Normative beauty ideals: The debate on oppression and liberation in women's subjectification process

This thesis aims to reveal that seemingly ordinary and commonplace beauty practices in daily life, beyond being a personal choice for some women, play a central role in the construction of normative femininity through gender norms, body politics, and power relations. To this end, it analyzes how beauty practices are constructed in women's subjectivation processes from a post-structuralist perspective, focusing on Foucault's concepts of power, subject, knowledge, and discourse. This analysis discusses both the seemingly oppressive aspects of beauty practices and their definition as tools of power and resistance. Employing a qualitative research method, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 17 women who regularly visit beauty salons. The thesis focuses on the narratives of the interviewed women, demonstrating that they sometimes adopt beauty practices as a form of subjugation, and at other times, as a means of expressing themselves powerfully and freely.