Nigellissima: a study of glamour, performativity and embodiment

Abstract

Aesthetic labour and emotional labour are neglected topics within the marketing field, despite their relevance to services marketing, and to date none of this work has found its way into the marketing literature on gender. This is despite the fact that there is a significant and growing body of work that explores the intersections of gender and marketing. Taking this latter literature as a starting point, the article seeks to incorporate the literatures on aesthetic labour and emotional labour into that discussion, as taken together these literatures offer us a fresh opportunity to consider where we are, where we've been, and where we have yet to go in marketing in terms of the 'gender issue'. Above all, the article reintroduces a 'trailblazing' (Bettany et al, 2010) feminist element into discussions of gender in marketing, by raising concerns about the deployment of 'feeling bodies' in key customer service roles. It concludes by arguing that there continues to be a gender dichotomy in marketing, and that sex role typing is alive and thriving in our marketing practices, particularly in service roles. The article calls for greater critical awareness from professional bodies, employers and employees in the marketing field about gender issues in our discourses and practices, and suggests areas for empirical research into this important topic.

Theorizing Reactive Reflexivity: Lifestyle Displacement and Discordant Performances of Taste

“…This reactive reflexive argument does not deny that a nexus of disempowering patriarchal norms inhere in the role of Australian middle-class homemaker, ranging from expectations that they undertake the lion's share of childcare and domestic labor to normative pressures to sacrifice their personal and career achievements to ideals of domesticity (Stevens et al 2015). However, these repressive ideological effects are complemented by a gamut of class privileges.…”

“…While this good mother ideology imposes a network of well-document gender demands (and constraints) on women's identities (Berry 1993;Hochschild 1989;Stevens et al 2015), it also provided our participants with a valorized socio-cultural identity and lifestyle resources for pursuing their aesthetic interests and enjoying other benefits that accrued from their social position, including a sense of liberty from the pressures and responsibilities of being the household's primary income earner.…”

“…The enactment of resistant identities has been a particularly prominent topic among studies addressing the relationship between gender ideologies and consumption (Bettany et al 2010;Hein and O'Donohoe 2014;Maclaran 2018;Stevens et al 2015;Thompson and Üstüner 2016). This nexus of gender-focused consumer research studies traverses a broad range of resistant gender identities-Goths, motor cycle mamas, at-home dads, fatshionistas, urban gay males, roller derby performers.…”

“…A fundamental assumption of critical reflexivity is that consumer identities are inscribed in a prefiguring network of socio-economic distinctions (and status hierarchies), normative classifications, and ideological discourses (see Crockett and Wallendorf 2004;Holt and Thompson 2004;Murray 2002;Schor 2007;Stevens, Cappellini, and Smith 2015;Valtonen 2013). To assert a more sovereign (i.e., less ideologically dominated) agency, consumers must therefore cultivate a critical consciousness and proactively resist the constraining forces of social conditioning, institutionalized norms, and ideological hailings (Firat and Venkatesh 1995;Izberk-Bilgin 2010;Holt 2002;Murray andOzanne 1991, 1995;Ulver-Sneistrup, Askegaard, and Kristensen 2011;Üstüner and Thompson 2012;Thompson and Üstüner 2015;Varman and Belk 2009).…”

Celebrity Chefs and the Social Construction of Taste in Contemporary British Society

“…He is also a well-known celebrity TV chef (Garfield, 2010;Gordon Ramsay, 2020). Ramsay merits investigation as he is one of the world's most Topics covered include her Domestic Goddess persona (Hollows, 2003), femininity (Stevens et al, 2015;Rodney et al, 2017), food porn (Chan, 2003;McBride, 2010), branding and domesticity (Hewer and Brownlie, 2009). Chan highlights how 'the beautiful and curvy Lawson seems to have it all…she appears able to juggle career, kids, a husband, and three-course meals including dessert and still look fabulous ' (p. 50).…”