MACMILLAN An Anthropology of Gender Variance and Trans Experience in Naples: Beauty in Transit

This book recounts the author’s fieldwork among the trans and gender-variant communities in Naples. This is where a gender-variant figure, the femminiello, has found a safe environment within the city’s historical poorest neighborhoods, the so-called “quartieri popolari”, which were and continue to be culturally and socially connoted. The femminielli, who can be read as “suspended” figures between the feminine and the masculine, provide the background for a discourse on the meanings that genders and sexualities have assumed in modern Naples. This is done with significant openings to theoretical reasoning that is both extraterritorial and multidisciplinary. Starting from the micro context, the aim of the book is to explore the breadth and complexity of the gender variant and trans experience, with particular reference to the changing meanings of the body, which are also tied to the collective images of beauty in contemporary times. From the Back Cover This book recounts the author’s fieldwork among the trans and gender-variant communities in Naples. This is where a gender-variant figure, the femminiello, has found a safe environment within the city’s historical poorest neighborhoods, the so-called “quartieri popolari”, which were and continue to be culturally and socially connoted. The femminielli, who can be read as “suspended” figures between the feminine and the masculine, provide the background for a discourse on the meanings that genders and sexualities have assumed in modern Naples. This is done with significant openings to theoretical reasoning that is both extraterritorial and multidisciplinary. Starting from the micro context, the aim of the book is to explore the breadth and complexity of the gender variant and trans experience, with particular reference to the changing meanings of the body, which are also tied to the collective images of beauty in contemporary times. Marzia Mauriello teaches Medical Anthropology at the University Magna Græcia of Catanzaro (Italy) and is the Scientific Secretary of the Study Centre on Food and Nutrition based at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. She has published extensively on gender and sexuality, gender variance and trans experience, and on the intersections between food and gender. About the Author Marzia Mauriello teaches Medical Anthropology at the University Magna Græcia of Catanzaro (Italy) and is the Scientific Secretary of the Study Centre on Food and Nutrition based at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. She has published extensively on gender and sexuality, gender variance and trans experience, and on the intersections between food and gender.