Rehama Nchimbi found the inspiration for her doctoral work, titled Women's Beauty in the History of Tanzania, in the study and 1980s book of American scholar Sylvia Boone on notions of female beauty among the Mende people of Sierra Leone. In her own work, Nchimbi traces the changing concepts of female beauty in the history of Tanzania. She explores the role body language, culturally accepted codes of behaviour, dress and other fashion accessories have played (and continue to play) in the self-image of Tanzanian women, and in the ways others see them. Exploring a broad terrain that stretches from the 'pre-colonial' values that are still upheld by some of Tanzania's rural communities to the contemporary beauty pageants held in cosmopolitan Dar es Salaam, Nchimbi identifies defining moments and key concepts relevant to understanding the inventive ways in which Tanzanian notions of female beauty were formed and sustained, but also transformed over time