Managing the semiotics of skin tone: Race and aesthetic labor in the fashion modeling industry

Abstract

This article explores the aesthetic labor of embodying race. The author’s research on fashion models in New York City uncovered a demand for aesthetic labor that differs along racial lines, namely, black models must fit themselves to a narrower set of standards, and experience their race as both an asset and a liability. This difference is evident in the context of the market for black models, where the “white gaze,” and the “corporate gaze” intersect. Yet both employers’ desire for workers with a particular “look,” and workers’ willingness to call on personal resources to style that “look” for the job foster a structural bias toward racist practices that are masked by appeals to “aesthetics.” Managing one’s racial appearance reveals a unique quality of aesthetic labor that emerges only when race is taken into account, arguing for its inclusion among the characteristics workers manipulate when their work is studied as aesthetic labor.