Shaping the female student: an analysis of Swedish beauty school recruitment texts

Abstract

This is an electronic version of an article published in:Eleonor Bredlöv, Shaping the female student: an analysis of Swedish beauty school recruitment texts, Studies in Continuing Education, 2016 38(2) This study focuses on the recruitment of adults to the beauty industry in Sweden. It is concerned with a move in (beauty) education away from state and towards private provision in a wider context where education is becoming more heavily marketised. Drawing on a poststructural approach inspired by the work of Foucault and feminist theory, the shaping of student subjectivity in recruitment material for private beauty schools is analysed. A poststructural approach provides analytical tools that make visible the process of how power shapes subjectivities, and the use of feminist theory gives special focus to the gendered aspects of this process. The study includes a textual analysis of website homepages of beauty schools, beauty schools' Facebook pages and web pages that provide compiled information on educational programs and courses connected to the beauty industry. The analysis shows how consumption is constituted and feminized through specific marketing strategies and thereby becomes both a starting point and a resource for the shaping of student subjectivity. Thus, a particular form of gendered entrepreneurial self is shaped in this femininised educational context, and this study therefore highlights the importance of vocational research that takes into account the shaping of student subjectivity.

Becoming an emotional worker and student: exploring skin and spa therapy education and training

“…Here, I argue, emotional students emerge through responsibilisation, making each other's learning possiblea process that is gendered. As Bredlöv (2016b) show in her study on how skin and spa therapy students position themselves as professionals through knowledge, a caring professional is constructed when skin and spa therapy students (self-) position. Here, a caring technology is set in motion when students learn to appreciate the pleasure of giving to such an extent that they can be left doing it without any control (see Fejes and Nicoll 2010;Foucault 1988;Skeggs 1997).…”

“…Colley 2006;Msiska, Smith, and Fawcett 2014). Bredlöv (2016b) examines emotional labour briefly in a study about how skin and spa therapy students are produced as professionals, where a caring knowledge is shown to play a significant role. Overall, the processes through which students in vocational education and training develop their ability to perform emotional labour remains remarkably unexplored.…”