Beauty on Duty

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. And I argue that this eye is constructed by varied economic, social, political, national and global discourses on what defines beauty, how is it to be enhanced and appreciated and enables you to participate in the global economy of beauty.

Locating beauty work in the concept of body work, it needs to be noted that body work is performed to care, cure, give sexual pleasure and decorate the body via the body of the worker through touch and close proximity. Hence masseurs, bar girls, escorts, undertakers, prostitutes, beauticians, dentists, nannies, midwives, tattooists, mortuary workers, yoga instructors, shoe salesmen, nurses and doctors are all body workers.

Many kinds of body work are seen as humiliating. Historically these works were done within specific personal relations like marriage, even caring for the patient occurred within the family. In India, historically much of body work was done within caste occupations like barbers. Now body work has entered the market and hence apparently anyone can do it. Moreover we also see a change in the definition of the body. Earlier intimate relations allowed for touch between bodies and since this occurred within the family, it was not seen as work. Now it is believed that these bodily contacts can take place between two strangers, in the market relations as well.

I did a small survey about beauty parlours and bigger beauty clinics and conclude that firstly, using the Gramscian point of view, the women in the beauty industry are not dopes of beauty who are there only because of some structural forces at play, without realizing that they are being duped. Rather they exercise their agency and choose to be in it. They understand the structure, enter it and negotiate their way through it. Hence we recognize women in the beauty industry as agential subjects who may be participating in the hegemony.
Moreover, as the beauty care providers move from the private to the public, new types of hierarchies may be reconstituted. Even as the association of certain castes to body work comes to be altered and new groups enter the profession, it doesn’t mean an end to the hierarchies. Even for the new entrants in the field, the point of entry is often determined by their social location and privileged classes and castes enter the industry at higher levels only.

Further, it needs to be recognized that women in beauty work actually require skill and it isn’t just about engaging in vanity. The work these women do is extremely skilled and requires soft but deft hands. To deny them this skill would be to fall prey to the popular notions that “Vanity thy name is woman!”

It also needs to be recognized that women bring innovation to their working spaces. They show their skill and industriousness in terms of decorating the limited spaces within which they work to make it look customer-friendly, in terms of decorating their own bodies to look neat and in terms of developing excellent public relations skills to attract and retain to customers.

Hence I argue that though hegemonization occurs, we don’t see a complete victimization as there are constant negotiations within that hegemonization and also that some of the actors do remain outside the victim framework. Hence, I beg to differ from many of the popular discourses that either seek to dismiss beauty work as being vain and duping the non-critical masses or else celebrate it as empowering women. Such binaries make us lose out on the agential roles women play in marking out their spaces even as they understand their work differentially from popular discourses.

Therefore I choose to look at women in beauty work as a choice the women make inspite of knowing that the choices themselves may be constructed. These choices do open up possibilities for the women engaging in them in terms of offering them livelihood options or actually leading to their empowerment even if in a restricted sense. Moreover they also recognize that this has been a result of the global economy of beauty thus indicating that they are aware of the larger socio-political scenario that they are part of and participate in the beauty industry knowingly.
And it gives us ample chance to smile at a sign at a barber’s saloon in Mumbai that reads:

“We need your heads to run our business!”