MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology Graduate School of Social Sciences
How beauty myths become lived realities
The racialization of beauty ideals in contemporary London
Berfin Yurdakul 10507256
Supervisor: Olga Kanzaki Sooudi Second Reader: Amade M’charek
Third Reader: Shanshan Lan Cultural and Social Anthropology
3-12-2018
Berfin.Yurdakul1995@gmail.com Word count: 26,392
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Acknowledgements
This research would not have been possible without the amazing people I met during my fieldwork, who basically gave me the opportunity to do this research. I want to thank the people working in all three the salons and specifically Iku, Silvana, Mike, Keith and Amanda who gave me access to these salons. I want to thank the professionals and clients for sharing their experiences and thoughts, even though they were just at the salon to do their work or
have a haircut. This thesis and research period would’ve not been the same without my supervisor Olga
Sooudi, because of her expertise and knowledge I had the opportunity to gain even more knowledge about the topic, but also how to look beyond my initial own personal interest. From the very first moment I had to write my proposal until the moment I handed this thesis in, Olga challenged me to stay critical and sharp. Even though it was not always easy, it definitely gave me the chance to make most out of it. Besides my supervisor, I want to thank my friends and family for all their support during this research period. Particularly thankyou Dzifa, Sander, Raj, Thijs, Izzy, Ella and Suchi for sharing your critique and knowledge on this research and reading parts of my initial research idea until the conclusion of this thesis. Last but not least, I want to thank my parents and sister. Thank you for supporting me while I was in the field, but also during my writing period at home. You had to deal with me being stressed, grumpy and tired at times when things became too complicated. Hopefully you think this was all worth it when reading this end result! Love you.
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Abstract
This research explores how beauty ideals are constructed through ideas about race. These constructions and ideas about beauty do not represent something universal and absolute, but rather explain present discourses about race and beauty within a specific context. This research is conducted in three different hair salons in London. While I argue that beauty is constructed in different ways within these salons, the way in which race is constructed within these salons explain racial discourses about the body and beauty. Today in these three salons there is an idea that a brown tanned skin tone, slim-thick body type and dark (curly) hair is seen as beautiful within contemporary youth and pop culture. Although it is presented as an ideal that goes beyond Eurocentric standards, the ideal and racial labeling of this ideal in itself is problematic as it reproduces ideas about racial differences and racial hierarchies. The beauty ideals are constructed through ideas about race, but at the same time ‘naturalness’ is an important concept people engage with in the salons, which is reflected in their ideas and practices within the salons. I argue how this contemporary ideal should be understood within the context of the neighborhoods, (colonial) history that constitute ideas about good and badness that affect readings of different bodies.
Research question: How is the intersection between ideas about race and beauty constructed and reproduced in three different hair salons in the City of London?
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Acknowledgements 2
Introduction 5 Theoretical Framework 6 The history of race as a concept 6
Race as a social construct 8
Beauty 10
The beauty salon 12
Specific research setting 14 Hair Salons and Research Population 17
Methodology 18
Reflection 20
Thesis Outline 22 Chapter 1: Race, Body and Beauty 23 The salon: the mixed race space? 24 The racial labeling of beauty 28
Meanings behind the racial labels 32
Mixed race in contemporary culture 37 Conclusion 39
Chapter 2: Shifting away from colonial hierarchies? 40
Historical Processes 41
Gender and Race 44
Black hair and the beauty hierarchy 47 The ideal “inbetween” 50
Racialized beauty and pop culture: the hype around the buttocks 52
Contemporary ideal: problematic? 56
Conclusion 59 Chapter 3: Betwixt and Between Natural and Artificial 60
Natural and Artificial beauty 61
Natural Beauty as ‘inner beauty’ 63
Natural beauty products 65
Race and naturalness 70
Conclusion 73
Conclusion 74
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Future research suggestions 77 Bibliography 78
Introduction
What is beauty and who is considered beautiful? The concept of beauty is one that appears in our everyday life, but at the same time is complex and fluid. There is no absolute answer on what beauty is and who is beautiful, however, it is something we are confronted with every day. The ideas about beauty that are presented within a certain context however, can tell us something about the broader ideas that people have about for example age, gender, class and race. In this research, I primarily focus on the racial aspect that comes with beauty ideals. However, since ideas about beauty intersect with other identity markers, these ideas have also been included as part of this research.
Everyday beauty ideas and practices can be understood as a way in which people work and think about the body, particularly about their own bodies and those of other peoples. People’s beauty ideals can be part of their own bodily project, but the racial notions of my respondents in this research, do not always reflect their personal beauty practices. Consequently, my initial questions were firstly ‘in what way do people racialize beauty in their everyday speech and beauty practices?’ and secondly ‘what kind of processes involving history, politics, contemporary (pop/youth) culture and lifestyle does this reflect?’ Within this research, conducted in three different hair salons in London, it becomes clear that beauty is racialized and that racial notions are interconnected with the way in which people speak about beauty. Bodies are racialized, labeled and valued in different, even contradicting ways. In this way racialized body parts are labeled as highly attractive, such as curly hair or full lips, while afro hair and white or too dark skin color get labeled as less attractive. In the three salons, people infer that ‘mixed race’, ‘racially ambiguous’ or ‘in between’ is beautiful and considered to be attractive by society as a whole. However, this is not merely about specific racial backgrounds, even though the attached labels may infer this. It is about the presumed phenotypical characteristics that are associated with certain ‘races’ that are considered as attractive or not.
Although the primary focus of this research was “race”, it became clear that ideas about “naturalness”, when it comes to beauty, shaped people’s perception of beauty as well. This “naturalness” is underpinned by the consumption of products, but also with embodying a certain look that is labeled as “natural”. The concept of beauty in this sense is not an innocent matter of ‘taste’, but the result of ideas shaped through different historical, social and political
6 processes within society. This research begins with an overview of my theoretical framework, research setting, the specific research population and reflection.
Theoretical Framework
This research is a discussion about the relationship between ‘race’ and ‘beauty'. Both concepts that are difficult to define and subject to different meanings over time and place. I will discuss these concepts with the use of different research, to explain how these concepts are understood and used within this research. By doing so, the relationship between these concepts will be explained and applied in the setting, population and methods of this research.
The history of race as a concept
Within this research, I focus on how ideas about “race” intersect with “beauty” and how each continuously informs the other. Although I approach race as a social construct in this research, it became clear that my respondents view race as something biological and primordial. The relation to beauty in this sense, made beauty into something that is constructed through race and racial labels. However, my findings suggest these primordial ideas about race and beauty are shaped through the social relationships, grown out of historical- and political processes; thus are actually not within the body but articulated through the body. Consequently, the body becomes the object through which these constructed ideas about race and beauty are articulated. As Omi and Winant also state, everyone “knows” what race is, although everyone has a different opinion as to how many racial groups there are, what they are called, and who belongs in each specific racial category. (Omi, Winant 1994:3) To understand the way in which race is constructed and how this concept developed over time, I will explore the concept of ‘race’, how the racial labeling changed over time and how it exists today. In order to understand the complexities that underpin the contemporary racialized beauty ideals, it is essential to discuss
this.
To understand the contemporary use of the concept of “race” we must to take into consideration how colonialism and imperialism in Europe shaped the way in which we use and perceive ‘race’. As Hirschman argues, ‘Western slavery of Africans in the New World developed as an institution, one that played a critical role in the emergence of the racial ideology of white supremacy’ (Hirschman 2004: 394). By 1800, the industrial revolution was in its early stages and Europe had begun colonizing large parts of Asia and Africa through both military and political means. European colonists created sharp divisions in terms of prestige, power, and economic status between the rulers and the ruled in the Victorian Age. As these divisions
7 coincided with differences in color and other physical attributes seen between Europeans and the people of Asia and Africa, ‘race’ and thus racism aided the legitimization of imperialism. (Hirschman 2004: 395). Omi and Winant describe how, the European whites were considered superior, in terms of intelligence amongst other traits, and how other skin colors were deviations from the norm. (Omi Winant 1994:15) In chapter two, I will describe how these processes are still visible in ideas about beauty and articulated in different ways in the Aiko salon and the NiceHair barbershop. Although the racial hierarchy is not present in an explicit way, the way in which beauty ideals discussed in the context of the salons, implicitly goes back to this hierarchical thinking in colonial times about different races.
Within my research the term “race” is used in the specific sense of how it is articulated by my respondent. Their use of the term is not always simple: the term contains different layers. Although there is a tendency to biologicize the term in each salon. In the NiceHair barbershop the concept and the use of it was criticized more than in the Aiko and MieiCapelli salons. At the same time, in the NiceHair barbershop racializing bodies and thinking in racial hierarchies was also present. On the other hand, the Aiko salon was a place in which racial notions and categories were not perceived as problematic: the presence of people from different “races” in one place1 was valued positively. The MieiCapelli was a place where race was not a part of the
way in which people spoke or practiced beauty, because of this, the racialized beauty ideals will be discussed based on my findings in the Aiko salon and the NiceHair barbershop. It becomes evident how this concept of ‘race’ and the way in which it is constructed, throughout history, is present and related to beauty in different ways in these salons. The fluidness of this concept becomes evident, but at the same time, although I approach race as a social construct, it is a lived reality and imagined as primordial by all my respondents in this research.
8 Race as a social construct
‘Races certainly exist, but they have no biological meaning outside the social significance we attach to biological explanation itself’ (Visweswaran 1998:77). I approach race as a relational ‘object’; it is (re)created within social relations within the context people are in, which in this research is the hair salons. Although race is a social construct, it is a lived reality. M’Charek (2013) explains how ‘Race is not a singular object ‘out there in nature, but a relational entity enacted “inhere”’ (M’charek 2013:435). Race is not simply made up of skin color, physical characteristics, clothing or national identity, but it is an affect between differences. These differences are of the body, not in the body. Therefore, we need to understand race as a relational object. (M’charek 2013:435)
M’charek criticizes this way in which race is often seen as something biological that is merely in the body. I understand race as something that is established between people, which is also the approach taken within this research. However, this was not the common understanding of my respondents. In the salons, race was perceived as a primordial aspect of the body, a certain race is what you ‘are’, how you are defined by your blood and genes, by birth and by your family. Something that is fixed and unchangeable, an aspect of your body that defines your inner and outer body. Nevertheless, this research focusses on how this is constructed through the social relationships.
When it comes to beauty and the way in which this is racially labeled in this research, it assumes that race is something that is in the body that can determine beauty. However, the racial labels used, such as mixed race for example, are constructed through the social processes that become relevant within the context of the hair salons.2 Although the use of racial labels
assumes that beauty is in the body, my respondents referred to a specific kind of look through these labels, rather than necessarily to all the people that identify with these labels. These labels do not represent an absolute reality or biological base for race (and thus indirectly beauty) but rather the way in which these labels are constructed and gain meaning within the salons. Relating beauty to racial labels assumes that there is a prevailing idea, however that beauty can
2 Mixed race in the context of this research (according to my respondents) implies that there is something such as ‘mono racial’. The label mixed race is the result of this constructed idea that we can divide people into different (mono-racial) groups and if these people mix, something such as ‘mixed race’ is the result.
9 be captured by a racial label that is in the body according to my respondents. Nevertheless, the focus of this research is how this occurs through social processes that have been constructed in history and articulated in numerous ways within the salons today. I will follow this situational model of race, but explain how race in the context of this research is something that is presented as in the body and determining their, fixed and lived reality. My approach to race in this research will be a combination of the literature discussed. I will approach race as a relational object that is subject to power relations and is related to ideas about physical appearance, but also social class. By doing so, race within this research is the way in which I explore the existing attitudes toward beauty and how this is related to power and history.3 Throughout this thesis, particularly
in chapter two, I make use of the terms “black” and “white” as my respondents use these labels in order to describe people, but in sometimes these labels are also used by myself. With these labels I am not referring to an absolute reality “out there” in which black and white exists as fixed categories, but how, through social constructions these labels refer to different people within the context of this research. Also, in this research I refer to how features, such as a small nose, white skin and straight hair are ascribed to whiteness and how a bigger bottom, darker skin and afro hair are ascribed to blackness. This is not because I reify the black or white body that is always the same, but because I refer to the perceptions of my respondents who associate blackness and whiteness with these features. Through analyzing pop culture, inequality in the concept of “naturalness” and explaining what the so called mixed race/racially ambiguous body looks like, I do not try to explain how race is in the body as something biological, but rather how racial notions influence how the racialized body is imagined and valued through historical and social processes.
3 Within this research I do make use of racial categories such as ‘black’ or ‘white’: these do not reflect absolute realities, they rather explain how my respondents categorize people. I use these labels as constructs that are not fixed, but categories that are fluid and used differently by different people. These labels are a way to describe the constructions and the way in which they gain meaning through my respondents: they do not reflect an reality out there.
10 Beauty
The socio-symbolic dynamics which mark beauty as a socially constructed entity encompass mechanisms that allow for the idealization of certain phenotypical features over others. In essence, beauty is thus a politicized entity in which moral and cultural superiority is enshrined (Jha 2016:20).
Beauty is the concept through which I started this research to unveil the racial discourses that are present in the salons. Ideas, practices and ideals continuously intersect the racial discourses in the way in which people think and speak about the racialized body.
Beauty is a subject that has been discussed in numerous different fields. The meaning of this concept and the way in which it is used in daily life is not about an objective reality: rather it is about something that is continuously constructed, measured and worked upon by society. In relation to race, the racialized body has different meanings for different people within the salons; it reflects a cosmopolitan standpoint, what people want to look like or what they search for in a partner. What is beauty and how do you measure this concept? Within this research I approach beauty as a form of practice but also as cultural capital. The focus is on the appreciation of certain looks described as “beautiful”. As Kuipers (2015) also argues, this is a form of cultural capital ‘a socially conditioned and convertible form of aesthetic appreciation that carries cultural value’ (Kuipers 2015:40). It is not about the objective visible physical appearance of individuals, but about the way in which appearance, more specifically racialized appearance is valued in different ways and why that is. My respondents explain how racial labels are used to describe ‘beauty’ while actually referring to certain looks. These looks could belong to everyone, but it is the meaning and imagined look that is attached to the label of for example ‘Latina’ that results in the appreciation of a certain look.
Human bodies are rarely completely neutral, they are racialized, gendered and related to ideas about age. (Kuipers 2015) The valuation of beauty and the human body comes together with gender norms and present racial discourses that inform the perception of the human body. By judging people on “beauty”, it is judging if they fulfill requirements to look like a proper man or women for example. (Kuipers 2015:41) At the same time, connotations of the racialized body, such as supposed hypersexuality or even boringness, are part of the valuation of “beauty”.
11 However, these are not absolute realities: what a proper man or woman should look like, what kind of racialized connotations the body has or if someone looks young or old, all these notions vary from context to context and have different meanings through each context. The concept of beauty is not about an objective reality out there. Although within my research different people could explain beauty in the same way, it has a different meaning for everyone according to what they are trying to explain. It differs when people talk about what they think is attractive in their (potential) partners, what they want to look like themselves and how their actual beauty ideal can be different from what they try to look like themselves. Beauty is about the human body, and at the same time people incorporate ideas about personality and being a “good person” while talking about beauty. So in reality, there is thus no absolute beauty. Beauty is the abstract way in which people value the human body according to their cultural capital and ideas about different markers such as class, gender, age and race. This is something that varies from place to place, moreover the way in which one person speaks about beauty is fluid and subject to which aspect of their idea about beauty they try to explain. In this research, beauty becomes the way in which people work on their bodies in the salons, talk about the body in relation to these different identity markers and what this reflects in society. To understand this, there is a critical approach in which it becomes clear that there are contradictions in all these aspects of beauty.. To research beauty, is about understanding its meaning and the ideas that people relate to their concept of beauty, and how this is constructed through social relations, history, media and politics. In this research, the meanings about race and racialized beauty reflected different opinions and ideas about the body in the salons. For example, while for some, mixed race was an ideal that reflected racial hierarchies and racism, for others the valuation of the mixed race body was something that was attractive because it is different and exotic. The valuation and ideas about beauty are also being practiced. It is something people work on an everyday basis: dying grey hairs to appear younger, going to the gym to look more muscular and masculine and haircuts to look well groomed. This happens at home, in the gym but also in the beauty salon. The beauty salon is a place in which the human body can be transformed according to what is valued as beautiful in this specific context. In different salons, there is also a presence of different cultural capital through which aesthetics become meaningful. For example, the two salons in Shoreditch viewed looks that passed as looking ‘natural’ more positively than looks that appeared as the result of a lot of artificial effort.
These ideas and notions about the body are created through the cultural capital that is present in the salon. At the same time, by making the body look a certain kind of way (such as what they would call natural) people also disseminate their cultural capital to others. It is a
12 dialectic process in which the body on one hand is an object that is subject to ideas that are (re)created continuously in different contexts, but at the same time the body also becomes a tool to carry out the message about gender, age, race and sexuality. The salon is a place in which these are all brought together, as it is a place in which beauty is practiced, but also a place where different ideas about gender, race and age are ingrained in the concept itself. As such the salons that I chose to go to for this research, are racially labeled and disseminate a message to their (potential) clients.
The beauty salon
In this research my field (the hairsalon) is already a beauty informed place, since it is a place in which people work on their bodies to create an appearance that resonates positively with ideas about their looks. The beauty salon however, is not a neutral place but one where people work upon gendered and racialized ways of looking.
A hair salon is a place in which people work on their bodies, and where different techniques of the body intersect. These techniques of the body can relate to different aspects, such as gender, race or class5. My approach to race is the main focus in this research, given this intersects with class as stated above, but also with gender and sexuality. Beauty practices thus should be understood as phenomena that are part of a complex web of ideas about the body and identity, which are constructed by society as a whole. This is why the beauty salon can be understood as a microcosm of the beauty ideals that are embodied through specific beauty practices.
What do people do in the salon? Why do people feel like they should go there? These are the most important questions I have asked my respondents. As Black argues that race is worked upon and reconstructed within salons. Within the United Kingdom (UK), salons are often segregated in terms of race. There are salons for White4, Black and Asian clients
respectively. (Black 2014:11) This division by itself already demonstrates the idea of racial otherness that exists in the body, in this case the hair, and should be treated differently. This is why the specific salons in my research were chosen, since they are a reflection of the (racial) divisions made in UK society today. Not just merely race divides different kinds of salons, they
4 Although racial categories are social constructions rather than a fixed reality ‘out there’, ‘White’ in this sense refers to people from European descent while Black refers to people from African descent.
13 are also divided by class5. The salon adjusts their prices and services to the social economic
status of its clientele: in this way, the beauty salon reflects and reproduces existing divisions between racial and class lines (Black 2004: 11). I tried to go to salons that were in the same price range and had the same kind of clientele based on social economic status. The social economic status also seemed to highly influence the clientele of the salon as well. An example of this was the Aiko hairsalon (which is supposed to be a fusion between Japanese, Brazilian and Italian), according to the professionals this was visited by people working in the area, described as “hipster, white, upper middleclass people”6. In contrast, the afro hair-salon was
the only salon that attracted people from various social economic status, but when it came to race, the majority of its clientele were black. This explains that social economic status and racial markers do influence the clientele, but that these can also vary.
5 Class in this sense could be defined as the division of people into groups based on their social, economic and cultural capital. (Savage et al, 2013: 221)
66 ‘Upper middle class refers to people that have a higher income and people who were born in families with an higher income’, these people in my research work as professors, young professionals in IT and advertisement etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_Kingdom#21st_century)(2-12-2018) . In my research, it mostly refers to the cultural capital of my respondents which are part of ‘upper middle class’ cultural capital In particular in which ‘they engage with both highbrow and popular cultural forms’. (Savage et al. 2014:226)
14 Specific Research Setting
I conducted this research in three different hair salons in London, two of them are located in the neighborhood Shoreditch and the other in Dalston. These neighborhoods are located in North/East London.
London Borough of Hackney in which Shoreditch and Dalston are (partly) located7
The neighborhoods are described by my respondents, and the majority of people I spoke to in London, as ‘hipster’. “Formerly a predominantly working-class neighborhood, Shoreditch has been gentrified over the years by the creative industries and those who work for them”8, which
are mostly young people. Gentrification, as Hubbard (2016) argues
involves the displacement of working class populations, a phenomena most obviously manifest in the transformation of residential landscapes. This is visible in the changes on many shopping streets, with locally-oriented stores serving poorer populations and ethnic minorities being replaced by 'hipster' stores such as 'real coffee' shops, vintage
7
https://www.google.nl/search?q=hackney&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij_sOMz4PfAhXRz4U KHadCCQUQ_AUIDigB&biw=1366&bih=657 (30/11/2018)
15 clothing stores and bars serving microbrews. These stores have been taken as a sign that the fortunes of struggling shopping streets are improving, with the new outlets often depicted as offering a better range of healthy, green and 'authentic' consumption choices than the shops they displace. (Hubbard 2016:1)
The appearance of Shoreditch changed industrial buildings into offices and flats. Now the neighborhood is filled with art galleries, trendy bars, restaurants and media businesses.
9Shoreditch was traditionally a working-class neighborhood, but since the arrival of artists and
the creative sector in the late 1980s, it has become one of the trendiest neighborhoods in London. 10While the term hipster is subject to different definitions and never clearly defined, in a broader sense my respondents meant young urban (upper) middle-class people. The hipsterness as they would describe it, mostly referred to the amount of vintage stores, all day brunch café’s and the semi nonchalance of the people in the neighborhood. Dalston on the other hand is a neighborhood that is currently undergoing gentrification partly because of the regeneration of East London from the 2012 Olympics (Hackney, where Dalston is located, was also one of the host boroughs). Today, Dalston is a vibrant neighborhood with a diverse population. 11 Dalston appears less gentrified than Shoreditch as the gentrification of this
neighborhood is currently still an on-going process.12 While Shoreditch in my research was always described as really hipster and trendy, Dalston was also a place that was labeled as still more working class. This is visible in Dalston in the smaller presence of art galleries, trendy bars, restaurants and media businesses.
This research is undertaken in these neighborhoods given the focus throughout is on race and since the hair salons are ‘different’ in their labeling, there needed to be a common ground to make a fair comparison (a white salon in a lower class neighborhood would already be different from high end black salons in the first place). Throughout this research it became clear that there is a broad complexity when it comes down to the intersection of beauty, race and class dynamics, which are not established in any of the salons. The idea of undertaking research in the same neighborhood thus did not create a communality in the actual research (except for the lifestyle informed idea about naturalness). At the same time this does explain that the practices and ideals are fluid, even within the similar neighborhoods. I wanted to do this research in a middle class neighborhood and focus on younger people (which to me means
9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreditch#Contemporary_culture (30/11/2018)
10
https://www.timetomomo.com/en/district/shoreditch/ (18/07/2018)
11 Dalston Ward Profile 2015 file:///C:/Users/samsung%20tad/Downloads/dalston-ward-profile.pdf (5/11/2018) 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalston (5/11/2018)
16 between 18-35 years old). Shoreditch and Dalston are seen as places in which young professionals are working, living, spending their leisure time and thus also go to the salons here. As the neighborhoods are described as trendy, researching beauty trends in these neighborhoods seemed logical. In places like these, the people are concerned with the current trends and hence engage with them in relation to their own appearance and also seem interested to talk about them. This is purely based on my own assumptions about gentrified neighborhoods in big cities and how I imagine people are in hair salons within neighborhoods like these. Hence my research was focused on these neighborhoods because, as explained above, differences in neighborhoods (especially class wise) would not give me the opportunity focus on race and to make a fair comparison.
Since race is an important aspect within my research I have chosen one hair salon that is labeled as an afro-hair salon/ barbershop and one that is labeled as a fusion of Japanese, Brazilian and Italian. The other salon is not marked with a specific label, which will be the white and thus actually ‘unmarked’ (when it comes to race) hair salon. Although it seems like I try to make these salons ‘fixed’ places, it is to have a starting point to get into the most used and important racial categories within the UK: White, Asian and Black. Therefore I went to three different hair salons specializing in so called ‘black/afro’ hair, Asian hair and one for European or ‘white’ hair. These are not the labels or categories I ascribe, but the ways in which they primarily identify themselves. I am aware of the fact that these categories: Black, White and Asian, are not fixed but fluid and continuously being (re)constructed in different ways.
17 Hair Salons and Research Population
My research was carried out with ‘different’ types of respondents, but they were still associated in certain ways. The age and gender from my respondents varied, and I interviewed people in their 20s, but also people in their 50s. Nevertheless, most of my respondents were not older than 35, so I would categorize them as ‘young’ people. I undertook 15 semi-structured interviews but most of my data is the result of informal conversations I had with the professionals and clients on a daily basis. In total, I had around 100 informal conversations. Since MieiCapelli and Aiko are both located in Shoreditch, they had the same ‘kind’ of clients: mostly white people working and/or living in that neighborhood, which they described as ‘hipster’ (since that is also the way in which they mostly described Shoreditch) and people between 20-40 years old. These salons were generally more expensive, thus most of their clientele consisted of (upper) middle class people.
The NiceHair barbershop was a slightly different, to start with it was located in Dalston, a neighborhood just a bit further up north from Shoreditch but less gentrified than Shoreditch. Nevertheless, the clients did describe Dalston as well as ‘hipster’ but not particularly themselves. In this salon the majority of my respondents were males, in contrast the majority of my respondents were females in the other two salons. The ages of respondents were generally the same, with the majority between 20-35 years old.
In the NiceHair barbershop the majority of the people identified as ‘black’13 (it did not
really matter if they were Afro-Caribbean or African). While in the other two salons the professionals described most of their clients as ‘white’14. The MieiCapelli and Aiko hairsalon
where thus more comparable as research population, while the NiceHair barbershop was relatively different from these two salons, not only because of the population, but also the way in which it was a really informal place while the other two were more formal and high end hair salons. The differences in the research population within the salons also influenced the data.
13 Black according to their own labelling and identification. 14 White according to their own labelling and identification.
18 Concepts of race and discussions about racism were challenged and critiqued by the black professionals and clients in the NiceHair barbershop, while this was not present within the Aiko and MieiCapelli salons. At the same time, the ideas about ‘naturalness’ were more present in the Aiko and MieiCapelli salons, mainly because these two salons were located in Shoredich and most of the clients were white, which affected the styles, practices and products that were influenced by these ideas about naturalness.
Methodology
My research combined participant observation with semi-structured interviews and informal conversations. Before I arrived in London, I undertook desktop research on the salons I wanted to go to but did not send them emails about my research. My reasoning was that I thought that non face to face contact about this research would give me less chance to get access because the professionals of the salon may not have fully understood who I was and what I was trying to achieve, as they had not met me. However, even after physically going to these salons, many of them did not grant me access upon arrival. Because of this, I was forced to go into different salons and try to get access, which also affected my research. I described my research project on beauty and race to different salons, and in the end I managed to find three salons that would allow me to conduct research there
Within the different salons the way in which I could research differed, in particular the NiceHair barbershop was a different kind of environment than the first two salons, since it was a place where people also came to just hang out. This also affected the way I could collect my data as well as the kind of data I collected in this salon, making it different to the data from the other two salons. In the first month I spent most of my time in the Aiko Hair salon. I used to go there four times a week and would spend the entire day there. Being there really was ‘participant observation’. They gave me the opportunity to be their assistant: I could sit at the front desk, bring clients coffee, sweep the floor etc (since I had no experience in hairdressing
my tasks were limited).
In the Aiko salon I also functioned as a hair model, which gave me the opportunity to research the techniques and observe what was going on. Iku, the owner of the salon, gave me the opportunity to talk to different clients, these were usually semi-structured interviews. I was not really allowed to talk casually about it to everyone; she had to decide and introduce me. Because of this, the conversations I had with the clients were really only between me and the client. However, because I was able to work there as an assistant, I was able to blend into the salons
19 and do participant observation, especially with the professionals. A large part of my data there is from the informal conversations I had with the professionals. With the clients I would have semi structured interviews most of the time, I had several standard questions I would ask everyone, but tailored the questions based on their answers. The questions I started with were about what kind of treatment they get at the salon, why they specifically go to this salon, to continue talking about what they think about trends nowadays, what they see in their environment and what they do to their own looks. I did not have to ask specifically about race: while asking the above mentioned questions people would give answers that were informed by ideas about race. Because of this, it was easy for me to ask more about this and obtain my information through these questions.
After the Aiko hairsalon, I got access to MieiCapelli, although I still did go to Aiko for a couple of hours some days, but most of the days I would be at MieiCapelli. I mainly observed and spoke with the professionals there, as I was not really allowed to ‘participate’ as an assistant, this is why I used to be there four days a week for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I did this for around four weeks, while at the same time I was searching to gain access to an afro hair salon. For the last three weeks, I had gained access to the NiceHair barbershop and I was there five days a week. Since this salon was a different kind of environment and equally a place where a lot of people living in the neighborhood came to hang out, I spent a lot of time deep-hanging out there. During my time at NiceHair, I had informal conversations with both the clients as well as the professionals. Because of this the data from this salon is relatively different from the others: while in the other salon I made use of semi-structured interviews, in this salon it was mostly informal conversations. Another difference was that in this salon everyone would get involved within the conversations I had with someone, while in the other salons I could have one on one conversations with the clients or professionals. In addition, within this salon the professionals and clients would have frequent conversations with each other, apart from my questions, about subjects including race and beauty ideals. This resulted in my data being more and ‘thicker’ in this salon, since it was not merely the result of how people responded to my questions, but also how they responded to each other’s.
20 Reflection
One of the obstacles in this research was fitting in and reflecting on my own perceived identity. In which ways does my appearance affect the answers my respondents gave me? In which way does ‘race’ play a role in this? I tried to go beyond this during my research, I noticed that people would prefer to talk about me or my experiences/looks instead of their own. I tried to open up a bit, but to not make the conversation all about me, since that was not the main focus of this research. How would it be if someone looking completely different would do this research? Would this person get the same answers? I think in future research on this topic, especially in relation to racial identity, the research should be conducted by different looking people. From a personal perspective it really helped me to reflect on my own identity and how this changes from place to place. Although you might know this happens, until you are really forced into this position you are not aware how you are really perceived in a different place. I could tell my “race” got another form and meaning in the context of London, and also how this was linked to beauty. From an academic perspective, I think a positive outcome is to see how beauty is telling about broader subjects as well, such as ongoing tensions between different racial groups in society and how this affects the readings of racialized bodies and beauty. The aspect that I did not include before going on fieldwork, naturalness, also gave me the opportunity to look broader than just my initial personal interest and to analyze how beauty trends also come together with phenomena such as environmentalism.
Within the different salons my position changed, especially when it came to the racialization of my own identity. In the MieiCapelli and Aiko hair salons I was viewed as ‘exotic’, especially within the Aiko hair salon they would describe me as having the, what they would call, ‘Latina look,’ even though I do not have any Latin ancestry. Thus, it was mostly my looks, especially my curly hair texture and tanned skin color, through which I was categorized. However, in the NiceHair barbershop, where the majority of the barbers and clients identified as black, this was different. Within the first moment I got into the salon I was labeled
21 as white. While in the other salons they used different racialized categories to describe people, such as white, asian, black, in the NiceHair barbershop they would make the division between
just black and white, and who was not black according to them, was just white. Since my research is about physical appearance, my own appearance was mentioned frequently
by my respondents. Especially since I fit into their description of being racially ambiguous or in between, it did make me question how I had to interpret these answers. Within my opinion, they would have been less explicit about this “ideal” if I looked completely different.
My own looks made it easier for the respondents to talk about this beauty ideal, since they assumed that it would not insult me, but rather compliment me. However, someone looking completely different, would have been able to focus more on other aspects of beauty. My own racialization and the way in which I was considered as the ideal according to my respondents, also influenced the conversations I had about this racially ambiguous ideal that is going on according to my respondents. Research in which physical appearance was a central topic was a vulnerable experience since my respondents would talk freely about my own looks as well, which made it difficult at times to detach my own experiences I had within the salons from what they actually said about beauty in general. Within this research it was important to keep reflecting on my own positionality and try to go beyond these conversations about my own racialized looks.
Besides from my own positionality, within this research my respondents had statements that could be interpreted as racist, sexist or offensive in general. Although I do include certain statements that can be perceived as controversial, I do not support what my respondents said. It is a sensitive subject in which people say different things that not everyone agrees on. However, I do want to show the reality and what my respondents said, since all of it is part of the data. Since I did build relationships with my respondents, it was also difficult to analyze it in such a way, that it might come across as if I personally see them as ‘racist’. Although I am aware of the fact that some of the statements are racist or sexist, my respondents did not say them with any harmful intentions, but rather expressed their honest opinions about the topic. To research and explain the reality I did include most of the statements of my respondents in this research, but this does not reflect any of my personal opinions about this topic
22 Thesis outline
In the first chapter, I focus on the Aiko salon and elaborate on the relationship between race, the body and beauty. By doing so, I will argue that different racial labels are used to describe a beauty ideal. However, this is not necessarily in line with the clients, looks or practices in the salon; they are rather a reflection of different ideas about mixedness and multiculturalism in general. Chapter two is more of a case study of the barbershop and explains why the racial labeling of the first chapter is problematic if understood from a historical perspective.
Although the barbers and clients would express the same kind of (racialized) looks as being ‘beautiful’, they were rather criticized than celebrated. The third chapter shifts away from race and explains how “naturalness” is important in how my respondents construct and perceive “beauty”. This notion of naturalness consists out of different layers and intersects on a deeper level with the racialization of beauty as discussed in the first two chapters.
23
Chapter 1
Race, Body and Beauty
What is the relationship between race, the body and beauty? While I have introduced the concept of race in the introduction, in this chapter I will explain how the concept is constructed and used in relationship to beauty(and the body). This chapter will focus mostly on the Aiko salon and how the concept, practices and ideas of the salon are in line with ideas about multiculturalism, mixing and celebrating (racial) diversity, but at the same time contradict with the clients and treatments. The socially constructed concept of race shapes the mechanisms that constitute beauty ideals, for the construction of beauty is partly based on notions that reflect current societal discourses regarding racial dynamics. The ideals that are described in the Aiko salon, mostly “mixed race” will be discussed in relation to contemporary discussions about multiculturalism and mixing, allowing one to grasp an in-depth insight into the on-the-ground social realities that reflect the manifestation and reproduction of racialized beauty ideals. Although the racial labeling of beauty assumes that race exists in a biological way, and that this could determine the way in which the racially labeled body looks according to my respondents, the labeling, described features and practices in the salon reflect a paradox. While it is about certain body parts (skin color, hair, bodyshape) that are explicitly ascribed to races, at the same time, it also affects how these body parts are being read on different racialized bodies.
24 The Salon: the mixed race space?
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE UNIQUE CULTURAL FUSION OF ITALY, JAPAN, BRAZIL & ENGLAND?15
While looking for an (Asian) ethnic labeled hair salon in the neighborhood I lived in16, the Aiko salon was highly recommended and popular in this neighborhood, whilst also viewed as a good salon outside the context of Shoreditch from my online research. Aside from this, it is also one of the salons that pops up when searching for an Asian hair salon in Shoreditch. It is described as a fusion between Italian, Japanese and Brazilian. Because the salon is categorized and recommended as Asian on the internet, I expected that this would be something that would appear in some way in the salon: not necessarily in what the salon looks like, but in the treatments and clients. To get to this salon, you walk around the vibrant neighborhood, which is filled with vintage stores, trendy coffee places with a Scandinavian interior, all day breakfast/brunch places and multiple restaurants. The salon itself is situated in a quieter place, between a yoga studio and coffee bar. The salon is a spacious place and the doors are an extension of the windows, which gives it a light atmosphere. The walls of the salon are black and white, on the walls there is a pattern of all the popular sights of London; Big Ben, Bank, London bridge etc and there is a little salon table with some chairs for the clients that need to wait. Next to the walls there are closets in which books (about hair) and hair products are located. In the corner there is a little make-up bar where freelance make-up artists do clients make-up. The salon itself has nothing specific that explicitly refers to Italy, Brazil or Japan. The interior was quite minimalistic (minus the London patterns on the wall) and had no pictures of models hanging around within the salon. To me the salon appeared just trendy with the minimalistic interior, books and magazines with the latest trends and the packaging of the products on sale that were located around the salon.17
After spending several days in the salon, I already had the idea that it was not as Italian, Brazilian or Japanese as it was presented to be. Their treatments, styles and clients spoke
15 Quote from their own website 16 Shoreditch
25 otherwise. However, even though this was not the case, there was this constant presence of talking about these labels. The conversations with the clients were about the interesting mix of people in the salon, about what the professionals from Brazil used to do back home, about Italian food and so on. It thus was something that was important for this salon, but not necessarily when it came to hair and the way in which people wanted to look, or already looked like. At the same time, the importance of the labels was explicitly present in the way in which they presented themselves (they would ‘blame’ their background for their behavior) and the description of the salon. While talking to the professionals there, asking how they would describe the salon, they described it as the following:
This salon is a fusion, it is Italian, Japanese and Brazilian18. It is an interesting mix. We all work here and come from different places. Yeah I don’t know, that’s just our concept. (Anna, 27, professional from Romania)
The owners of the salon, Iku and Mario, are from Italy and Brazil respectively. While Iku originates from the Japanese community in Brazil, Mario was born in Italy. One of the other professionals was also from Italy, one other from Brazil and the other three were from Poland, Romania and Britain. In reality they were all people that came from different parts of the world. Although this was not necessarily visible in the salon itself, this aspect was articulated in the way in which they spoke about the salon, and how it is presented since it is described as a salon with a Brazilian Italian and Japanese fusion. Nothing in the treatments was informed by any of these labels and not even the names of these treatments on offer. Rather, the hairdos for example were described as Glam Rock- Romantic Vintage – Punk Chic- Contemporary Minimal- Retro
– 50s Elegance- Burlesque finger waves- Androgynous- The only limit is your imagination.
Which have nothing to do with the racial labels of the salon. When wondering why this label is used or so important, Marcus responded the following;
It is just, when you see it, like Japanese Brazilian Italian here in London, you think my god, what happened there? It is like this mix that is interesting. People find that really cool.
18 Japanese and Brazil referred to the fact that Iku was Japanese Brazilian (Japanese ethnic group in Brazil, she specifically was from Sao Paolo). In the first place however it is not presented as ‘japanese Brazilian’ but Japanese and Brazilian, which was also confusing for new clients (will be explained later on in the chapter)
26 The racial labels in this sense, appear to be a part of the marketing as well, but what does this say about this salon, the way in which the professionals talk about (racialized) beauty ideals and the practices in the salon on the other hand?
The majority of the clients in this salon are white: the reason why they would visit is mostly because they liked the work done by the people there, rather than the racial labels. However, I did speak to some people who visited this salon because it was recommended as an Asian salon, although this was a minority of the total number of people I saw and spoke to in the salon. There is a contradiction in how the salon is presented and what actually goes on inside the salon. Talking to Iku, the owner, about this, she describes her salon in the same way:
Berfin: This hairsalon is called a fusion of Italian, Japanese and Brazilian, how do you see this back in the salon?19
Iku: Well actually not, the salon is more like Shoreditch you know, hip, trendy. I mean the environment is not Italian, Japanese or Brazilian.
While spending my time in this salon, I noticed that it is an important topic during the conversations they have with each other and with the clients. Because of this, I asked Iku if people think this concept and her background are interesting:
Yeah you know, Japanese people get upset if I say that I am from Brazil and not from Japan, they think I am fake Japanese haha. I know I have the Japanese face and Japanese hair, but yeah. But other than that, I think 99 percent of the people think I am really cool because of the mix. I mean yeah I have both: I am Japanese, I have the discipline of that side, the cleanness and stuff. But at the same time, I have this flamboyant Brazilian vibe because I am from Brazil so yeah, that makes it a good mix.
The concept of mixing being interesting was a regular theme in the conversations about beauty I had in this salon with both clients and professionals. Iku relates her racial background to her character, which makes the salon and her treatments appealing to clients. It is not necessarily about what really is happening in the salon, rather it is a set of ideas about race, mixing and how that creates something interesting and appealing that people want to be associated with. The salon in itself is not a place where a lot of people identify themselves as ‘mixed.’ Rather,
27 they would describe themselves as white, and would think that mixing is appealing and attractive. This is about an idea that people have with reference to mixing, rather than a specific look they aim for in their own beauty practices. However, it is not completely separate from how people think about the body and how this relates to race, which became clear in the different conversations I had. The salon is a place in which people transform their body and give meaning to the looks they aim for, whether it is gendered, racialized or associated with age. Nevertheless, through the knowledge, constituted ideas and attitudes towards mixing that are present in the salon, there evidently is a certain presence of these racial labels, the mixing, and their appeal.
28 The racial labeling of beauty
The ethnic labels in the Aiko salon are an important aspect of how the professionals within this salon present themselves, not just as the concept of the salon, but also the way Iku ascribes different aspects of her personality to her Japanese Brazilian background. At the same time, this racial labeling was present in the way in which the clients and professionals would talk about beauty and what is nowadays perceived as beautiful, especially within youth culture. Throughout various conversations within the Aiko salon, ideas about racial backgrounds and beauty ideals were expressed. Beauty in general is racially labeled, although it is about having certain ancestry, there are a number of elements, one of which is one’s specific look which is assumed to belong to a certain label. During this research it became clear that one racial label specifically in the Aiko salon is associated with beauty: mixed race. This idea is presented within the discourse in the Aiko salon of race as being something primordial rather than a social construct. This example sheds light upon how race is perceived as something within your body, and thus can be a cause of someone’s beauty or ugliness. This idea of the mixed race body being viewed as beautiful has been researched by different scholars, and will be discussed further in this section.
During my first day as a hair model in the Aiko salon, I had the opportunity to have conversations about beauty with Jane, the assistant who was doing my hairdo for that day. Jane is 19 years old and originally from Poland, she has already been an assistant for a year at this salon, but aspires to become a hairdresser. Every Friday the assistants had training in which they would practice treatments. On this first Friday working as a hair model, she was doing a so called ‘party hairdo’ with my hair. While doing my hair, we had a conversation about her ideas on beauty. The conversation at the Aiko hair salon gave me the impression that it would be easy to talk about this subject. However, the following conversations I had in the salon were much less explicit as the one with Jane, mainly because people seemed to be self-conscious about the concepts of race and beauty.
The following conversation will show how beauty is immediately linked to race by Jane, since my question was not explicitly about race, but just the simple question ‘What do you think
29 is beautiful?’ is answered by racialized ideas about beauty.
Well, I love mixed race people, they are so beautiful! And Latinas, oh my god, everything is so perfect about them, their hair, body, skin color, yeah it’s amazing.
What does it look like and… do people share this opinion?
Yeah well, nowadays, you see so many Kim Kardashians down the street. Just the beautiful dark hair, perfect skin, brown skin tone, makeup yeah, just perfect. I know I am white but… I just don’t think white people look good, they look ill all the time, people with brown/olive skin tone look so beautiful, I mean, even makeup fits them better than just white people. I mean, I have never seen an ugly Latina or mixed race person, they are just beautiful.
Jane expresses her preference for mixed race and so-called Latina people and assumes that these are the most beautiful according to her. However, she does think that it is a more common trend nowadays, when mentioning that there are ‘so many Kim Kardashians’20 down the street. Kim
Kardashian in this conversation becomes a symbol of the described racialized beauty ideal Jane expresses. The mentioning of Kim Kardashian, mixed race and Latinas as beautiful, Jane implicitly means a specific look. This look includes a tanned skin tone, brown (preferably curly) hair, and a curvy/slim-thick body type. Through relating these racial labels to beauty, the actually social constructed categories become something primordial in her viewpoint.
In the Aiko salon, ‘Latina’ not only by Jane but also by other professionals was linked to beauty but also served as an explanation to someone looking sexy. This image of the Latina should be understood within the context of the images that are present in globalized American pop culture, which are the result of a number of social phenomena, including the Latina representation in beauty pageants and globalization of telenovelas. Molina Guzman and Valdivia (2010) explain how the portrayal and imagination of the Latina body should be understood as a form of tropicalism. “Tropicalism” is the process in which specificity is being erased and Latinas are being homogenized. The common stereotype within this process of tropicalism about the Latina body is characterized by the curvaceous hips and breasts, long brown hair and brown/olive skin. (Molina Guzman, Valdivia 2010:211). This process of
20 Kim Kardashian is not Latina but Armenian, Dutch, English, Irish, and Scottish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Kardashian (5/11/2018)
30 tropicalism shows how the Latina body is imagined in a sensualized way and is associated with certain physical aspects. The Latina body, and the label, thus comes together with these fixed images, that determine how people relate (sensualized) beauty to the Latina label. This is similar to the ideals that are present within the Aiko salon and labeled as Latina and Mixed. Although race and racial categories are continuously constructed depending on the social context and relations, through relating race to beauty and looks, it becomes clear that race is seen as something which is in your body and determines your physique and beauty. It reveals a biologized way of thinking about race, and how this is related to beauty. Although Jane talks about what she finds beautiful and attractive, what is not so beautiful can be defined by race as well according to her:
Visuals of the look Jane, and later on other respondents, are talking about. 21 (left one on Instagram #latina, right one #mixedrace)
Well yeah, Indians do come a lot of times. They take really good care of themselves, their hair, skin everything. Beautiful makeup yeah, they look good. Do you think the
same about them as about the mixed race or Latina people? Uhm no, not really
actually, I mean, they put on a lot of makeup and stuff so that’s why they are so beautiful, lots of makeup. I mean, Latina girls ohmygod, even if they don’t put any makeup on they
21 Instagram.com https://www.instagram.com/mixxxedchicks/?hl=en and https://www.instagram.com/maria_perezxox/ (20/07/2018)
31
look like supermodels and I am like ohmygod why are you doing this to me, they are so beautiful!
Beauty in this sense is defined by socially constructed and imagined narratives about race, with the nexus between both beauty and race being compartmentalized and attributed on the basis of ideals that are perpetuated by for example pop culture. The construction of racialized beauty is about the way in which different labels are constructed in a certain context. In the Aiko hair salon, ‘Latina’ was the label used to describe the look Jane is describing and representing this idea of “tropicalism” (Molina Guzman, Valdivia 2010). One of the examples is how they would describe me as ‘Latina’ although I have a Turkish/Kurdish background. As Jane stated as well while talking about her perception of beauty.
But, you actually don’t look Turkish, I’m quite surprised. I would rather say you’re Latina or something. I always think Turkish people look different, also the people I know. Like your skin tone is not really Turkish… and also your hair and stuff is not.22
While beauty is described with the use of racialized labels that might assume that race is in the body of people, there is also a contradiction in how beauty is described in relation to race. Race determines the body according to Jane, but at the same time, by dismissing my background, there appears to be a ‘flexibility’ in how her ideas about looks are related to race, and can be ascribed to someone with a different background as well. There is the assumption that certain characteristics, like skin color or hair texture, belong to certain racial groups. Someone who does not belong to this group could still have these features. Nevertheless, this reality does not change the perception of the racialized beauty ideas: instead of acknowledging that Turkish people can have the skin tone and hair texture I have as well, the presence of these features rather make me ‘not Turkish looking’ but Latina. It expresses a perception in which the labeling of beauty and primordial racial thoughts do not reflect an absolute reality, they rather express a set of ideas that are constructed and given the meaning of beauty in a certain context, in this case the Aiko salon.
32 Meanings behind the racial labels
The racial labelling of beauty comes together with certain meanings that are attached to these labels. Although it refers to certain looks that are implicitly being described through the use of
these labels, the meaning of these labels exists out of different layers. Jane is explicit about her ideas about beauty, according to her, mixed race and Latin people are
beautiful. Although she identifies as white by herself, according to her, whiteness is not beautiful at all. Jane was the first person I spoke to in this salon, which in combination with the concept of the salon and how people spoke about race in general, gave the impression that race is important when it comes to beauty in this context. From this conversation it becomes clear that there is an implicit assumption what ‘mixed race’ or ‘Latina’ looks like. Even though in reality it can look like anything, mixed race and Latina in this conversation refers to dark hair, a tan/olive skin tone and a so called curvy body type. Jane her beauty ideals and the racial labels attached to this ideal look, comes together with other racial notions that influence the
construction of “beauty”.
While having this conversation, she undid my hairdo:
So, what shall I do with your hair? Straighten it or putting curly hair product in it? I really love curly hair, I hope I will get a mixed race baby so my kid will get hair like this, I just have this boring flat hair. I actually really love all the mixing that’s going on, I like just any race any mixed race thing you know. It’s so beautiful these weddings and people that bring in their own culture and then mix it… it’s absolutely amazing. I hate these people that just want to be with their own culture and people, I mean come on, why would you do something like that you know.
The mixing that Jane is talking about, refers to the fact that within the UK the category of ‘mixed people’ as a part of the population was 1.3 percent in 2001. In 2011 however, this had
33 gone up to 2.2 percent, which unveils the growth of this category in ten years. (Aspinall 2017:10) What is considered as mixed within this census is having parents from the different (constructed) racial backgrounds: Asian, Black and White. Mixed race in this way is constructed through the combination of already existing notions of mono-racial identities. However, the mixed race category might be growing because more people also self-identify with this category, since this category has received a positive meaning in the last couple of years, which is also translated in ideas about beauty. The Aiko salon exemplifies and celebrates this very concept of ‘mixing.’ It is visible in the concept of the salon as a mix of Brazilian, Japanese and Italian, in how this is used as something positive. This positivity apparently, given the way in which the professionals and clients embrace this mixed concept, shows the popularity of the concept of mixing and how this is constructed as something positive in the
context of this salon.
The notion of mixed race people being considered beautiful is something which is stated by different people in this research frequently: however, people had varying ways to describe this, which sheds light upon the different racial notions that are attached to this label. The following conversation is with Nina, a girl originally from Newcastle but has worked in London for a couple of years, talking about her own experiences growing up and also how she feels about beauty ideals nowadays. While Nina was getting her hair done, I was sitting next to her to see what Mauro, one of the hairdressers from Italy, would do to her hair. She showed Mauro a picture of a girl on Instagram with a blonde/grey balayage23 and said that she would like that as well. Nina, who has a mixed Chinese and English background started joking as well:
