The Constructed Glamour Project is a research initiative examining Hollywood beauty as a system rather than an individual attribute.

Through archival documents, beauty manuals, studio records, fan magazines, advertisements, contracts, and visual culture, the project explores how glamour was manufactured, circulated, taught, and maintained throughout the twentieth century.

Rather than treating beauty as innate or effortless, this project approaches glamour as labor: a coordinated process shaped by cosmetic industries, film studios, publicity systems, fashion, media technologies, and cultural expectations surrounding femininity.

Research Focus

• Hollywood glamour and star image
• Beauty instruction and instructional femininity
• Modeling, labor, and professionalization
• Cosmetic surgery and body modification
• Fan magazines and consumer culture
• Advertising and aspirational beauty
• The relationship between beauty, discipline, and performance
• Archival studies and visual culture

The project combines methods from film and media studies, cultural history, feminist theory, beauty studies, and archival research to examine how femininity is constructed and reproduced through media systems.

This project is part of ongoing doctoral research in Film and Media Studies.