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Description
In the context of globalization, the idea that individuals can live isolated from other cultures and ideologies is challenged as people everywhere, are strongly influenced by multiple contact experiences that shape their identities. An important aspect for women is the negotiation of cultural norms of beauty that are shaped by mass media. Global mass media create cultural pressures on women to self-objectify and become preoccupied with physical appearance by presenting them with images of feminine beauty that collapse individual cultural ideologies into one global ideology. Based on the feminist theoretical assumption that gender, race, class, and cultural identity must be examined in relationship to each other, this ethnographic study examines how a group of Congolese women living in San Diego engage in a process of identity construction by localizing the borderland of the "self" between the gendered norms of beauty represented in the media of the host culture and those of their home country. The findings reveal that female Congolese immigrants' bodies are an embodiment tool in reproducing gendered norms of beauty in America as well as in Congolese cultures. While, the move from the Congo to the U.S. appears as a detachment from cultural norms, values, and canons of their home country, by immigrating in the U.S., Congolese women are expected to integrate the cultural and social values of this host country. Meanwhile, they cannot ignore the customs, traditions, and beliefs that constitute their African cultural legacy since they shape their identities in this adjustment process. In view of these findings, this study concludes with a call for a more systematic and critical assessment of identity negotiation in intercultural communication context.