FOR ALL THE BEAUTIFUL SHADES OF YOU: how race, gender, and embodiment shape the retail beauty work

Borzoo, Sepideh

FOR ALL THE BEAUTIFUL SHADES OF YOU: how race, gender, and embodiment shape the retail beauty work

dc.contributor.advisor	Banerjee, Pallavi
dc.contributor.author	Borzoo, Sepideh
dc.contributor.committeemember	Lightman, Naomi
dc.contributor.committeemember	Nelson, Fiona
dc.date	2023-11
dc.date.accessioned	2023-06-23T18:23:04Z
dc.date.available	2023-06-23T18:23:04Z
dc.date.issued	2023-06
dc.description.abstract	In my dissertation, I examine various forms of subordination as well as resistance along the multiple axes of identities experienced by marginalized women of colour in the beauty industry. I specifically focus on how employees navigate their positions in the retail division of cosmetic industry, both in large chain stores owned by white men and in small entrepreneurial companies owned by women of colour. Using qualitative methods —in-depth-interviews with 30 women working in the beauty stores, and discourse analysis of the social media content produced by my focal companies, I show how gender and race act as organizing structure of women’s work experiences in the business of beauty in conjunction with sexualities and immigration status. In the big box stores, the gendered and racialized processes in organizations shape and reconfigure the subjectivities of their employees. I underscore that in these stores, women employees’ personhoods, including their embodied and emotional qualities, are governed and reconstructed under, direct and indirect, organizational control. Gender discourses are activated in this feminized occupation through specific organizational policies as well as the intangible organizational culture recreated through customer-employee interactions. Bringing sexuality and class on the same level of analysis as gender, I show how hierarchy, not only between women and (gay) men, but among women with various immigration statuses, is legitimized within the aesthetic economy. Focusing on beauty companies run by Indigenous, Black, white, and immigrant women of colour entrepreneurs, I show how deploying marginal positionalities under conditions of immigration status, gender, and race marginalization serve not only to redefine these women’s identities as empowered, but also to decenter masculinity and whiteness in organizational culture through their leadership style. Located in the Canadian context, my research shows how women’s work within the business of beauty traverses across intersectional experiences of Indigenous, Black, white, and immigrant women of colour.
dc.identifier.citation	Borzoo, S. (2023). For all the beautiful shades of you: how race, gender, and embodiment shape the retail beauty work (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/116652
dc.identifier.uri	https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/41495
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Beauty Industry
dc.subject	Racialization
dc.subject	Gender and Embodiment
dc.subject	Work and Organization
dc.subject	Entrepreneurship
dc.subject.classification	Education--Sociology of
dc.title	FOR ALL THE BEAUTIFUL SHADES OF YOU: how race, gender, and embodiment shape the retail beauty work
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Sociology
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.