ABSTRACT

Beautification rituals are powerful elements of consumer cultures that transcend time and place. In an age of “moral terrorism” to “invest” in the body as an imperative, beauty salons -a twentieth century invention- have become a ubiquitous resource for individuals’ self-actualization through consumption. This market-mediated place dedicated to beauty services is less investigated than the extensive multidisciplinary literature available on beauty and the body. We argue in this paper that beauty salons achieve iconicity through the interplay of four critical dimensions that reinforce one another: (1) the spatial performances of withdrawal from the world, (2) the mediation of experiences of gendered intimacies, (3) the articulations of complex narratives of magical transformations, and (4) the subtle claims of medico-scientific truths that captivate consumers.

摘要

美化仪式是超越时间和地点的消费文化的强大元素。在“道德恐怖主义”将“投资”于身体作为当务之急的时代，美容院——一项二十世纪的发明——已成为个人通过消费实现自我的无处不在的资源。这个致力于美容服务的以市场为媒介的地方比关于美容和身体的广泛的多学科文献较少受到调查。我们在本文中认为，美容院通过四个相互加强的关键维度的相互作用来实现像似性：（1）退出世界的空间表现，（2）性别亲密体验的中介，（3）表达神奇转变的复杂叙述，