Erasure and Assertion in Body Aesthetics: Respectability Politics to Anti-Assimilationist Aesthetics.

The article examines body aesthetic practices as strategies marginalized Black communities use to claim personhood within a dominant white mainstream, focusing primarily on respectability politics—a set of assimilationist practices developed post-Reconstruction to counter hypersexualization and violence against Black women by conforming to white bourgeois standards of modesty and comportment. While respectability politics employs a "negative" aesthetic of blandness and bodily erasure to avoid harm, it is ambivalent and self-undermining, as it requires marginalized individuals to erase aspects of their identity without securing genuine respect or moral equality. In contrast, the article highlights anti-assimilationist body aesthetics, exemplified by Chike Jeffers’s defense of sagging pants and Janell Hobson’s celebration of Black female bodies through photography and dance, which assert personhood by embracing visibility and culturally specific expressions rather than conforming to dominant norms. These anti-assimilationist approaches center marginalized perspectives, reject white supremacist values, and offer pluralistic, empowering models of aesthetic agency that better affirm moral and political recognition. The discussion underscores the ongoing relevance of these aesthetic strategies in resisting oppression and shaping social justice efforts.