{"id":2560,"date":"2016-01-08T20:24:10","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T20:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/?p=2560"},"modified":"2016-01-08T21:06:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T21:06:26","slug":"the-making-of-mens-grooming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/2016\/01\/08\/the-making-of-mens-grooming\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of Men’s Grooming"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term \u201cgrooming,\u201d hairstylists told me, is important in recoding beauty for men. During my research at high-service men\u2019s salons, which focus on creating a pampered, \u201celevated experience\u201d for their clients, I explored what it takes to make beauty masculinizing for some men. Veronica, the owner of one men\u2019s salon, refers to her business as a \u201cgrooming lounge\u201d so that clients invest in the space, services, and products as distinctly masculine. B<\/em>eauty<\/em> has been linked to women and femininity; to sell men on the commercial beauty industry, so the thinking goes, it has to be repackaged. This repackaging of beauty as “grooming” has been effective\u00a0for Veronica, as well as for\u00a0large cosmetic companies.<\/p>\n

Men\u2019s grooming is a growing subsector of the beauty industry, with already established and emerging product lines like Nivea Men, The Lab Series, Dove Men+Care, Jack Black, and Lauder for Men. And salons dedicated solely to shoring-up men\u2019s hair, eyebrows, and nails are popping up across the country. Market\u00a0research\u00a0companies announce varying revenue numbers, but they all agree men\u2019s grooming sales are in the billions and growing exponentially. This is cause for intrigue among social scientists like myself as well as journalists like Sabri Ben-Achor<\/a>, who recently reported for NPR\u2019s Marketplace on \u201cHow it became OK for guys to take care of themselves<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Image from: www.hisstylediary.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are thrilled here at Feminist Reflections that two of our contributing editors were interviewed as academic experts for Ben-Achor\u2019s piece, including Tristan Bridges and myself. Lisa Wade, of our sister blog Sociological Images, is also featured. The article focuses on \u201cwhy now?\u201d What is it about the current cultural climate in the United States that makes the production, marketing, and sale of men\u2019s grooming so successful, and why didn\u2019t this happen sooner?<\/p>\n

Listen to the NPR Marketplace report, here:<\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/files\/2016\/01\/mp_20160106_seg_20_64.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

*I use pseudonyms to refer to my field sites and research participants, and this data come from my forthcoming book, Styling Masculinity: Gender, Class, and Inequality in the Men\u2019s Grooming Industry<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The term \u201cgrooming,\u201d hairstylists told me, is important in recoding beauty for men. During my research at high-service men\u2019s salons, which focus on creating a pampered, \u201celevated experience\u201d for their clients, I explored what it takes to make beauty masculinizing for some men. Veronica, the owner of one men\u2019s salon, refers to her business as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,245,30335,55,35058,26,175,144],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-2560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bodies","category-feminism","category-feminist-sociology","category-gender","category-in-the-news","category-public-sociology","category-sociology","category-teaching","tag-race"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2560"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2572,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions\/2572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/feminist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}