Emotional and Aesthetic Labor of Finnish Military Officers

This study analyzes the emotional and aesthetic labor of Finnish military officers. It examines the kinds of valuations officers attach to the notion of an ideal soldier. The meanings that officers give to these ideals are explored within the wider framework of post-Fordist new work. The ideal soldier is traditionally considered to be physically capable and strong, rational, and in control—features culturally coded as masculine. An analysis of 108 military officers’ writings and 12 interviews showed that while the traditional masculine ideal still exists, a vast variety of valuations are related to new work. The notion of the new ideal worker includes attributes, such as empathy, emotional intelligence, and social skills, which are culturally coded as feminine qualities. These feminine valuations may work to female officers’ advantage. However, despite fractures in traditional masculine ideals, there are still some deeply rooted gender stereotypes that work to female officers’ disadvantage.

Luxury Branding in the Hospitality Industry: The Impact of Employee’s Luxury Appearance and Elitism Attitude

Some of the luxury consumption literature suggests that luxury consumption is a beneficial social signal for the actor which facilitates social interaction. However, a different stream of recent research suggests that luxury consumption bears social costs to the actor. In the employee–customer interaction context, wearing luxury brands can either benefit or backfire for the employee depending on the situation whether luxury status or warmth is necessary. Based on the gaps in the literature, this study examines the impact of employee conspicuous cues by utilizing luxury consumption and elitism attitude on employee–customer rapport and behavioral intentions. The study results show that employees wearing luxury brands increase customers’ perceived impression management toward the employee. Such perception is strengthened when employees show an elitism attitude. In addition, when employees wear luxury brands, customers are more likely to build rapport with employees when they show a democratic attitude, as they perceive the employees are less likely to involve in impression management than showing an elitism attitude. The results build upon the luxury hospitality literature, aesthetic labor, impression management, and rapport literature.

“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 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.

Seeking “skilled, poised, fluent” verbal communicators: Aesthetic labor and signaling in journalism job advertisements

Journalism job advertisements send important signals about valued skills and attributes. How such advertisements articulate journalistic expertise, including interactional expertise, has been studied, but signals about verbal communication usually have been overlooked. Little is known about how journalism employers define the most valued communication skills and the ideal journalistic voice. This signaling theory study explores expectations advertisements convey for how journalists should sound through a thematic analysis of U.S. journalism job listings (n = 510) specifying substantial verbal communication. Requirements for exceptional verbal skills and explicit calls for vocal clarity raise barriers to entry for journalists with speech disabilities or speech anxiety.

Man Made Beautiful: The Social Role of Grooming and Body Work in Performing Middle-aged Corporate Masculinity in South Korea

This article examines how middle-aged urban men in South Korea relate to age-relevant ideas of beauty in a society in which youthful muscular bodies are increasingly presented as the ideal or, arguably, even as a norm. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 male participants aged 36–56 years residing in the Seoul metropolitan area, it seeks to outline what role grooming and aesthetic labor play in their everyday social interactions. The findings suggest that men’s aesthetic practices in the workplace are strongly linked to considerations of in-group harmony, competency at work, and maintaining social hierarchies. Rather than being motivated by a desire to emulate hegemonic masculinity embodied by male celebrities of similar age, men in this age group engage with body work primarily for the homosocial gaze of other men in their workplace in order to embody their membership and belonging to it. These micro-contexts of men’s aesthetic labor help to illustrate how not all aesthetic labor can be explained in terms of considering the body simply as an object of investment. The participants’ reflections also illustrate how men’s bodies as neoliberal objects in the contemporary Korean workplace are not interpellated by societal or cultural influences in identical ways. For white collar workers, the role of aesthetic labor was clearly seen as more significant than for those in blue collar roles, suggesting a degree of social stratification of body work. Despite the relatively easy access to affordable technologies of the body in Korea, for workers in lower-middle class jobs where grooming and fitness are not considered an essential part of their job, partaking in aesthetic labor came with the anxiety that it might be encoded as “excessive” by others. This suggests that Korean beauty cultures continue to be highly class- and context-specific rather than relatively uniform as often (mis)understood in existing literature.