The World of the Beauty Salon - Essay Example

The World of the Beauty Salon A regular visitor of a beauty salon might explain her preoccupation with the social ritual of beautification as a means to improve one’s appearance, boost confidence, and perhaps become attractive to the opposite sex. Feminists have questioned this frenzied preoccupation with beauty as another form of gender subjugation. Beautiful women, women who evoke sexual desires in men, are feted by the society to which they belong, whilst ordinary woman are rendered “drab, ugly, loathsome or fearful bodies.” (Young 1990, p. 123). The knee-jerk instinct for the feminist movement therefore is to critically appraise this beauty norm in terms of its relationship with power. Bourdieu (2001, p. 1) calls masculine domination and the manner with which it is imposed upon women and suffered by them, a “symbolic violence, a gentle violence, imperceptible and invisible even to its victims” – suggesting perhaps that the patriarchy that imposes its demands upon women had been so entrenched in daily life that it is often difficult to identify, let alone resist. To quote Bourdieu (2001, p. 1): This extraordinarily ordinary social relation thus offers a privileged opportunity to grasp the logic of the domination exerted in the name of a symbolic principle known and recognised both by the dominant and by the dominated – a language (or a pronunciation), a lifestyle (or a way of thinking, speaking and acting) and more generally, a distinctive property, whether emblem or stigma. Bartky, for instance, has noted that the “fashion-beauty complex” is a “major articulation of capitalist patriarchy.” (Bartky, 1982, p. 135). By putting social pressures on women to look a certain way and dress a certain way, the argument is that it reinforces the gender hierarchies and reaffirms the disturbing tendencies among women to define their image and self-worth according to how they are perceived by men. Thus, the regular visits to the beauty salon to primp up and make one beautiful make women willing accomplices to gender stratification. Elaborates Black (2004, p. 69): The complicity of the woman in her femininity is inevitable, since she has inescapably grown up in a society based on a gendered hierarchy. She has also acquired a gendered habitus which guides her speech, her taste, her way of understanding and relating to the world, and her very sense of being. Less discussed however is how beauty salons reinforce not only gender markers, but also cultural, racial, generational markers. This is where the quote from Black comes in, “(t)he world of the beauty salon is not about beauty. We are not really ever judged according to aesthetics, but rather, aesthetic symbols become signifiers of other categories. Their value is read in classed, racialised, gendered and sexualised terms. (2004, p. 190)”. Taking off from this quote, this paper argues that the beauty salon reinforces aspirations of vertical mobility (e.g., moving from a lower class to higher class, from a perceived inferior race to a perceived superior race) by playing on aesthetic symbols of the categories aspired towards. To this end, this paper looks at the beauty salon as a glorification of the Caucasian ideal: white skin, coloured hair (any colour other than the black hair colour of Asians, indigenous Latin Americans, Africans), slim body structure, and how it reaffirms prevalent racial and class unevenness. Theoretical framework: using intersectionality as lens of analysis Most people often assume that axes of difference and bases of inequality revolve around independent spheres. Gender discrimination, for example, is to be studied separate from class discrimination; race discrimination is to be studied separate from class, and so on and so forth. However, in many, if not most, cases these spheres overlap and interact with each other. Here we discuss the notion of intersectionality – that which looks at the multiple, socially-constructed categories that interact in complex and multidimensional ways to produce and reproduce structures of inequality. It is hinged in the idea that themes of gender, race and class should be perceived not as independent from each other, but as overlapping structures of oppression and exploitation that must be addressed and resisted together as it “shapes those upon whom it bestows privilege as well as those it oppresses.” (Frankenberg: 1993, p. 131).” If we begin to trace the root of gender differentiation, and even subordination, it is imperative to consider the notion of gender as social construct and see how men and women are assigned different social roles and are treated or considered differently because of perceived biological differences. As expressed by Lorber (1994, p. 56) – Western society’s values legitimate gendering by claiming that it all comes from physiology – female and male procreative differences. But gender and sex are not equivalent, and gender as a social construction does not flow automatically from genitalia and reproductive organs, the main physiological differences of females and males. Lorber considers as “crude markers” distinctions based on skin color, age, organs, indeed they are the products of happenstance, the genetic sweepstakes if you will, and cannot or should not be made the basis of denying or conferring privilege. And yet, as a result of this, women were then considered less able than men and therefore must be submissive to the husband. Her greatest asset is her purity. Women have been considered as the weaker sex, unable to carry out masculine tasks and duties requiring intellectual development. In the past, a little girl would learn from her mother that a woman’s place was at home – doing household work like cooking and cleaning and watching over young children. Indeed, societal norms have greatly affected women in many cultures. Women, in most cultures, are considered to be inferior, a situation that has continued to hinder their career progress. In many societies, men and women are assigned distinct social roles which are restricted by certain norms. The perception of the role of women in the workforce has widely changed over time in the society. Historically the society viewed women as in the home taking care of the husband and children. Social norms required the woman to be submissive to the husband and should not leave the home for work. We must bear in mind that these “dichotomous, mutually exclusive categories that shape our understanding of the world are gendered and they are key to the production and reproduction of violence at all levels” (Confrontini 2006, p. 333). It is wrong however to look at female subordination without looking at other axes of difference. This now brings us to the concept of intersectionality. The concept of intersectionality was conceived by the United Nations in 2001, such concept stating that: An intersectional approach to analyzing the disempowerment of marginalized women attempts to capture the consequences of the interaction between two or more forms of subordination. It addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, class oppression and other discriminatory systems create inequalities that structure the relative positions of women, races, ethnicities, class and the like … racially subordinated women are often positioned in the space where racism or xenophobia or class and gender meet. They are consequently subject to injury by the heavy flow of traffic travelling along all these roads. (United Nations 2001). Intersectionality was first used as a concept to trace the layers of oppression undergone by black women. Frankenberg, the famous feminist, for instance, admitted that she she had at first considered race far removed from her work as a Marxist Feminist. To quote her, “I saw racism as entirely external to me, a characteristic of extremists or of the British State, but not a part of what made me or what shaped my activism.” (1993, p. 53) Her race consciousness was triggered by the observation that unlike those she campaigned in the All-Cambridge campaigns who were whites like her, those she worked alongside in the feminist movement in the United States were “lesbian women of color and white working class women” (ibid, 54) – bringing forth a heterogeneity that demonstrated the unities and linked experiences of women from all over the world. Beauty Salons and the Whiteness Fetish While there have been many inroads already taken to eliminate racial discrimination in the Western world, we see that discrimination has taken a more covert, insidious form. While it is illegal to make race a basis for employment or academic selection, or for any conferral or denial of privilege, for that matter, the racial differences still manifest in many ways. Whiteness indeed bestows a structural advantage to those who possess that color of skin, and conversely, creates disadvantages for those who are of another skin tone. In the past, race was used as an organizing device to include or exclude. In a way, therefore, it becomes inextricable with class – particularly when race becomes the determinant of conferring economic benefit. To provide an example most relevant to the present discussion, white is still considered the standard of beauty in many places – with women opting for rosy creamy white skin Caucasian features. Even young children are exposed to this white fetish for beauty. As recent as 2009, the Golliwog rag doll – coloured black and meant to depict Africans in a derogatory light – was for sale at the Queen’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk. (Babble.com, 2009). It internalizes racial discrimination and reinforces in more subtle but equally dangerous ways the message that white is beautiful and other colors are not, whilst maintaining the myth of meritocracy and color-blindness. Says Peggy MacIntosh (1989, 10): It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already. Beauty salons are complicit in reproducing the Caucasian ideal. In salons in Asia, for example, women go to extreme lengths to look white. Some salons in the Philippines – deemed reputable as they are run by licensed dermatologists – even dispense glutathione pills in concentrated doses, or even intravenous injections, because one of glutathione’s known side effects is a whiter colour of skin. The long-term effects of a pill used for Parkinson’s disease and ovarian cancer being used for healthy normal people who just want to become white has yet to be studied. This predisposition for the Caucasian ideal does not only manifest in skin color but it takes on other variants as well. For example, noselifts are very common – with the end in view of approximating the high bridge of the Caucasian’s nose. Among ethnicities were the racial characteristics include small, slit-shaped eyes such as Korea and China, a beauty salon procedure is called a “double-slit surgery” which is aimed at creating a crease above the eyelids or removing the fold to make the eyes look bigger. In a CNN article, it was reported that a 24-year-old woman’s appetite for cosmetic surgery had garnered media attention. To quote the article, Hao has become a living billboard for cosmetic procedures in China. After four months and twelve operations, she now has a higher nose. And her eyes are larger and rounder -- doctors removed the fold in her eyelid to give her a more European look. Hao also had breast implants and liposuction to take fat from the lower buttocks, making the head-to-toe makeover. (Weaver, 2003, Web). To what extent are our social lives mediated by this race-based beauty ideal? It would appear that race-based aesthetics is important in male-female relations and attraction. In an article entitled “When does Race Matter?: Race, Sex and Dating at an Elite University” (McClintock and Murry, 2010: 45), the authors looked at what the contemporary generation calls “hook-ups” – or the phenomenon of uncommitted and spontaneous sexual encounters that often take place among young people in places like universities. For its methodology, the paper used data from the College Social Life Survey, which is an undergraduate students survey in Stanford University, an elite learning institution. The paper found that homophily – or the tendency to love or associate with those of the same kind or the same race – still informs many of the relationships within the university, including hook-ups. The paper found that “groups that share a physical location but avoid social ties will have low rates of interracial relationships.” (p. 46) The paper also demonstrated that blacks are particularly socially isolated where relationships and hook-ups are concerned. What this suggests is that men and woman conform to this race-based aesthetic expectations in order to attract partners and in order to broaden life-choices. It is therefore part of an overarching structural arrangement that reinforces gender stratification through constantly-reproduced symbols and markers. Turning now towards Foucault’s theory of the Panoptic Gaze, we see how Foucault’s metaphor of the Panopticon is applicable here. A Panopticon is a prison structure where the guard can view the prisoners but the prisoner cannot view the guard, thus rendering the prisoner docile and disciplined by the mere thought that he is or could be under investigation. According to Foucault, the effect of this is “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (Foucault, 1979, 201). Using the theory of intersectionality, we see how the panoptic gaze can be two-fold: it keeps women “in place” using the strictures of patriarchy – ensuring that woman behave as women should behave, and look as women should looke, but at the same time, it keeps the racial arrangements “in place” by ensuring that those belonging to the perceived lower or outsider ethnicity will always be in an aspirational position towards the “more superior” race, lest he or she be accused of deviation or lose his or her footing in the social niche. But all these entail making women different from who they really are and demand deviations from natural conditions. According to Duncan (1994, p. 61): The idea of toned slenderness and a total absence of cellulite, flab and fat runs directly counter to women’s biological predispositions. Female reproductive functions require sufficient adipose tissue for childbearing, and the sites of fats are genetically programmed so that fat is deposited in the breasts, thighs, hips and bellies. Yet the female beauty ideal demands that these very areas – with the recent exception of the breasts – be devoid of fat. In similar vein, recent beauty fads demand that women be rosy-white, have a defined nose bridge, and so on, when their genetic ethnicity has formed them otherwise. In a sense, race and class and gender are similar in that it triggers the process of differentiation, and these differentials are legitimized and ratified in order to support existing power structures or arrangements. Race and gender and class differentials therefore, operate to strengthen one another and create filtering mechanisms that determine what people can get, and how, as well as the relationships between the group that gets and the group that does not. A black woman for example is beset with deeper structural disadvantages than a white woman, or a black man. A poor black worker will not enjoy the same financial advantages as a rich black businessman. Discrimination therefore takes place on multiple levels. To address one and ignore the other, to look at beauty in one field and not seeing how these fields interact and merge, to see the panoptic gaze as imposing only one structure of domination, rather than multiple structures of domination, is a profound injustice. Word count: 2607 References “The Queen of England Sells Racist Toys?” Babble.com. February 5, 2009. Available at http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2009/02/05/the-queen-of-england-sells-racist-toys.aspx Bartky, S. (1982). “Narcissism, Femininity and Alienation.” Social Theory and Practice Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 127-54. Black, P. (2004). The beauty industry: gender, culture, pleasure. London: Routledge. Bourdieau, P. (2001). Masculine Domination. 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