Handbook of Beauty and Inequality

This open access handbook offers a state-of-the-art overview of theoretical perspectives, empirical insights and scholarly debates into the relationship between beauty and inequality: how does beauty shape and reproduce social inequalities, and how does social inequality shape appearance and beauty standards? This comprehensive review emerges out of the burgeoning research on appearance and inequality in recent years. The handbook brings together under one volume the widely dispersed research on this topic which uses different concepts, approaches and methods, often without reference to one another. It does so by pulling together knowledge on appearance and inequality from different subfields of sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, management studies, communication and media studies, economics, legal studies, gerontology, psychology and evolutionary psychology, and creates talking points between and within disciplines. It presents different conceptualizations of beauty, including beauty as morality, capital, stigma, asset, merit and fashion. It also focuses on mechanisms linking beauty to inequality, drawing mainly on quantitative and analytical approaches, and looks at intersections between beauty and various axes of inequality. Finally, the work highlights institutional approaches to various fields in which beauty standards are created and reproduced. The chapters are written by established scholars from a range of disciplines and countries and discuss the literature, while also presenting original empirical research. This is a highly useful and handy resource for anyone interested in learning more about the field.
 
This exemplary and ambitious Handbook of Culture and Inequality is a timely contribution to our understanding of how beauty operates in our social world. The introduction offers a sharp analytical framework to organize what is a multi-layered interdisciplinary field, while the contributions carefully parse how beauty shapes inequality in fields of activity ranging from teaching, to politics and fashion. This book is certain to become a classic reference for everyone intrigued by the power of beauty.  

•          Michèle Lamont, Harvard University
•  

List of contents

Introduction. Beauty and Inequality: New Questions for a Fragmented Field.- Part I: Beauty.- Beauty as Subordinate Capital.- Beauty and Morality.- Sexual Capital.- Evolutionary Approaches to Beauty.- Beauty as Gendered Inequality.- Beauty as Evaluation.- Beauty and Meritocracy.- Part II: Mechanisms.- Beauty and Romantic Outcomes.- Beauty and Romantic Outcomes.- Beauty and Hiring Discrimination.- Beauty and Social Capital.- How Beauty Impacts Life Satisfaction: Objective, Subjective and Mediating Effects.- Beauty, Media Representations and Body Image.- Looking Right for the Job: Appearances, Unequal Chances, and Gatekeeping in the Labor Market.- Part III: Intersections.- Beauty, Gender, and Ageing.- Beauty, Race/Ethnicity, and Gender Inequalities.- Beauty, Bodies and Elites.- Body Size and Social Class: Beauty and Stigma in a Tale of Two Habitus.- Clothing, Beauty and Inequality.- Beauty, Gender and Parenthood.- Beauty Regimes and Global Inequalities.- Part IV: Fields.- Cosmetic Surgery.- Beauty and Work: Continuity and Change in the Analysis of Aesthetic Labour.- Sexual Fields and Women s Sexual Capital: Online Challenges and Insights.- Beauty and Teaching.- Beauty, Dating, and Desirability.- Beautyvism: Beauty as a Political Tool.- Beauty and Fashion.- Lookism: the Morality of Appearance Discrimination.

About the author

Giselinde Kuipers is a Research Professor of Sociology at the KU Leuven in Leuven, Belgium. She is a pioneer of research on beauty and inequality, and has expertise in cultural and media sociology, visual methods and mixed-methods designs. Her innovative ERC-funded mixed-methods project on the sociology of beauty and inequality was one of the first sociological studies on the topic. In 2022, she received her second ERC grant for her project Beauty and Inequality: Physical Appearance, Symbolic Boundaries and Social Dis/advantage in Five Global Cities. She has published extensively on beauty and inequality. She has also served as editor-in-chief for scientific journals and co-edited edited volumes, including the Handbook of Humour Studies.
 
Outi Sarpila is a Senior Research Fellow at the INVEST Research Flagship Centre at the University of Turku. Between 2023 and 2026, she is serving as a professor of sociology in the Department of Social Research at the University of Turku. Sarpila has led two externally funded research projects focused on themes of appearance and inequality. The most recent of these, funded by the Research Council of Finland, has partially facilitated this handbook project. Sarpila’s background is in economic sociology, and she has specialized in quantitative research on appearance. Her research on these themes has previously been published in journals such as Sociology, European Sociological Review, and European Societies. 

Summary

This open access handbook offers a state-of-the-art overview of theoretical perspectives, empirical insights and scholarly debates into the relationship between beauty and inequality: how does beauty shape and reproduce social inequalities, and how does social inequality shape appearance and beauty standards? This comprehensive review emerges out of the burgeoning research on appearance and inequality in recent years. The handbook brings together under one volume the widely dispersed research on this topic which uses different concepts, approaches and methods, often without reference to one another. It does so by pulling together knowledge on appearance and inequality from different subfields of sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, management studies, communication and media studies, economics, legal studies, gerontology, psychology and evolutionary psychology, and creates talking points between and within disciplines. It presents different conceptualizations of beauty, including beauty as morality, capital, stigma, asset, merit and fashion. It also focuses on mechanisms linking beauty to inequality, drawing mainly on quantitative and analytical approaches, and looks at intersections between beauty and various axes of inequality. Finally, the work highlights institutional approaches to various fields in which beauty standards are created and reproduced. The chapters are written by established scholars from a range of disciplines and countries and discuss the literature, while also presenting original empirical research. This is a highly useful and handy resource for anyone interested in learning more about the field.
 
This exemplary and ambitious Handbook of Culture and Inequality is a timely contribution to our understanding of how beauty operates in our social world. The introduction offers a sharp analytical framework to organize what is a multi-layered interdisciplinary field, while the contributions carefully parse how beauty shapes inequality in fields of activity ranging from teaching, to politics and fashion. This book is certain to become a classic reference for everyone intrigued by the power of beauty.  

•          Michèle Lamont, Harvard University
•  

Beauty has emerged in recent years as a key arena for social scientists interested in inequality. This invaluable volume brings together cutting-edge thinkers from different disciplines to think about the myriad ways beauty is related to various forms of advantage and exclusion in contemporary societies.  Timely, comprehensive, and asking important, provocative questions, this volume demonstrates that beauty and inequality represents a distinct and urgent field of emerging social science research. 
                                                                                                                                                                               -   Sam Friedman, The London School of Economics and Political Science
 
 Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but vision is socially structured along quite unequal lines. This original, timely and rich handbook looks at the intersection of beauty and social inequality and compiles a wealth of interdisciplinary research into how beauty both creates, maintains and sometimes capsizes inequality.
-       Roberta Sassatelli, University of Bologna

Product details

• Assisted by: Giselinde Kuipers (Editor), Sarpila (Editor), Outi Sarpila (Editor)
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 03.05.2026
• EAN: 9783032080349
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3208034-9
• No. of pages: 540
• Illustrations: X, 540 p. 20 illus. in color.
• Series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Miscellaneous; Kulturwissenschaften, Ethnische Gruppen und multikulturelle Studien, Gender Studies, Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie, Ethnographie, Soziale und ethische Themen, Sociology of Culture, Aesthetics, Gender Studies: Gruppen, Open Access, cosmetic surgery, Philosophie Ästhetik, Social Justice, Sociocultural Anthropology, Race and Ethnicity Studies, Lookism, Beauty and aging, Aesthetic labour, Beauty as capital, Appearance as Class Distinction, Comparative studies of beauty standards, Beauty and racial inequalities, Physical appearance and life satisfaction, Beauty-based discrimination