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“I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London

Postfeminism is a neoliberal sensibility that locates femininity in the body, thereby imploring women to constantly labor on, monitor and discipline their bodies. This aesthetic labor is presented to women as freely chosen and empowering. Brazilian waxing is exemplary aesthetic labor directed at the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Dutta, Nandita
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8215335/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34164460
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.646344
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author Dutta, Nandita
author_facet Dutta, Nandita
author_sort Dutta, Nandita
collection PubMed
description Postfeminism is a neoliberal sensibility that locates femininity in the body, thereby imploring women to constantly labor on, monitor and discipline their bodies. This aesthetic labor is presented to women as freely chosen and empowering. Brazilian waxing is exemplary aesthetic labor directed at the self. Academic literature on aesthetic labor in general, and Brazilian waxing in particular, looks at white and middle-class women, as this category of women is considered the putative subject of postfeminism. Little attention is paid to racialized women from the global south who perform aesthetic labor on other women’s bodies in the global north. In this paper, I draw on my ethnographic study of two beauty salons in London run by South Asian women to argue that these South Asian beauticians are postfeminist subjects as well. The aim of challenging the putative subject of postfeminism, using the example of Brazilian waxing, is not merely to include South Asian women in the discourse, but to advance a transnational theorization of postfeminism. Such theorization, I demonstrate, leads to a better understanding of how postfeminism is implicated in global structures of power as well as the affective qualities of postfeminism including intimacy and disgust.
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spelling pubmed-82153352021-06-22 “I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London Dutta, Nandita Front Sociol Sociology Postfeminism is a neoliberal sensibility that locates femininity in the body, thereby imploring women to constantly labor on, monitor and discipline their bodies. This aesthetic labor is presented to women as freely chosen and empowering. Brazilian waxing is exemplary aesthetic labor directed at the self. Academic literature on aesthetic labor in general, and Brazilian waxing in particular, looks at white and middle-class women, as this category of women is considered the putative subject of postfeminism. Little attention is paid to racialized women from the global south who perform aesthetic labor on other women’s bodies in the global north. In this paper, I draw on my ethnographic study of two beauty salons in London run by South Asian women to argue that these South Asian beauticians are postfeminist subjects as well. The aim of challenging the putative subject of postfeminism, using the example of Brazilian waxing, is not merely to include South Asian women in the discourse, but to advance a transnational theorization of postfeminism. Such theorization, I demonstrate, leads to a better understanding of how postfeminism is implicated in global structures of power as well as the affective qualities of postfeminism including intimacy and disgust. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8215335/ /pubmed/34164460 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.646344 Text en Copyright © 2021 Dutta. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sociology
Dutta, Nandita
“I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London
title “I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London
title_full “I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London
title_fullStr “I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London
title_full_unstemmed “I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London
title_short “I Like it Clean”: Brazilian Waxing and Postfeminist Subjectivity Among South Asian Beauticians in London
title_sort “i like it clean”: brazilian waxing and postfeminist subjectivity among south asian beauticians in london
topic Sociology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8215335/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34164460
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.646344
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