“Making Over” Poor Women: Gender, Race, Class, and Body Size in a Welfare‐to‐Work Nonprofit Organization

Abstract

Drawing on 13 months of participant observation at a welfare-to-work nonprofit that provides unemployed poor women with used business attire, I assess the extent to which-and how-this "objectified cultural capital" is transmitted to clients. I advance prior theorizing in this area by considering whether clients' "bodily capital" impacts the services they receive. I find that despite providing needed services to clients, the organization reifies many of the inequalities it seeks to remedy. When sorting clothing donations, staff and volunteers curate particularly classed embodiments by selecting garments that are work-appropriate yet not luxurious. Also, well-intentioned efforts to provide a luxurious shopping-esque experience for clients ironically produces service scripts that facilitate control over clients' behavior. Finally, service interactions reproduce inequities between different types of clients along the lines of race, class, and body size, such that clients with more privileged bodily capital fare better than those with stigmatized embodiments. I use these findings to caution against romanticized understandings of philanthropic efforts to remedy social inequality, while also underscoring the importance of taking embodiment-particularly the striking social disadvantages of larger body size-into account when examining the intersections of gender, race, and class.

Black Ballerinas: The Management of Emotional and Aesthetic Labor*

“…I coded my interviews similar to other scholars who study emotional and aesthetic labor (Gruys 2019; Kang 2010)—by identifying and coding emergent themes to do with each. I looked for themes that focused on dancers’ discussions of emotions and feelings (i.e., how they projected a specific emotion despite how they internally felt toward a director, choreographer, other dancer, and for the audience) and discussions of embodiment and appearance‐based requirements (i.e., discussion concerning how they wore their hair, their costumes, their practice attire, their body image, etc.…”

Both sides of the Paycheck: Recommending Thrift to the Poor in Job Readiness Programs

“…The office itself is decrepit, with swathes of stained carpet, an ominous leak in the roof, and an aesthetic appeal right out of the 1980s. It comprises an office suite for some -three to five staff members (the number fluctuated during the time of our fieldwork, given shifting grant cycles), a computer lab, a conference room, and a cavernous "clothing closet" full of donated clothing, undergarments, and jewelry so that the "ladies" or "girls"-as the program staff exclusively refer to participants-can "dress for success" (Cummins and Blum, 2015;Gruys, 2019). Mornings in the program are dedicated to basic computer skills.…”

Sized Out: Women, Clothing Size, and Inequality

“…Linking clothing size to employment opportunities, Cummins and Blum (2015) observed that the work attire, such as business suits, required to convey “professionalism” in higher-status occupations are often deemed better-suited to thinner bodies. Gruys (2017) similarly found that it is more difficult for larger and curvier women to find well-fitting business suits, particularly if they are poor. In these ways, limited access to fashion choices may translate into social disadvantages with economic consequences.…”