Female Beauty, Symmetry, and Race: Interpretations of Georges Hébert in the Works of Renato Kehl

Renato Kehl (1889–1974) was a Brazilian physician and a leading figure in the eugenics movement in Brazil during the early twentieth century. His writings reveal how conceptions of race and beauty intersected with broader hygienist and evolutionary discourses of the period. Kehl’s engagement with the ideas of Georges Hébert – particularly those contained in L’éducation physique féminine: Muscle et beauté plastique – shows how he appropriated Hébert’s work to support his eugenicist conception of female beauty. Through Hébert’s Natural Method of Gymnastics, Kehl articulated a physical and moral model of femininity in which physical exercise functioned as a technique for shaping bodies, linking aesthetic ideals to racial improvement and to the nation-building project of the time.