The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a new style of man: the metrosexual. Overwhelmingly straight, white, and wealthy, these impeccably coiffed urban professionals spend big money on everything from facials to pedicures, all part of a multi-billion-dollar male grooming industry. Yet as this innovative study reveals, even as the industry encourages men to invest more in their appearance, it still relies on women to do much of the work.
Styling Masculinity investigates how men’s beauty salons have persuaded their clientele to regard them as masculine spaces. To answer this question, sociologist Kristen Barber goes inside Adonis and The Executive, two upscale men’s salons in Southern California. Conducting detailed observations and extensive interviews with both customers and employees, she shows how female salon workers not only perform the physical labor of snipping, tweezing, waxing, and exfoliating, but also perform the emotional labor of pampering their clients and pumping up their masculine egos.
Letting salon employees tell their own stories, Barber not only documents occasions when these workers are objectified and demeaned, but also explores how their jobs allow for creativity and confer a degree of professional dignity. In the process, she traces the vast network of economic and social relations that undergird the burgeoning male beauty industry.
KRISTEN BARBER is an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Men and Beauty: The Historical Expansion of an Industry 2 Rocks Glasses and Color Camo: Selling Beauty to Class-Privileged Men 3 Heterosexual Aesthetic Labor: Hiring and Requiring Women Beauty Workers 4 Hair Care: Emotional Labor and Touching Rules in Men’s Grooming 5 “We’re Men’s Women”: Occupational Choice Narratives of Sameness and Difference Conclusion Appendix A. Class, Gender, and the Economy in the Study of Men’s Salons Appendix B. Participant Demographic Information Bibliography Index
