<![CDATA[This study examines how fashion culture and lifestyle, understood as modes of self presentation, social performance, and everyday practice, operate as tools of identity construction and resistance in Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty Is a Wound. The objective is to reveal how beauty, personal choices, and public perception function as symbolic capital in negotiating gendered power relations, class hierarchies, and political constraints. Using close textual analysis, the research explores how female characters, particularly Dewi Ayu, mobilize appearance, behavior, and life decisions to challenge dominant ideologies and redefine their roles in society. The findings show that fashion culture in the novel extends beyond clothing to encompass socially coded forms of visibility and influence, transforming beauty into a strategic site of agency. Lifestyle choices, from unconventional work to defiant relationships, emerge as acts of resistance that blur the boundary between personal autonomy and collective struggle. These results position the novel as a literary example of how aesthetic and cultural practices can function as vehicles for social activism.]]>
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