Aesthetic Labour Research Articles

How cosmetic apps fragmentise and metricise the female face: A multimodal critical discourse analysis

In the present time, we see a rapid development of so-called cosmetic apps promoted by prominent cosmetic companies. Although there is an emerging market for male consumers, these apps are marketed as technological innovations designed to analyse, rate and evaluate mainly women’s facial appearances through the submission of a selfie. Based on the results generated from the selfie, personalised solutions are offered in the form of recommended products to supposedly help women improve their appearances. Drawing on a critical feminist approach and using multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), the aim of this article is to study how these evaluations are semiotically reproduced and presented to the users. The paper examines in detail how apps convey the evaluation process and transform a selfie into measures, presented through diagrams and charts, that is, how the female face is fragmented and metricised. Coming with affordances of being systematic, exact and scientific, these infographics assign the facial evaluations with meaning. A key argument is that these cosmetic apps are changing the way women are implied to consider and control their (facial) appearance. Following neoliberal notions, the apps put strong pressure on women to take the responsibility to engage in intensive forms of aesthetic labour and to consume the ‘right’ products to appear as the best versions of themselves.

Gender, beauty and the future of neoliberalism: aesthetic labour and women’s (anti)aspirationalism in Taiwan

Prior research suggests that gendered norms of appearance are particularly demanding in East Asian societies, including Taiwan. However, it remains unclear how the factor of temporality is related to women’s beautification. Relying on 62 in-depth interviews with Taiwanese women, we explore women’s mobilization of feminine appearance as an important aspirational strategy to gain various advantages and some women’s resistance to those bodily norms in Taiwan’s neoliberal context. The findings reveal that, in both cases, women’s attitude toward the future is determinant. The apprehension of appearance in the future could be illustrated by women’s concern for aging well, their meticulous preparation for maternity, and mothers’ investment in their daughters’ beauty practices. Paradoxically neoliberalism’s future-oriented temporality could result in a resistant attitude toward female beauty, since endless bodily work might lead to a withdrawal from the constant investment in female appearance.

Class performance: An empirical case of Chinese service workers in hair salons

AbstractChina's service sector has attracted millions of internal migrants from impoverished rural areas. This research investigates how service work contributes to the reproduction of class inequalities in China through the everyday interactions between service workers and customers. Based on 15 in‐depth interviews with Chinese service workers in hair salons, this research argues that the workers conducted class performance to distinguish their class from others. Specifically, they displayed aesthetic and interactive class performance at work through aesthetic labour and deferential work to legitimize the superiority of middle‐class aesthetics and the middle‐class customers' sense of entitlement. Moreover, under the circumstances of increasing job instability and the suzhi discourse, the workers' class performance could also be extended to their lives through entrepreneurial labour and relational work. While the service workers could exert agency through certain strategies in their class performance, their agency was still limited in the structural constraints and even reinforced class inequalities. This research deepens the understanding of class inequalities in the Chinese context and provides policy implications to diminish class inequalities.

From aesthetic labour to affective labour: feminine beauty and body work as self-care in UK ‘lockdown’

This paper draws on qualitative survey and interview data with 72 participants focusing on feminine body and beauty work practices in the UK’s first Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ in 2020. The data suggest that the affective dimensions of beauty were intensified, accelerated, and expanded during this period. Feminine beauty and body work was deployed to produce desired affects: namely positivity, productivity, and the elimination of stress and anxiety. I argue, therefore, that beauty practices became oriented less around aesthetic labour – the work of improving and maintaining appearance – and more explicitly and substantially a project of affective labour – the deep feeling work of generating and maintaining a disposition that aligns with the needs of capital. Using the lens of affective labour provides insight into the way that the affective harms of the pandemic crisis were individualised and managed by feminine selves through practices of beauty and body work. Participants’ affective labour projects produced two interrelated sets of immaterial outcomes. First, they helped maintain a ‘market ready’ set of positive and productive dispositions that were particularly crucial for those subjects in heightened conditions of precarity, insecurity or isolation. Second, affective labour was key to the deeply gendered, racialised and classed moral formulation of the ‘good’ pandemic citizen who would, and could, follow the directive to ‘stay at home’ in order not only to care for themselves and others, but to use the ‘opportunity’ of lockdown to transform and improve the self.

Coping with occupational stress: exploring women spa therapist’s experiences

ABSTRACT Traditionally performed by women for low wages, the gendered nature of therapy work entails a complex interaction between customer service, therapeutic expectations, and contact with naked bodies in intimate settings. There is currently however a paucity of research exploring occupational stressors for spa therapists, and how they cope (or not) with these workplace challenges. A study involving qualitative interviews with women working as spa therapists in Victoria, Australia identified negative stress outcomes associated with job overload, emotional labour and gendered aesthetic labour. A unique combination of coping behaviours and coping resources for spa therapists in the work environment was identified, which contributes to our understanding of these workplaces and women’s experiences of occupational stress.

Manager-Level Businesswomen’s Personal Experiences of Appearance Management and Body Image

The purpose of this study was to explore the personal experiences of businesswomen regarding appearance management and their body image. To achieve this, diverse perspectives were employed, including critical, practical, and positive body image perspectives. Interviews were conducted with 17 Korean businesswomen with more than 10 years of work experience. The data were analyzed using a phenomenological approach to understand their lived experiences of appearance management and body image. The participants acknowledged that appearance is important in the workplace - more so for women than for men. They commented that appearance may play an important role in displyaing social attractiveness to strangers, but other elements of social attractiveness such as liveliness or social skills take prominence in established relationships. Businesswomen, particularly those whose professions involve the display of appearance, are more likely to engage in aesthetic labor or the unpaid labor of managing their physical appearance in order to meet expectations at work. In general, however, these women considered appearance management to be a practice of self-care which seems to demonstrate their positive body image. This study has significance in that it strived to understand the subjective, lived experiences of businesswomen, including their thoughts and emotions related to appearance management and body image.

Aesthetic Labor in Religious Contexts: Women Encountering Modest Dress in the Workplace in the UK and Saudi Arabia

This article explores how UK women encounter religious dress and behavior codes in religious work contexts. It compares two very different case studies: women working at faith-based organizations in the UK and women working for secular organizations who travel for work to Saudi Arabia. Using 65 semi-structured interviews, participant wardrobe photographs, and observation in regional modest fashion retail, the article analyzes women workers’ experience in religious contexts as a form of aesthetic labor. It investigates the gendered and religious components which structure women’s different responses to workplace modesty codes. Detailing the additional aesthetic and emotional labor demanded of women in crafting modest professional appearances in religious contexts, the research reveals continuities in how workplace modesty requirements impact on women’s occupational performance and sense of self. The conclusion argues that religion-related workplace modesty codes constitute a religiously-inflected form of organizational aesthetics that may operate simultaneously with, but be experienced differently from, secular-driven organizational aesthetics. We find that religious dress codes are arbitrated by the avoidance of shame, an affect accompanying the government of modesty for all involved. We find that organizations benefit from, but do not recognize or recompense, the additional aesthetic labor that modesty demands of women.

Aesthetic labour and diversity on the shopfloor: the experiences of women workers in fashion retail

PurposeThis paper explores the workplace experiences of aesthetic labour among racially diverse frontline women workers in a fashion retail store.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study is based on an ethnographic study, drawing on findings from participant observation and interviews with frontline workers at a fashion retail store in the UK.FindingsThis paper explores how the embodiments of aesthetic labour are perpetually produced and commodified through the discipline of management in a fashion retail store. It challenges the notion of phenotypical Whiteness as the beauty standard within fashion retail and demonstrates how embodiments differ according to race. While White women are continuously scrutinised by their appearance, the aesthetic demands for women of colour tend to focus on speech and racialised bodies to provide “authentically” exotic experiences for customers. Additionally, this study highlights how the mobilisation of aesthetic labour can create work humiliation and work alienation.Research limitations/implicationsDespite this study being based on an ethnographic study at one British fashion retailer, this paper seeks to give voices to an underrepresented group by exploring the lived experiences of racially diverse women workers.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the intersection between aesthetic labour and race from an embodiment perspective, exploring the workplace experiences of racially diverse women workers in fashion retail and how their various forms of embodiment are racialised and commodified.

Aesthetic Labor in Service Work: The Breakthroughs, Debates and Future

Aesthetic labor refers to the process in which workers’ appearances make the core of employability. After two decades of development, the theory has yielded outstanding theoretical and empirical achievements. The review briefly investigates the trajectory of the construction, the debates, and the unfinished agenda of aesthetic labor. Introduced at the dawn of the 21st century, aesthetic labor ambitiously re-conceptualizes the emotional labor paradigm by accentuating the role “looking good and sounding right” plays in the new economy. It challenges the analytic frame of emotional labor by foregrounding the importance of corporeal attributes and the embodied dispositions of workers during service encounters. However, the theory is also challenged for its dominating feminist scope and the one-sided accentuation of the dysfunctions of society. A growing volume of research has diverted the attention on the experiences of male workers in aesthetic labor, and some, at the same time, are attempting to justify the prevalence of aesthetic labor by examining the agency of workers during the labor process. Comparative case studies, as well as the scope of cultural approach, are considered two promising research methodologies for aesthetic labor studies. Although the pursuit of beauty has always accompanied human development, the value of a “good look” has never been more prominent in our age. The booming of beauty industries such as make-up, modeling, and fashion has witnessed how a desirable physical appearance helps countless men and women ascend the social ladder from almost the bottom to the top. An increasing volume of literature focuses on the phenomenon, among which the term “aesthetic labor” stands out as one of the most influential theories that capture the characteristic of occupations based on the never-ending polishment of physical appearance. After two decades of development, the theory of aesthetic labor has stimulated volumes of research examining the role of the body and physical beauty in interactive service work. The review essay aims to sketch the breakthroughs that the theory have made, the debates centered on the theory and the future directions that might fill the gap

I'm Skinny, I'm Worth More: Fashion Models' Experiences of Aesthetic Labor and Its Impact on Body Image and Eating Behaviors.

The fashion industry has been critiqued for promoting ultra-thin bodies, yet the relationship between models' aesthetic labor and eating disorder (ED) development is unclear. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, we explored the lived experiences of nine female fashion models including metaphors they used to describe body perceptions and eating behaviors. Four superordinate themes emerged: Shaped for the industry; The body as a market product; Food restriction ("it's almost glamorized"); Toward a healthier modelhood. Models' career trajectories were those of lost childhoods, punitive body rules, inadequate dietary advice, and self-regulated food restriction. Models were "shaped" by agents from an early age to conform to the industry's body rules irrespective of the physiological and psychological consequences. A "toxic" side to this aesthetic industry was depicted; agents were judged callous and money-focused, while idioms like, "feeling like a piece of meat" and "being a hanger of clothes" conveyed a deep sense of degradation and objectification. Ideas instilled at a formative age continued to influence self-image and eating patterns into maturity, pointing to an industrial element to the construction of eating disorders. Our study highlights how infantilization, sexism, and other unethical elements become normalized in poorly regulated industries such as fashion, with dire consequences for the health and wellbeing of employees. Model agencies should recognize the impact of occupational edicts and poor communication on young recruits in a sensitive phase of personality development. Finally, we advocate for more acknowledgment and further investigation into eating disorder construction commercial/industrial side.

Workplace Monitoring: The Moderating Roles of Aesthetic Labour Attributes towards Employees’ Performance in a Fast-food Restaurant

Front-line employees in the hospitality industry are considered as the source of service differentiation. Workplace monitoring encourages decision-making and awakens predictions about employees' future actions, skills, and their suitability for employment. Monitoring proponents contend that it is a good way to ensure that goods and services are of high quality. Despite many discoveries on the workplace monitoring in the hospitality industry, study on the aesthetic labour attributes specifically in fast-food restaurants is still under explored. Hence, the objective of this current study is to examine the effect of workplace monitoring and the moderating role of aesthetic labour towards employee performance in the fast-food restaurant. This study adopted a non-probability purposive sampling design and data was collected via questionnaires personally administered to frontline employees from selected fast-food restaurant’s outlets. To test the proposed hypotheses, a correlational research design was used, and a causal-comparative design was adopted. The results showed that workplace monitoring has a positive influence on employee performance in the fast-food restaurant. Additionally, aesthetic labour significantly moderates the relationship between workplace monitoring and employee performance. The findings suggested that in any realistic environment, aesthetic labour cannot be perceived and examined on its own, and the organization must monitor the workplace to identify the state of the employees.

Gender and the blurring boundaries of work in the era of telework—A longitudinal study

AbstractThis longitudinal study analyses gender and the blurring boundaries of work during prolonged telework, utilising data gathered during the different phases of the COVID‐19 pandemic. The pandemic caused a major change in the knowledge work sector, which has characteristically been more prone to work leaking into other parts of life. The study examines the blurring boundaries of telework: between time and place, care and housework, and emotional, social, spiritual and aesthetic labour. The experiences of different genders regarding the blurring boundaries of work during long‐term telework are scrutinised using a mixed methods approach, analysing two surveys (Autumn 2020:N = 87, and Autumn 2021:N = 94) conducted longitudinally in a consulting company operating in Finland. There were several gendered differences in the reported forms of labour, which contribute to the blurring boundaries of work. Some boundary blurring remained the same during the study, while some fluctuated. The study also showed how the gendered practices around the blurring boundaries of work transformed during prolonged telework. Blurring boundaries of work and attempts to establish boundaries became partially gendered, as gender and life situation were reflected in knowledge workers' experiences of teleworking.

“Competing personas”: aesthetic labor in the Chinese fitness industry

Given the proliferation of lifestyle consumption, industries such as the fields of fitness, fashion, and beauty and makeup have experienced rapid growth in terms of employment numbers, leading to fundamental challenges to working patterns. Based on ethnographic data concerning two fitness clubs in Shanghai collected over 13 months and 35 in-depth interviews with managers, fitness trainers, and customers, this article draws on the concept of aesthetic labor to examine how a “persona,” a combination of an ideal physique and a desirable personality in line with the aesthetic tastes of socioeconomically diverse clientele, is developed through the labor process of the fitness trainer. The author introduces the term “competing personas” to characterize shopfloor politics in the fitness industry. By understanding the process of packaging and selling their bodily, gendered, and affective resources as a “game,” fitness trainers draw symbolic boundaries to distinguish themselves from each other, thereby justifying their aesthetic competencies and self-identities. This article distinguishes three types of personas: advisor, friend, and idol, and these types are characterized by different corporeal and affective strategies. The article reveals how the exercise of agency by both male and female workers in the process of persona-building fuels the symbolic reproduction of class and gender inequalities by naturalizing the domination of an ostensibly legitimate taste.

Promoting extreme fitness regimes through the communicative affordances of reality makeover television: a multimodal critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACT Taking off from the theory of social semiotics and using the methods of multimodal critical discourse analysis, this paper demonstrates how the communicative affordances of a Swedish reality makeover show, The Great Health Journey, are used to promote discourses normalizing extreme fitness ideals. It is a show that reduces health to body fitness and supports a particular health consciousness gaining prominence today, an ideology here depicted as fitnessism. Progressing the ideas put forward by Crawford with the notion of healthism, fitnessism accentuates the careful submission to strict fitness-related regimes as crucial for a healthy lifestyle. It turns the very fit body into a sign of good morals, indicating the values of self-discipline, self-control, and willpower, personal characteristics seen as crucial in the neoliberal era. But the healthiness of this fitness ideal can be questioned. Rather than serving the interest of public health, fitnessism seems to mainly encourage “aesthetic labour” and support commercial interests to exploit body dissatisfaction.

The continuum of regaining one’s body: Childbirth and reproductive choice under beauty pressure in Taiwan

This article explores the phenomenon of regaining one’s body, by nuancing the Western feminist analysis of the cult of beauty and the ideal of the ‘yummy mummy’ in a non-Euro-American society, Taiwan. While existing studies of bouncing back after childbirth have focused mainly on losing weight during the postpartum period, this article examines a continuum of the beauty-related deliberations and different forms of aesthetic labor of Taiwanese women before, during and after pregnancy. Drawing on 62 in-depth interviews, my analysis shows that not only do women include the project of regaining their body in their plans for pregnancy and giving birth, but that beauty becomes a controlling claim that can compete with a child’s well-being or mother’s health. Moreover, this task should be viewed as a holistic and multidimensional concept because it involves not only body shape but also keeping desirability vibrant and dealing with delicate interpersonal relationships.

The “Foreign TA Problem” as a Demand for Aesthetic Labor

The “Foreign TA Problem” as a Demand for Aesthetic Labor

Tyred out: Natural aging and aesthetic labor in Pirelli's 2017 calendar

We review how natural aging is constructed in contemporary media discourse by examining coverage of the 2017 Pirelli calendar. While highly digitized and provocative representations of youthfulness might be readily associated with this calendar, the 2017 edition featured actors aged 28–71, shot in black and white with limited makeup and apparently no digitization. As older women we reflexively examine this exposure of how women might age naturally; and discursively unpack tensions surrounding understandings of beauty and empowerment across media coverage. We suggest the Pirelli calendar is a complex media production, with impact that extends far beyond the product itself, spreading through the economic system and connecting tyres to art in the process. We progress understandings of aesthetic labor across the lifecourse, offer further development of the beauty and empowerment tensions embedded in the aesthetics of natural aging and explain how natural aging facilitates a multi-layered process of binding.

“I don’t just want to look female; I want to be beautiful”: theorizing passing as labor in the transition vlogs of Gigi Gorgeous and Natalie Wynn

ABSTRACT In September 2018, transgender YouTuber Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints) released “The Aesthetic,” a video in which she explored the social pressure placed on trans women in the public eye to pass. Taking this video as a starting point, I analyze trans beauty influencer Gigi Gorgeous’s early transition vlogs in which she details her experiences with cosmetic surgery. The narrative Gorgeous constructs in these vlogs, I contend, employs transnormative discourses that center an internal struggle with gender dysphoria. However, I complicate this narrative by placing Gorgeous’s vlogs in conversation with Wynn’s vlog where she recounts her own experience with facial feminization surgery, pointing to the external pressures she faces to conform to beauty norms. I contextualize these narratives within the literatures on aesthetic labor and social media influencers to explore how Gorgeous and Wynn’s desires to pass and to be beautiful are informed by their status as highly visible trans women working in the cultural industries. By theorizing passing as labor, I argue that beautification practices such as cosmetic surgery are investments that trans women in the public eye make in the hopes of attaining social and economic capital.

Glitter, Shine, Glow

Abstract This article explores the ways in which patina is deployed in gendered celebrity culture, specifically through forms of visual communication in relation to luxury. The article is framed by literature on race and gender from apartheid to postapartheid, and texture in visual communication in relation to luxury in Africa. The author uses three magazine covers featuring beloved Black South African women celebrities to illustrate three aesthetics of Black feminine success: glitter, shine, and glow. Visually, the three patinas are linked and on the surface might seem indistinguishable, but a difference in positioning and ethic comes through in the discourse animated by each. Glitter is linked to the classic narratives of sexy fame, in which the woman featured is portrayed as the heteronormatively desirable archetype of fun and glamour. Shine is linked to a politicized ethic of visibility, the work of spotlighting presence, legitimacy, and excellence as a role model for a broader feminine community. Glow is linked to a narrative of feminine enlightenment and inner peace, in which beauty comes from within and radiates outward from the skin, and feminine aesthetic labor is harnessed to the project of transcending gross materialism while simultaneously using material cues to communicate that joyful transcendence.

The Lived Experiences of Queer* Teachers in İstanbul within the Scope of Institutionalized Heteronormativity and Neoliberal School Policies

Even though the challenges that Queer* employees face in the workplace because of their intersecting identities of gender, sexuality, race, and class continue to be one of the rarely studied topics in social sciences, there has been a resurgence of interest in recent years, concerning how Queer* teachers experience the conflation of their sexual and professional identities. Informed by the recognition that schools are one of the most representative prototypes of gendered organizations with their ever-adapting regimes of inequality, this study is motivated by the question of how Queer* teachers in İstanbul deal with the enduring institutionalized homophobia, which has only got worse in terms of its silencing and pathologizing mechanisms. Claiming one of the fundamental functions of schools to establish strictly heteronormative spaces of learning, where any form of gender nonconformity or sexual dissidence stands before disciplinary punishment or reprimand from other students and teachers, I have examined the current working conditions of Queer* teachers in İstanbul within the contexts of schools, which compel Queer* teachers to abide by their institutionalized rules and norms of compulsory heterosexuality. This study attempts to learn what kind of experiences Queer* teachers in İstanbul articulate regarding the conundrum of being forced into presenting themselves as non-sexualized and non-gendered professional figures, as neoliberal policies and capitalist expectations of a rigid separation between professional identities and personal lives of workers continue to negatively affect the occupational well-being of Queer* teachers. A careful analysis of the interviews has revealed that the Queer* teachers in İstanbul are burdened with the aesthetic labor they are constantly expected to perform due to the emergent neoliberal schemes of professionalism and that they suffer under closely monitoring mechanisms of heteronormative school policies and work climates.