Secrets of the Keraton: constructing Indonesian beauty ideals through an indigenous beauty brand

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to study how a local beauty brand, Mustika Ratu, was able to compete with foreign companies by discursively constructing an ideal of Indonesian beauty that drew on cultural heritage and history, indigenous knowledge, nature and pre-colonial royalty, all of which represented alternative sources of authority to Western science but also reinforced the political and cultural priorities of the long New Order regime in Indonesia (1965–1998). Design/methodology/approach This research uses a historical case study drawing on archival, textual, visual and autobiographical data spanning 1940s to the 1990s. This contextualises beauty marketing in Indonesia leading up to the birth of Mustika Ratu in the 1970s and the trajectory of its growth up until the New Order era from 1965–1998. Findings This paper shows that while domestic brands can mobilise alternative sources of authority in their construction of beauty, including selective use of pre-colonial heritage and history, in doing so they can also reproduce existing cultural, ethnic and social hierarchies and political hegemony that exist within the “local”. Originality/value While the global beauty industry has been marked by “scientification”, we show how history and indigenous systems of knowledge can function as alternative forms of authority in the construction of beauty ideals. However, we also draw attention to the ways in which versions of history and culture are constructed for political purposes, and how this can find expression in products and marketing rarely associated with the State but which still reproduce existing power relations. Countries in Southeast Asia have been little studied by scholars of beauty history, and this paper shows how the evolution of beauty ideals expresses and reflects both versions of national identity as well as broader political and economic changes in the macro environment.