Brune Mantese de Souza

BRUNE MANTESE de SOUZA, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, was approved funding in October 2024 to aid research on “Making Transborder Heads: Transfemininities and Gender Production in Hair Studios of Tabatinga (Brazil) / Letícia (Colombia) /Santa Rosa (Peru) , Amazon.” This postdoctoral research explores how gender — especially transfemininities, non-binary identities, and gender transitions — is shaped through hair aesthetics in the tri-border area of Tabatinga (Brazil), Leticia (Colombia), and Santa Rosa (Peru). Focusing mainly on beauty salons and barbershops, the project centers on the experiences of trans women and travestis. They used mannequin heads made of latex, plastic, and human hair as tools for collaborative artistic and ethnographic practice. These “heads” became “dolls” once the professionals intervened, adding hairstyles, makeup, and stories that reflected both imaginative personas and their own lived experiences. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s speculative fabulation and Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation, the research blurred the lines between fiction and reality, creator and creation. The study draws on Marilyn Strathern’s concept of aesthetics as the formal stabilization of relations. It also challenges biomedical views of transition by emphasizing the role of hair, makeup, and clothing as key technologies of gender. Local ideas of femininity, race, and class — especially around “cabocla” beauty — shape how trans and travesti communities creatively reimagine gender at the margins of normative and national boundaries.