Beauty Regimes: A History of Power and Modern Empire in the Philippines, 1898–1941 by Genevieve Alva Clutario (review)

Reviewed by: Beauty Regimes: A History of Power and Modern Empire in the Philippines, 1898–1941 by Genevieve Alva Clutario Brayden Rothe Beauty Regimes: A History of Power and Modern Empire in the Philippines, 1898–1941. By genevieve alva clutario. Duke: Duke University Press, 2023. xiii + 335 pp. ISBN 978-1-4780-1964-0. 28. 95 (paper). Genevieve Alva Clutario's book grapples with understanding the integral role that beauty and fashion played in the Philippines during turbulent transitions from Spanish to United States to Japanese imperial regimes. During this colonial period, fashion and beauty End Page 342 served an integral role in undermining foreign rule, to reaffirming and challenging shifting status roles. Her detailed and engaged deep dive into sartorial material culture and its impact on people and empire expands on an under-analyzed area of study. Through close readings of archival sources and analysis of sartorial utilization and understandings, Clutario demonstrates the fundamental centrality that clothes, cloth, and spectacle had among imperial regimes and the rising Filipina/o identity from 1898 to 1941. Studies into Philippine sartorial culture and sartorial culture more broadly are not new, with previous works by Stephanie Coo and Denise Cruz examining late Spanish colonial sartorial and Filipina identity formation. Clutario words it best when she says that she "provides alternative possibilities for understanding how empires overlap, how nationalism and nations formed against and with the colonial state, and how colonial subjects navigated dramatic shifts in power" (p. 9). Engaging in research during these transitional periods in the history of the Philippines proves critical to understanding not only identity formation, but transformation between Spanish and American imperial control. Clutario demonstrates a strong grasp of the archive in the first chapter, utilizing relevant archival materials such as the personal letters, diaries, and memoirs of white women in the Philippines, who often excluded the names of the individual Filipinas they encountered to capture the feelings, attitudes, and viewpoints of these unknown Filipina women. Highlighting the extent to which what appeared as mere petty acts were actually moments of identity affirmation, attack, and transformation, through the implementation of these sartorial materials. Clutario's second chapter highlights the role that spectacle played in not only reaffirming U. S. economic stability in the Philippines, but the extent to which material culture played a role in the continuity of Filipina/o identity and does this well. Clutario writes that "the 1912 Manila Carnival eclipsed the spectacles of previous years. Building on the infrastructure of the previous carnivals and Philippine Expositions, the 1912 festivities included bigger floats, more elaborate industrial exhibitions, and a fuller program. It also reinstated and expanded the Manila Carnival Queen contest" (p. 81). Here, Clutario lays the groundwork for later discussions on identity formation and spectacle but is speaking to a broader literature of the study of spectacle and expositions like the World's Fairs, which were integral tools for American imperial and industrial retention of control over their citizens. She goes on to say that "the development of the Manila End Page 343 Carnival Queen contest itself reflected the intertwined process of maintaining beauty pageantry and constructing a version of nationalism through the creation of a 'Filipina' identity" (p. 100). The following chapters detail the expansion of spectacle from within the Philippines to the wider American mainland. Filipina embroiderers produced garments for the beautification of white American consumers, predominantly women, resulting in a transnational Philippine beautification industry, composed of embroidery and fashion industries supported by colonial extraction. An entire industry of embroidery continued and expanded under American rule, from schools and colleges teaching embroidery, to household workers and eventually garment manufactories producing these commodities (p. 112). It is important to note, as Clutario does, that Filipinas in the embroidery industry were working and lower class, and not the elites utilizing sartorial culture to their benefit from chapter one. Here, she explores the hierarchies present in Philippine society, by race, class, and ethnicity. Clutario discusses the formal state apparatuses meant to reaffirm the market demands for exported embroidery such as the Department of Public Instruction, and the carceral system at Bilibid Prison and beyond, and how both systems were meant to ingrain "habits of sober industry. . .