Men Are Real, Women Are 'Made Up': Beauty Therapy and The Construction of Femininity

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3d
Men are real, Women are `made up'1: beauty

therapy and the construction of femininity
Paula Black and Ursula Sharma
Abstract
Beauty therapy as an industry is multi-faceted; as a set of practices it is complex. The

beauty industry has been the subject of much critique but comparatively little
empirical study. Based upon research with beauty therapists themselves, this article
investigates the complex relationship between femininity and beauty. The beauty
industry is located within debates about the body and leisure. The growth in the
beauty industry is also linked to the commodification of body practices. Despite
remaining critical of the role of beauty in the lives of women, we also emphasise the
fact that women are not `cultural dopes' (Davis, 1991). The actual experiences of
beauty treatments and the testimonies of women involved in the industry paint a
picture of competing discourses and contradictory outcomes. This is not least
because both clients and therapists deny being concerned with beauty, but rather aim
to provide `pampering', `treatment' or `grooming'. The beauty salon may be seen as
the site of both compliance with, and escape from, a feminine ideal. The role of class,
ethnicity and age in breaking down the monolithical concept of beauty and in
fragmenting the experiences of beauty practices are also discussed.
Introduction
All societies require work to be done to the body to change it from the `natural'
to one that is specifically cultural (Falk, 1995). However, the ways in which
feminine and masculine bodies become culturally acceptable differs greatly. In
a late 20th century European and North American context, what might be
called the ideal of femininity and the accompanying beauty industry are
systems that regulate and commodify the bodies of women to an extent and in
a form not experienced by men. In this context, male bodies require a very
different form of maintenance in order to conform to hegemonic masculinity ±
men are `real' without this work. This is not to deny that in the acquisition of
varying forms of masculinity intensive work is done to the body; body building
is an example. Young men too are under increasing pressure to obtain and
maintain a specific `look'. However, on a routine day to day level men are not
required to paint, moisturise, deodorise and de-hair their bodies in order to
appear masculine. These activities, however, form part of the day to day
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{Journals}sore/49_1/z173/makeup/z173.3d
Men are real, Women are `made up'
routines of femininity (Holland et al., 1994). In this sense then femininity is a

state to be constantly sought.
The beauty industry fuels this acquisition of femininity and even for those
women who do not visit beauty parlours themselves, the beauty system is all
pervasive. This does not necessarily mean that all women will equally achieve
this ideal, or that all women will strive to attain it, but rather than as a feature
of the everyday lives of women, femininity, and the discipline of the unruly
body, form an inescapable backdrop (Holland et al., 1998; Weekes, 1997;
Skeggs, 1997).
In this article it is our aim to outline the work of beauty salons, and to
investigate in some depth the claims surrounding what goes on there. The salon
has been chosen as a site par excellence, where this attainment of femininity,
and its definition and negotiation are being fought out. In its generally closed
and intimate nature, the beauty salon is not only a feminised space, but also
one in which the secret routines of femininity are commodified and
exemplified. Such feminised spaces, it has been claimed, have been generally
overlooked in the development of social theorising, for example in relation to
urban sociology, where Lofland stated in 1976 that:
As far as I know, for example, there is not a single published study of a

beauty parlour, a setting in which many women may undoubtedly develop
close and meaningful, if limited, relationships. (Lofland, 1976: 154)
This absence has to a limited extent been addressed since this date (see for
example, Furman, 1997; Gimlin, 1996; Jacobs-Huey, 1998; Thompson, 1998).
At this stage of our research, and reflected in this article, our discussion is
preliminary and wide-ranging. Our aims include the investigation of the
commodified nature of bodily maintenance and the extension of the leisure
industry into this bodily arena; the relationships and micro-activities of the
everyday world of the salon; the professional claims and rhetoric of the beauty
therapist and her (and it is usually her) investment in the emotional labour of
her trade; and finally, the main focus of this article, the relationship between
feminism and its investigation of beauty and femininity. This study originally
grew out of related research on non-biomedical healers and their sense of
professional identity (Cant and Sharma; 1999). Our first interviews therefore,
were concerned to examine the claims to professional status within beauty
therapy. We intended to investigate beauty therapy as work rather than as a
cultural institution. This emphasis was not maintained however, as our
interested in the multi-faceted nature of the industry grew. It soon became clear
that there were many ways of investigating this phenomenon.
Writers such as Wolf (1990) and Chapkiss (1986) have been unambiguously
negative about the effects of the `beauty system' or the `fashion-beauty
complex'. Wolf, for example, describes how eating disorders, the appearance of
women in the work place and reproduction amongst other arenas have become
# The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2001 101

subject to the `beauty myth'. This system of beauty has arisen as a part of a
wider backlash to the social, economic and political advances made by women.
Other work has, however, emphasised the complex nature of discourses and
practices which regulate the body and produce femininity (Bordo, 1993; Butler,
1993; Skeggs, 1997). It needs to be acknowledged that there is room for tension
and ambiguity within femininity, not least in the sense that class, age and
ethnicity will fundamentally alter the ways in which femininity is experienced
and defined (Gimlin, 1991; hooks 1992). In our research we have discovered
that the beauty industry, its role and the experiences of the women who come
into active contact with it is indeed a complex matter.2
In approaching this complex area then we broadly agree with Davis'
statement that:
Feminist theory on beauty needs to be grounded; that is, it must take the
ambiguous, contradictory, everyday social practices of women as its starting
point. (Davis, 1991: 33).
Methodological issues
Our research has consisted of interviews, observation in a college where beauty

therapy was taught, and we have also received beauty treatments in salons. The
interviewees were made up of eight women who taught beauty therapy, and
seven salon owners or managers. All interviewees were based either in one large
Midlands town or a Northern city. The beauty therapy teachers were all drawn
from one college within the Northern city. In addition, we observed teaching
sessions and staff meetings in this college, and offered a short course in
research methodology to the beauty therapy students here. Finally, we received
treatments in various salons unconnected with the college. In addition to this
fieldwork we studied literature and journals disseminated by professional
organisations associated with beauty therapy and interviewed some of their
officials. It should be noted that the evidence upon which this article is based
comes not from clients but from those closely involved in providing services
within the beauty therapy industry.3 Although some observation has been
carried out in salons, the majority of the following arguments are based on the
testimony of those occupying a specific position in the beauty therapy world.
Those teaching the subject, and with years of experience in the industry will
provide a different view to that based upon the experiences of clients.
Throughout our analysis and discussion we are referring to the beauty
industry and beauty therapy more specifically in terms of its social and
historical location. We are not concerned to chart the arguments around
beauty and aestheticism per se, rather to investigate the role of the beauty
industry and culturally specific beauty ideals which are implicated in our
investigation of beauty therapy.
102 # The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2001

The nature and scale of the beauty industry
A beauty salon has its own ambience. The uniforms of the staff, the decor, the
layout reflect the aspirations of the owner. Some salons give the immediate
impression of a clinic where staff dress in white, and where formality is
emphasised. In other salons, the staff are required to dress in more flamboyant
colours, often matched by the decor and the welcome received by the client.
Walls are decorated with the qualification certificates of staff and membership
certificates of professional associations. Salons generally contain a waiting area
with comfortable seating and assorted magazines; a desk and a till close to the
door where the client is taken after their treatment; a private area for staff;
screened cubicles where treatments are carried out; and if the salon offers nail
treatments, there is also a more communal treatment area where manicures are
performed. The salon has its own routines and tracks along which staff walk in
greeting clients, guiding them to treatment rooms, offering refreshments, and
finally leading to the point where payment is made. Salons too have their own
smell which is that of the equipment and chemicals used for treatments
intermingled with the pleasant aromas of perfumed creams and lotions, cups of
tea and coffee, and sometimes too the strong smell of nail products. In this
atmosphere the intimate routines of body maintenance are carried out.
Beauty therapy is part of a vast multi-national industry. The value of the
professional beauty industry in the UK in 1998 was £366 million, which
represented a growth of almost 6% on the previous year. This figure includes
beauty therapy treatments in a variety of sites including mobile, hair and
beauty salons, health clubs as well as the conventional beauty salon. The
growth in the customer base stood at over 13%. This means that 13% more
people, the vast majority women, visited salons in 1998 compared to 1997 (The
Beauty Industry Survey, Guild News, 1999).4 The beauty industry operates
through a variety of sites, all sectors of which are supported through media and
advertising. Women are the targets of this beauty ideal in women's magazines
and in advertising for products which promote health and beauty. The
idealised and sexualised feminine image is also used in advertising as a
marketing tool (Featherstone, 1982).
The expansion of the beauty industry has accompanied the expansion of the
leisure industry more generally and this was acknowledged by the therapists we
spoke to:
I think years ago there was almost not a sort of business ethic behind beauty
therapy. It was a kind of luxurious service. And I think it was a lot of small
salons working on quite outmoded and outdated lines and were seen very
much as a wealthy woman's option. I think it has changed quite radically ... .
Now it is a lot slicker, more business oriented. Salons seem to plan a little
better, analyse what they are doing to maximise their market. The bigger
companies are a big influence. I think it's the growth of the leisure industry
that has dragged us forward because, you know, the hotels are now big

business, and gyms in hotels. So now we have a lot of salons in hotels

alongside the leisure complex ... . And I think it is far more accessible to
people. With the advent of the fitness regime and people going to gyms and
being more concerned and that, they are more exposed to beauty therapy and
they are thinking well why not? I have worked out in the gym, why not treat
myself to a massage? Why not have a facial?
However, it is important to note that one woman's leisure is another woman's

work. The beauty industry itself, whilst providing the site for carefully
packaged and segmented parcels of free time, is also the site of work involving
physical labour, emotional work, long hours, low pay, and often poor work
conditions for those employed within it.5
What is beauty and do women want it?
Perhaps it would come as no surprise if women did strive for beauty. Beauty is
routinely associated with morality, sociability, kindness and other positive
characteristics. The work of Lombroso in the early part of this century sought
to theorise the links between facial features and criminality (Lombroso, 1968).
Of all of those who are subject to this valuing of beauty though, women are the
group most routinely and consistently judged according to aesthetic ideals. Not
all women wish to or are able to approximate to an idealise standard of beauty
but all women are evaluated against this yard stick. Black women, for example,
may reside outside of the idealised notions of the fair skinned beauty. In
defining Black as not only a personal but a political identity, other aspects of
appearance appear desirable and beautiful. For example, within the British
context, Weekes (1997) describes how ambiguity arises from an internalisation
of white standards of beauty by both Black men and women. In struggling to
challenge this standard, a different Black standard of beauty is established,
which is often itself essentialised. White people themselves internalise idealised
standards of beauty. As the category of white is both internally differentiated
and hierarchical, some groups of people may never feel that they are `white
enough' (Dyer, 1997). In our study all of the interviewees except one were
white, and the clientele of the salons visited whilst we were present was
overwhelmingly white. Though we have analysed in detail the construction of
femininity within beauty therapy, we have as yet paid less conceptual attention
to the construction of whiteness, or other `racialised' categories. This is an
avenue we intend to explore in future research.
Beauty may also be experienced in other contextually specific ways, for
example, the symbols of beauty vary according to age and also class (Gimlin,
1991). It should also be noted that beauty is never a pure category, and
femininity itself is always related to from a variety of subject positions. For
example, Skeggs has shown in her study of white working class women that
femininity was not an identity which the women unambiguously identified with

(Skeggs, 1997). This ambivalence towards the trappings of femininity has been
highlighted in our study by the refusal of therapists to acknowledge that their
work is about beauty or the production of a highly feminised appearance.
The salon is also an explicitly heterosexual world. This does not mean that
the clients and the therapists are all heterosexual, but rather that the body work
performed there is set against the backdrop of an overt (female) heterosexu-
ality. Lesbianism was not mentioned, and in the view of the therapists, the male
visitors to beauty salons were likely to be gay, or `stressed' executives.
It seems then that discussion of beauty per se is inadequate. This inadequacy
in terms of theorising is matched by the therapists' own mistrust of the term.
There was a noted absence of any discourse of beauty in their interviews or
wider discussions with us. Only in one sense did beauty arise and this was in the
criticisms of the term in the title of their profession. This addition to `therapy'
was seen to devalue the therapy and treatment side of their work, and to
somehow trivialise their role. Beauty in this way contributed to the image of the
beauty therapist as `bimbo' and was a much resented term. The following
interviewee summarises the view she believes the general public holds of the
profession:
Beauty therapy is for the girls who could not hack it at school, they failed,
they're stupid, all they do is paint finger nails and file and chew gum and
that's it.
This kind of belief reflects the common-sense understanding of the

`beauty=brains' split against which women are evaluated. In being associated
with the beauty side of this dichotomy, beauty therapists felt that they were
constantly battling to prove their intellectual and professional capabilities.
The treatments offered to clients in our study were carried out on a highly
individualised basis, and the assessment of the best treatment as well as the
most appropriate method of administering that treatment depended on the
skills of the therapist. In fact this formed an important part of their training,
and professional rhetoric. Apart from a generalised sense of helping the client
to look and feel good there was little evidence of a standardised form of beauty
drawn upon in the work of the beauty salon. In fact, as the quote below
illustrates, treatments provided without reference to the particular character-
istics of the client were seen as inappropriate:
Make-up is so subjective and what you think would look good on somebody
is not their perception of what looks good on themselves. Students start out
by putting their own make-up on everybody, which a sixty year old lady will
not always suit! ... . They won't say Ì hate it', but you know that they go
into the toilet before they go home and take off all that the student has put
on, because its a young person's make-up that has gone on to someone who
really shouldn't be wearing so much make-up.

The professional standards of the industry and the working practices of each
therapist were viewed as highly important but the ends towards which these
carefully practised means were progressing were less carefully reflected upon.
This does not mean that there are not generalised beliefs about the culturally
acceptable forms of femininity, but rather that within this ideal there is no one
way to be `beautiful', or even a desire to become so. In fact ideals of beauty
were sometimes mentioned as specifically what the client was not aiming for:
Not everyone wants to walk into a salon and see a blonde `bimbo', you
know, with legs up to their armpits to make them feel intimidated. I mean
people are ordinary. Ordinary people come through here. Elderly people
come through here and they're pleased to see me because I'm past it
(laughs).
Beauty therapists do not simply offer cosmetic services but see themselves as
having some overlap with the medical profession. Their work on the body
certainly strays in to the territory of both the medical profession and
complementary therapies. Salons are not simply about nails and make-up!
I would say that it does offer a very high therapeutic angle to it, it boosts
people's confidence and self esteem. Some people, I think, misinterpret what
vanity is. If somebody said years ago Ì am going to a beauty therapist's',
you instantly thought beauty and vanity, the two go together. But these days
there's more to salons, there's more emphasis on stress related problems and
that, massage is good to release stress and these other therapies have come
forward, reflexology, aromatherapy, shiatsu.
The beauty ideal then must be widened and refined if it is to make any sense in
the context of the beauty salon. The therapists themselves openly rejected the
idea that they were producing a look for women as if on some sort of
formalised conveyor belt. However, there is a problem here with why and how
these individually experienced desires arise. An individual is never simply an
individual. Selling individuality is a very different matter to demanding a
product on the basis of purely individual desires.
If not `beauty' then what do beauty therapists do?
The beauty therapists then did not discuss beauty directly, instead their work
was divided into `pampering', `treating', and `grooming'. Pampering treatments
are not seen as a necessity, but rather an indulgence for which the recipient
often feels guilty. Pampering is associated with relaxation and implies that the
need to relax arises from some stressful situation that the woman is escaping.
Stress most often relates to work or family commitments. The cost of the
beauty treatment, especially if seen as pampering rather than a necessity adds

to the guilt associated with it, particularly if this is taken from family funds.
One of the salon owners in our study had learnt to deal with this issue in her
work:
I mean we still get ladies in who say òh I can't afford that'. My answer is
well, I ask them a question, `has he [husband] got a football season ticket'?
and if she says yes, `well spend an equal money on your face', and then they
see it in a different light because the man is a bit old fashioned, you know,
`spending all that money on your face, you can't see what's happened'.
The economic implications of `pampering' here are put in to perspective in

terms of comparing the woman's time to herself and the use of household
money to facilitate this, with the man's involvement in leisure activities. This
struggle for women to create a space and a legitimacy for their own leisure
activities has been well documented (Deem, 1986).
We were constantly told in the interviews that clients desire to look `normal',
particularly in the case of treatments such as those for the removal of facial
hair or acne, or that they simply want to `make the best of themselves'. It is
here that the work of the therapist becomes `treatment'. The removal of facial
hair is one area where therapies received are seen as being essential treatments
for a legitimate, almost medicalised, problem:
When you do a consultation there's two things a woman will always say.
She will always say ± jokingly ± Ì thought I was turning into a man'. But
it is a fundamental worry that they're losing their femininity ... So they are
convinced that they are on their own and they are convinced that they are
no longer feminine. It's a awful thing for a woman to feel like that, very,
very damaging. And they feel isolated because its not anything you can
talk to somebody else about. You can't say òh, how do you deal with your
beard'? I knew one woman who used to get up, religiously, half an hour
before her husband, go to the bathroom, tweeze out all the hair on her
chin, put on full make-up before her husband was up. He didn't know she
had a problem.
This is clearly an area where the facial characteristic of hair is seen as a signifier
of masculinity, and in turn is a `terrible thing' to happen to a woman. These
tiny hairs can question her social identity to such an extent that her appearance
is kept under surveillance and regulated, sometimes with help from the beauty
therapist, but always as a shameful secret from everyone else. This struggle for
femininity questions essentialised notions of being born a woman, with a
biologically female body. The artfulness of such an achievement illustrates the
highly constructed nature of this supposed `natural' state.
Particularly where clients were busy working women, then the need to
look adequately groomed was a further justificatory strategy for visiting the
salon:

Beauty therapist 1: A lot of women work more now so they feel they can take
time for themselves, whereas before a lot of women just
used to be housewives.
Beauty therapist 2: Yeah, they hadn't got their own money.
Interviewer: So a lot of clients you get here actually do work then?
Beauty therapist 2: Yeah, yeah, this is why we've got a bit of a gap and then
all of a sudden they're haring in for a quick half leg [wax]
and an eye brow trim and dash back to work.
The work of beauty therapists then only obliquely, if at all, refers to the
concept of beauty. The therapist contributes to the leisure time of the client; to
the maintenance of an acceptable, feminine, but not overtly sexualised,
appearance for the world of employment; and to the achievement of a narrowly
defined standard of `normality'. What this fragmentation of discourses around
the work of the salon suggests is that femininity is produced in relation to
several different external social institutions; or perhaps that different women in
the salon invest in their femininity in different arenas. This multiplicity of roles
has also created space for men to visit salons. We have anecdotal evidence of
an increase in men's use of beauty salons in the UK. The type of treatments
they were receiving appeared to fall in to the category of stress relief (eg, body
treatments, massages etc.), or the area of grooming.
Òrdinary people come through here'
The expansion of the leisure industry and the seemingly unhindered spread of
rampant consumerism are not in themselves enough to explain the growth in
the beauty industry. In order to do this we must look more widely at the role of
the body in this consumer society, and more fundamentally at the role of
women's bodies. In addition, by listening to beauty therapists themselves we
can begin to evaluate some of the claims made in academic work.
Turner (1996) argues that patriarchy relied upon a comprehensive system of
institutionalised discrimination against women in law, religion, employment,
politics and so on. In Western democratic societies this systematic set of
structures no longer explicitly discriminates against women and instead these
societies may be characterised by what he terms `patrism'. As a result of the
shrinkage in institutionalised power of patriarchy, reaction shifts to other
systems whereby male power is maintained. Could it be the case then that the
`beauty myth' is a newly evolved system of oppression which has taken over
where discrimination these other left off (Wolf, 1990)? Despite seeing the
beauty system as all pervasive and damaging for women, Wolf does
acknowledge the fact that often women desire to conform to this ideal. In
this view then the role of the beauty industry is negative, even to the point of
convincing women to become complicit in their own `torture'. One of the
therapists in our study commented on this pressure and her role within it:

I wouldn't go out of the house without make-up. Which has got to be

wrong. Image is very nice but it's not the be all and end all. It's just a vanity
business isn't it?
The external pressures to conform to a certain ideal image have also been
linked to the development of advertising and women's magazines which target
women as consumers. Women are encouraged to create an individual look
through consumption of mass produced products. The paradox in this situation
is overcome through the woman's own labour to create her body or her home.
Beauty is a tool which is used in the service of this push to consume (Lury,
1997; Winship, 1987). These pressures were to some extent acknowledged by
the therapists themselves:
Yes, there are always these magazines with gorgeous women staring back at
you. You think that's the way men perceive you as, and that's the way you
should look yourself.
The picture from the interviews, however, is not so straightforward. We would

argue that the roots of this complicity, and the desire for a particular body
image can be more usefully understood by linking the issues arising from our
interviews to wider sociological themes.
One of the tensions within beauty therapy is that between the individualised
treatment experience and the existence of a generalised feminine or beauty
ideal. Individualisation and consumption go hand in hand. It has been claimed
that the radical individualisation of late modernism has weakened communal
ties and identifications, and that primary relationships now exist between
individuals and the market. This has been documented in the case of leisure
activities and lifestyle and even to the extent of intimate and love relations
being restructured according to the demands of the market (Featherstone,
1982; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995). Whereas the focus for women in the
past has been to achieve a certain look in order to gain love and win a husband,
from the 1980s onwards love disappeared from the beauty books to be replaced
by the goal of self-discovery and an individualised search for fulfilment
(MacCannell and MacCannell, 1987). In the beauty salon, the woman can
perhaps convince herself that the product she is consuming actually is unique
and tailored to her own very specific needs. At the same time beauty therapy as
a social activity is important.
Studies of hairdressing salons and beauty parlours in the USA have found
that a shared experience is central to the visit. Furman (1997) describes how for
older Jewish women the visit to the salon is very much an opportunity to share
details of everyday life events with friends and peers. Jacobs-Huey (1998)
describes a similar process in a hairdressing salon with predominantly African-
American clients. In both of these cases the layout of the salons and the type of
treatments delivered facilitated a sharing of experiences between the women in
a general open space. In the British context, at least in the salons we have

visited, this is not the case. The client is led in to a private cubicle and
interaction is facilitated only between the client and the therapist on a one to
one basis. Privacy and individual attention to the client are part of the
professional ethics of the beauty therapist. The role of therapist here is as
unofficial counsellor rather than participant in a general conversation. Beauty
therapists must carry out both body and emotion work:
I would say 80% of my clients, maybe higher, have problems that they tell
me about every time they come in ... . They come back because they feel
cared for. They come back because you will listen to them whereas at home
you know the husband will say `God if you talk about that once more I will
scream', but they pay you to listen as well you see, as well as having the
treatment. I have clients here, they'll pay forty pounds for a facial and
they're lying there the whole time with their eyes open instead of relaxing
and going right in to it, they're lying there the whole time and telling me
about their latest trauma, and I'm thinking `what are you getting from this
facial'? But what they're getting from the facial is unburdening of their
problems.
This counselling role was an ambiguous experience for the therapists. Though
they were aware of the benefits to the client, and of the fact that this was one of
the key motivating reasons for women to return for treatment, in terms of their
own mental and emotional health, this role was a difficult and sometimes
exhausting experience. At the same time they also derived immense personal
satisfaction from having helped and listened to clients (Sharma and Black,
1999). However, in receiving manicures, and in the waiting areas, women do
meet and spend some time sharing the social rituals mentioned in the studies
from the USA. We would suggest that this may be one of the reasons for the
growth in the popularity of nail treatments as women may attend salons partly
in order to partake in this more social activity.
In another sense too, the woman enters the salon aiming to partake of
thoroughly social activities. Not only the therapists but the clients themselves
are fully aware that treatments must be appropriate to the category of woman
that is being dealt with. This appropriateness is expressed implicitly in the
therapists' discussion of age, or of tailoring treatments to clients' own desires.
Women's knowledge of femininity and their own position in it is a collective
achievement which is constructed not only through sources such as the media
and the advertising industry, but also experienced through the milieu of
friends, family, employment, partners and so on. Skeggs (1997) argues that
women make differing levels of investment in femininity. In terms of the
working class women in her study, relationship to femininity was ambiguous.
Investment in its traditional trappings was higher when young, and decreased
with age as time and money were invested elsewhere. The rituals of `dressing
up' or shopping were social occasions, and the final appearance of the woman
a combination of many factors, including her own social positioning, and those

surrounding her. This is a regulated femininity, not wholly embraced by

women themselves. The women here are working class and white. Class, `race'
other than whiteness and sexuality will produce different relationships to
femininity, and the women involved will be judged very differently. The
individual does not enter the salon simply as an individual. Her decision to be
there, her request for treatments, the desired outcome, the amount of money
available to spend and a host of other factors enter the salon door with her.
Another recurring theme in our study has been the way in which therapists
divide treatments into a series of dichotomies which we have described as, for
example; aesthetics=treatment; looking=feeling; and holism=bits. Although
there is an overlap in the sense that treatments have effects for both appearance
and feeling, generally this distinction holds:
You're a bit like Jeckyll and Hyde when you're in the salon. You know,
when you do somebody a make-up, talk about completely different things
and you act in a completely different way to when you're giving them a
massage or a facial. When you're doing their nails it's different again ... .
When you go out into industry you learn how to change conversation, how
to change, erm, your persona.
One of the consequences of this distinction is the fact that one area lends
more legitimacy to the work of beauty therapists than the other. It is the focus
upon beauty, appearance and the face which has reinforced the image of
therapists as `bimbos'. Many of the therapists were keen to stress the level of
treatment carried out in their salons, and the overlap with the medical
profession.
This split also means that perhaps beauty can be separated out from
treatment in any analysis of the role of beauty therapy in the lives of women.
Both looking treatments (eg, facials, manicures, leg waxing) and feeling
treatments (eg, reflexology, massage) can be evaluated in terms of their
function in the production of a feminine body ideal. Body treatments which
aim to relax the client and are focused upon dealing with stress could perhaps
be compared to the executive game of squash which receives little negative
comment from either work-mates, professionals or academics. Leaving aside
the question of whether the reduction of stress simply perpetuates the stressful
situation which the woman originally finds herself in, and the issue of whether
beauty therapists are qualified to deal with `stress' in their pseudo-medical way,
there has been less focus upon this area of the beauty industry in feminist
critiques. In contrast, it is the beauty side of the work of salons which has
attracted most negative comment.
Though tentative at this stage there is also some evidence in our interviews
for clients to prefer different types of treatments according to factors such as
social class. It appears that different salons and therapists will cater to different
customer groups, guided by an implicit view of class:

Maybe the smaller unregistered type salons that really couldn't give a damn,
maybe it fulfils a place in the market place for those that don't want to pay
more for better qualified, well turned out therapists who know what they're
talking about. Maybe some people just want like the hairdressers that are on
the corner of the street òh I go there because it's handy', you know. OK
your perm looks a total pig's ear and you didn't come out with the right
colour on your hair, but it hasn't cost them much and it'll soon grow out.
Perhaps it's the same sort of thing in beauty.
In general, salons which focus upon beauty treatments service a less middle
class clientele. These salons do not strive to give the feel of a clinic and find
difficulty in recruiting clients to holistic treatments. In contrast, those salons
and therapists which cater to a more affluent and middle class market
emphasise their therapeutic competencies and will emphasise body treatments
at the expense of the more `bread and butter' techniques such as waxing and
eyebrow shaping. This differing relationship to the body seems to confirm
Bourdieu's claim that the working class have an instrumental relationship to
their bodies, and that the middle class approach is characterised by seeing the
body as an end in itself (Bourdieu, 1984). This differentiation in the types of
treatments selected then does not appear to show that only a particular class of
women visit salons, but that once in the salon the `habitus' of the woman leads
to different activities.
Discussion and concluding comments: (Just because it feels good, doesn't

make it right?)
One of the key issues we have had to face during this research has been the
extent to which our natural sympathy with the subjects of research has had to
be tempered with our reservations concerning the role of beauty in the
oppression of women. As qualitative researchers we are aware of the
professional discourse drawn upon by the beauty professionals in their
conversations with us. The therapists were happy to talk to us and in many
interviews we were the audience for their personal gripes and opinions
concerning the industry. However critical of developments within the industry
some of the interviewees were, none actually questioned the need for beauty
therapy per se. They explained themselves and their role in terms of an
occupational rhetoric (Fine, 1996). Part of the information we have gained
during this research is undoubtedly a product of a professional discourse of
beauty therapy. Though the testimonies undoubtedly carried an element of this
rehearsed and professionalised rhetoric, the interviews and other conversations
with therapists was clearly not simply limited to this level.
Despite this reservation, whilst conducting our research, we have been at
times seduced by the professional rhetoric of the therapists, and also by the
physically pleasurable sensations of beauty and body treatments. It would seem

heavy handed and hypocritical to deny these sensations to other women, or to

claim that they are suffering from some kind of false consciousness. At the
same time, however, we have had to question whether the subjective experience
of empowerment (rejuvenation, relaxation, time for oneself) is in fact what we
could comfortably accept as empowerment (Holland et al., 1998; 9).
A similar point is made by Davis in her exploration of cosmetic surgery
(Davis, 1995; 1991). In her aim of moving away from women as `cultural
dopes' at the mercy of the medical profession and commercialised discourses
on beauty, she takes into account the narratives and experiences of women
themselves. This presents her with a similar problem to ours; how to take the
testimony of women seriously whilst remaining critical of the system into which
they are buying. What she eventually concludes is that women are often aware
of the contradictions between the oppressive nature of the beauty system,
whilst at the same time trying to operate within that system to gain some
advantage for themselves. This means that women are not ignorant cultural
dopes, but rather knowledgeable and adept cultural actors.
Whilst we would agree that this is the case, it is important to continually
bear in mind the commercial motivation of the beauty industry. As much as
individual therapists are concerned with offering their clients the most effective
and pleasurable treatments possible, underpinning all relationships between the
(usually) women involved is the drive for profit. This is where beauty therapy
as an industry differs from the social rituals surrounding the giving and
receiving of what could be described as beauty treatments between friends or
family.
As with the tension between generalised standards and individualised
practices mentioned above, the question of the individual must be returned to
here. The therapists argued that the service they were providing offered a
chance for women to enjoy a female space and to take time for themselves
away from the masculine world, as well as from the demands of work and
family life:
I think it offers a female retreat, even though we are getting into that male
market, but I still think the female client wants to get away from those men.
And it is a very female orientated place. I do think that it offers them a
feeling of well-being, of relaxation, the chance to relax, the chance to get
away from everything, as well as the actual treatments, the facial or leg wax
or whatever. It's time for them.
This type of experience no doubt allows the woman to relax and to rejuvenate
herself. The opportunity to relax in a female space and the chance to share
problems with a sympathetic female listener are vital benefits of beauty
treatments for the clients. These benefits are over and above the confidence
drawn from the visual effects of treatments, the satisfaction gained from
obtaining the desired `look', or from the pleasurable sensations derived from
body treatments. For many of the women in the salons it was their own

disposable income that they were choosing to spend in a way that gave them
pleasure, and on treatments that focused upon their individual looks, bodies
and emotional requirements. In this way beauty therapy can be seen as of
positive benefit to women.
However, the discussion can not stop here. It seems logical that if the female
body is something which must be worked on in order to produce a culturally
recognisable product, then an industry will exist which serves this purpose, and in
turn commodifies at least some of these necessary processes. However, this does
not explain how this system works, or throw much light upon the different desires
of the women involved in it. The tension between the individual desire for a
specific look and a generalised view of what is acceptable is explained through the
different positioning of the women who are clients. The generalised ideal is that of
a normative femininity, which, as in the case of hegemonic masculinity, acts as an
Ideal Type rather than an achievable way of being in the world. However, not all
women have a similar relationship to this normative definition. In relation to body
practices social class, `race', sexuality and age are vital factors which position
women in very different relationships to any concept of `beauty' or `femininity'.
By choosing to spend leisure time and disposable income in the beauty salon, can
we see women as asserting a right to their own space and independence, or as
simply investing in femininity, in some cases to `put a floor under' the likely
devaluation of their skills in other areas as Skeggs suggests (Skeggs, 1997)?
What remains interesting for us is this investigation of the delivery of a
hegemonic or normative concept in a `real' situation to `real' people. How is
`beauty' or `femininity' actually taken up (or not) by the women involved in its
construction and maintenance? The issues we have raised here illustrate that
beauty therapy provides an arena where conflicting discourses and practices
concerning the body and femininity intersect. We have highlighted the fact that
beauty therapy is an ambiguous industry providing as it does both positive and
negative effects for individual women and the regulation of femininity more
generally. It seems that in general women are not striving for beauty but rather
desire to regulate their bodies in order to appear within the bounds of
`normality'. They also desire pleasure and relaxation through pampering and
time for themselves in a predominantly female space. These are issues which
undoubtedly require more work to be disentangled fully, and we are looking
forward to examining such questions in future research.
University of Manchester Received 5 November 1999

Finally accepted 24 July 2000
Notes
1 This phrase is taken from MacCannell and MacCannell, 1987: 212.

2 In this paper we refer to beauty therapy as a specific aspect of the wider beauty industry. We have
studied beauty therapy as a profession and as a cultural practice. The beauty industry includes
other arenas which we have paid less attention to, including fashion, cosmetics, advertising,

dieting etc. In a similar way we refer to `beauty' as a specific aspect of the wider term of
`femininity. Beauty is a culturally constructed ideal. Femininity relates to the practices, identities
and representations of what it means to be a `woman' in any given society.
3 The next stage of our research will focus upon interviews with clients.
4 On an international level it becomes clear that this interest in beauty, and its corollary of health
and fitness, has grown in the past twenty years. From 1981 to 1990 there was a 70% increase in
the number of cosmetic surgery operations performed in the USA, with around one and a quarter
million reconstructive procedures being carried out in 1990 (Synnott, 1993: 75). At the same time
measured levels of satisfaction that individuals feel with their bodies and their looks have
decreased (Synnott, 1993.
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Men Are Real, Women Are 'Made Up': Beauty Therapy and The Construction of Femininity

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Men are real, Women are `made up'1: beauty

Paula Black and Ursula Sharma

Beauty therapy as an industry is multi-faceted; as a set of practices it is complex. The