Learning to Look Good: Thai Women Office Workers and Everyday Consumption Practices at Work

Abstract

By arguing that consumption practices involve learning, in this chapter, I will explore how, through their engagement in the consumption of clothes and makeup, Thai women office workers learn to look good at work. I propose that women learn to look good through a process by which they look at other women, negotiate meanings of appropriateness, reify an ideal appearance by inscribing their outer bodies through their consumption of makeup and clothes, and formulate identities necessary for becoming members of the “community of practices” (Lave J, Wenger E, Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991). In understanding women’s consumption practices in relation to learning, I accentuate the doing of “embodied ethnography” (Turner A, Soc Anthropol 8(1):51–60, 2000; Monaghan LF, Fieldwork and the body: reflections on an embodied ethnography. In: Hobbs D, Wright R (eds) The Sage handbook of fieldwork. Sage, London, pp 225–242, 2006) and argue for the visibility of my body in the analysis and writing of ethnography. I reflect on my experiences during my fieldwork at a banking corporation in Bangkok, Thailand. I question how I participated in the process by which I learned to become part of the social community. The women’s embodied experiences as well as my experiences demonstrate that how we learn is informed by our engagement in the shared practices in the community of practices.