Women’s Resistance Against Beauty Standards Through the Dance Work Gugatan Tubuh Perempuan

Abstract

This paper explores Gugatan Tubuh Perempuan (Indictment of Women’s Bodies), a contemporary dance work interrogating beauty bullying and social pressures on women’s bodies. Grounded in the author’s personal experiences through an autoethnographic approach, this research employs Practice-Based Research while drawing upon objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts) and the beauty myth (Wolf). Data were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation of the creative process, and then analyzed thematically. The choreography involves audience participation by attaching duct tape onto the dancer’s body in a performance space set up as a photo studio, visualizing beauty standards as a form of restriction.

This paper explores Gugatan Tubuh Perempuan (Indictment of Women’s Bodies), a contemporary dance work interrogating beauty bullying and social pressures on women’s bodies. Grounded in the author’s personal experiences through an autoethnographic approach, this research employs Practice-Based Research while drawing upon objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts) and the beauty myth (Wolf). Data were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation of the creative process, and then analyzed thematically. The choreography involves audience participation by attaching duct tape onto the dancer’s body in a performance space set up as a photo studio, visualizing beauty standards as a form of restriction. Findings indicate that the subjectivity of personal experiences can be transformed into collective awareness, positioning dance as both a medium of resistance and healing. This study affirms the transformative power of dance not only as an artistic practice but also as a pedagogical one, offering a model of gender-equitable dance education for women’s empowerment.

Findings indicate that the subjectivity of personal experiences can be transformed into collective awareness, positioning dance as both a medium of resistance and healing. This study affirms the transformative power of dance not only as an artistic practice but also as a pedagogical one, offering a model of gender-equitable dance education for women’s empowerment.