Working-Class Women and Television Fiction Uses: Can Subaltern Voices Speak of Sexuality?

We reflect how heterosexual working-class women, of different generations and ethnic groups, in Brazil’s southernmost region, make representations of sexuality connecting sex and affection. It seems that sexuality is more of a problem to be faced than a pleasure to be lived, although the mentalities (Ariès 1990) of working-class women in inner Rio Grande do Sul relate conformity and resistance to the patriarchal order. The accounts of appearance, manners and sexual behaviour show that family, work, school and television fiction shape a symbolic capital extracted from their class and gender habitus (Bourdieu 1999; Skeggs 2004). Such accounts – which we had obtained during two years of fieldwork and through individual sociological profiles (Lahire 2004) – present richness of material for the analysis of lived experiences and of the weight of social structures on personal lives.