How Do the Women Working in the Beauty Profession Interpret Their Profession?: A Study on the Mechanism of Gendering of the Job

Abstract

  When an occupation is gendered as feminine, how do those who work in it interpret the gendered figure assigned to it? This paper aims to clarify this question by focusing on the narratives of women working in the beauty profession. In the beauty industry, approximately 80% of the employees are women, therefore it is highly gendered as a “feminine” occupation due to its working conditions and nature. How do women in the beauty industry accept or dismiss the “feminine” image of their career? Moreover, how do their interpretations relate to the transformation and reproduction of gender norms and feminism? The purpose of this paper is to clarify these questions. In previous studies, beauty workers have been discussed either as “agents” of the “beauty myth” that women must be beautiful or as “victims” engaged in labor under poor conditions. Such discussions lack a perspective that seeks to understand their interpretive practices and the characteristics of their work. This research examines women’s interpretations of their occupations using data from interviews with 29 women in the beauty industry from January to April 2021. This study uses two definitions of “pink collar jobs” (“women’s workplace” and “women-oriented work”), which women’s labor studies have conceptualized, as supporting lines in the analysis. The analysis results indicate that women working as beauty professionals do not merely accept the image of “beauty profession = feminine” that has become ubiquitous in the population, but construct their own professional identity, sometimes dismissing it and sometimes using it strategically. Furthermore, their interpretations are ambivalent to feminism, as they can be involved in both reproducing and fluctuating gender norms.