Pamela's place - Power and negotiation in the hair salon

This article draws from field research ina Long island beauty salon to explore the ways that female beauty work constructs gendered, classed identities. Stylists use their attachment to beauty culture to nullify status differences between themselves and their clientele, and to imagine themselves their customers' friends and social equals. However the emotional ties stylists profess force them to accomodate clients' appearance preferences, even when they are, in the stylists' estimation, unattractive or unstylish. Hairdressers' emotion work thus serves to undermine their status as professionals. While stylists use beauty culture to nullify status differences, clients use professional identities to resist beauty ideology Customers 'understandings of beauty, rather than following some omnipotent ideal, are instead driven by social location and cultural distinctions. Women use beauty work to stress social differences; rather than an endpoint, beauty is exploited in the service of class and status.