Series
Volume 33
Studies in German History
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Racialized Beauty in the Global German Empire, 1884-1919
“There Is Only One Way to Be Pretty!”
Kate McGregor
236 pages, 10 half tones, bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80768-159-3 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (April 2027)
eISBN 978-1-80768-160-9 eBook
Reviews
a fresh consideration of German colonial race policy and violence through the lens of contemporary European beauty standards and heteronormative ideas of attractiveness. — Dr. Adam A. Blackler, University of Wyoming
Description
Racialized and gendered beauty standards operated as a form of everyday colonialism and violence in the global German Empire. Through routine practices of grooming, dress, hygiene, and aesthetic judgment, white German women actively produced and normalized shifting racial hierarchies in both daily life and print culture. These intimate, feminized practices functioned as mechanisms of classification and exclusion, extending imperial power beyond formal institutions. By centering embodied habits often dismissed as trivial, Kate McGregor demonstrates that empire was not only governed through law and force but lived and reproduced in everyday life, positioning white women as active agents in the making of colonial rule.
Kate McGregor is a historian of modern Germany and European imperialism, specializing in gender, race, and colonialism. She completed her PhD at the University of New Brunswick, where her research examined racialized beauty norms in the global German Empire. Her work has appeared in edited volumes on gender and German colonialism, and she has presented internationally on topics including race, aesthetics, and colonial power. McGregor’s research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.



