occupational cultures and the embodiment of masculinity: hairdressing, estate agency and...

Occupational Cultures and theEmbodiment of Masculinity:Hairdressing, Estate Agencyand Firefighting

Alex Hall, Jenny Hockey* and Victoria Robinson

Drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council-fundedproject, this article explores the implications of different occupational cul-tures for men’s masculine identity. With a focus on embodiment andindividual agency, it explores the argument that it is within ‘scenes ofconstraint’ that gendered identities are both ‘done’ and ‘undone’. In thisarticle we examine embodied experience in occupational cultures com-monly stereotyped as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (hairdressing, estate agencyand firefighting), showing how men conform to, draw upon and resist thegendered stereotypes associated with these occupations. What we argue isthat gendered conceptions of ‘the body’ need to be differentiated fromindividual men’s embodiment. Instead, processes of identification can beshown to emerge via embodied experiences of particular kinds of gen-dered body, and in the ways in which men negotiate the perception ofthese bodies in different occupational contexts.

Keywords: masculinity, embodiment, the body, occupational cultures

This article draws on data from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded project that investigates the implications of gendered occupational

cultures for men’s performances of masculinity at work. Focusing on lifecourse transitions and men’s everyday movement between work and home,it explores the ‘elusiveness, fluidity and complex interconnectedness ofmasculinity in modern societies’ (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill, 2003, p. 4).Selecting occupations that are stereotyped as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (hair-dressing, estate agency and firefighting) (Office for National Statistics, 2004),the study asks how the juxtaposed cultures of workplace and home might

Address for correspondence: *Dept of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Elmfield,Northumberland Road, Sheffield, S10 2TU, e-mail: [email protected]

Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 14 No. 6 November 2007

© 2007 The Author(s)Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

mailto:[email protected]

evoke contradictory or congruent performances of masculinity. In addition,we explore the potential gaps between representations of the ‘heroic’ firefighter, the ‘unscrupulous’ estate agent and the ‘camp’ hairdresser, and thecomplex realities of men’s embodied lives. We draw on Butler’s notion ofgender as a ‘practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint’ (2004, p. 1),concerning ourselves with men’s agency in particular social contexts andideologies. As our data demonstrate, it is through scenes of constraint, such asparticular occupational cultures, that gender may be both ‘done’ and‘undone’.

Our research questions posed methodological challenges — and Connell’s(2005) view of gender as a structure of practice helpfully led to a focus onembodiment. As he explains, ‘gender is a social practice that constantly refersto bodies and what bodies do ... it is not social practice reduced to the body’(2005, p. 71). This article therefore explores the way that the men in our studyengaged in the ‘social practice’ of masculinity as embodied individuals whoinhabit the workplace identities of firefighter, hairdresser and estate agent(for discussion of gender as a social practice in relation to organizations andwork, see the special issue of Gender, Work & Organization, May 2006). Theirdomestic lives were another important aspect of our study, but here we focuson processes of identification in the workplace. We begin by discussing theo-retical approaches to the body and identification, outlining how our researchdesign sought to overcome the challenges arising from investigating embodi-ment. We then discuss the insights that data from the three occupations canshed on the relationship between embodiment, work, identity and masculin-ity, before drawing our conclusions.

Embodying workplace identities

We begin with the distinction between ‘the body’ — as it has figured in thesocial sciences from feminist theory to medical sociology — and ‘embodi-ment’. Sociological analysis of the body has prioritized the body we have, theobject body over which we might exercise agency, via diet or cosmeticsurgery. The concept of embodiment, however, concerns the body we are and,as such, enables an understanding of the dialectical processes of identificationas they unfold in particular social contexts.

Feminist critiques have argued that a western, post-Enlightenment splitbetween mind and body has meshed with a gender hierarchy that linksculture and the intellect with masculinity, and nature and the body withfemininity (Battersby, 1998; MacCormack and Strathern, 1980). In response,authors such as Butler (1990) and Grosz (1994), whose work is influenced byFoucault, highlight the social ‘production’ of bodies through discursive prac-tices such as medicine. However, the body as the material site of humanexperience remains a concern for feminists such as Moi (1999), who have

OCCUPATIONAL CULTURES AND THE EMBODIMENT OF MASCULINITY 535

© 2007 The Author(s) Volume 14 Number 6 November 2007Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

developed Merleau Ponty’s (1961) theories of embodiment by focusing on thelived body as their analytic starting point. Similarly, Watson, a medical soci-ologist, views embodiment as a site at which the personal and the socialinterweave, citing Giddens’ argument that identity is sustained through‘practical immersion in the interactions of day-to-day life’ (1991, p. 99, cited inWatson, 2000, p. 111). If identity is ‘the interface between subjective positionsand social and cultural situations’ (Woodward, 1997a, p. 1), then humanembodiment is core to this interface.

Notions of the body as an object do, nonetheless, remain important in thatits scrutiny, mediation and objectification are important aspects of embodiedsubjectivity. Particular representations or objectifications of male bodies cancontribute powerfully to whom men think they are.

Men’s bodies

The feminist debates about the relationship between femininity and the bodyoutlined above have also addressed men’s bodies. As Jackson and Scottsuggest, ‘as well as criticizing the all-pervasive pathologisation of women’sbodies, feminists have called for the problematisation of men’s bodies’ (2002,p. 370). Morgan stresses the importance of this task, arguing that, ‘at leastsuperficially, women tend to be more embodied and men less embodied insocial scientific, popular and feminist writings and representations’ (2002, p.407).

More recent work has focused on men’s bodies; for example, Grogan’s(1999) discussion of body dissatisfaction among both women and men high-lights the increasing requirement that men be both slender and muscular.Arguing that both sexes are now willing to submit themselves to dietaryand surgical body modification practices, Monaghan (2005) discusses this‘dubious equality’ through reference to Davis’s (2002) work on cosmeticsurgery. Further, although he concedes that male bodies are not generally‘objects-for-others’ in the same way that female bodies often are, he doesargue that men and boys are increasingly being subjected to normalizingbody discourses and practice.

Nonetheless, Morgan remains critical of existing sociological accounts ofmale bodies, arguing that they tend to be represented as hard and aggressive,an ‘over-phallusised picture of man’ (Morgan, 2002, p. 407). Whitehead (2002,p. 189) argues similarly that force, hardness, toughness, physical competenceand applying physicality to the world are misleadingly associated with domi-nant masculinities.

We also problematize such representations, yet recognize their role inmen’s embodied subjectivities, their notions of who they should or might be.Whitehead suggests that while ‘many men fail to achieve a seamless, con-stant, symbiotic relationship between their bodies and dominant discourses

536 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Volume 14 Number 6 November 2007 © 2007 The Author(s)Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

of masculinity’, they may still attempt to do so and their masculine subjec-tivity is bound up in these attempts (2002, p. 191). Moreover, while feministssuch as Delphy (1984) have argued that bodily differences are made toground ‘gender’ via what Connell (2005) later described as ‘gender projects’,these projects have local contexts. This means that different masculinitiesemerge from what Connell refers to as ‘configurations of practice generatedin particular situations in a changing structure of relationships’ (2005, p. 81).Csordas (2002) and Young (2005) similarly argue that a body-based phenom-enological starting point must include wider cultural and structural dimen-sions of subjective experience. As our data indicate, it is through particularsocial configurations — class, age, historical location — as well as individualagency that ‘restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life’(Butler, 2004, p. 1) are both done and undone. Via engagement with thesedata, it becomes clear that gender emerges as the outcome of particular formsof embodied practice, performance, interaction and play that can act to notonly reinforce or do, but also to destabilize or undo masculinity in its hege-monic or stereotypical forms.

The study

An item of data from our previous study of heterosexuality1 — that malefirefighters are prone to partnership breakdown — led us to ask how thegendered nature of men’s work environments and their relationship withdomestic space might interact. We considered how being a man might involvedifferent performances depending on context. Following men’s movementbetween home and work, we address what Woodward calls

fundamental questions about how individuals fit into the community andthe social world and how identity can be seen as the interface betweensubjective positions and social and cultural situations. (1997a, p. 1)

To get at these different dimensions of embodied identity, we combined threekinds of data: interviews with 54 men from the three occupational cultureswhich asked them to reflect on how home and working life might differ or belinked; interviews with 54 of the men’s female partners, friends or childrenwhich asked how the men do masculinity at home; and participant observa-tion at each workplace that explored how embodied identity emerged withinsocial practice. Our sample also encompassed three age cohorts: young menbeginning their careers; men in mid-life and older men around retirementage. Our study is located in South Yorkshire, where working-class men’semployment opportunities in the steel- and coal-mining industries were asso-ciated with the forms of traditional, ‘macho’ masculinity that Donaldson(1991) describes.



With the decline of these industries, young men from this area, includingmany in our sample, can no longer find expression for this kind of masculinityat work, and many of them are now being employed in the newly expandedservice sector. Participant observation was conducted at workplaces in one ofthe region’s cities, though some interviewees came from surrounding areas.

Hairdressing fieldwork took place in two salons that were selected to reflectvery different social and geographical locations. Raymonds was a one-manbusiness, set in a row of shops in a working-class area of Sheffield. Its clientelewere mainly, though not exclusively, older women and occasionally, men.Raymond, its eponymous owner, was in his late fifties, his business fading ashis customers gradually died off. In comparison, Cameo Club was set amongfashionable city centre wine bars and shops and employed nine staff, includingits female owner and two male stylists. Its clients were mainly thirty-something professionals and young people looking for the latest hairstyles.

Two estate agents were also chosen to reflect contrasting field sites: onewas a successful family business run from a cosy office in an affluent area ofthe city; the other was a large city centre office that was part of a chain anddealt in properties from the entire area, with a lucrative interest in fashionablecity-centre lifestyle apartments.

Fieldwork among the firefighters was conducted in a city centre fire stationwith one watch — a group of roughly ten firefighters who work and sleeptogether through a ‘tour’ of two day shifts and two night shifts. These weremostly local men, some with previous employment in the steel industry, thearmed forces or trades such as plumbing or plastering, though a proportionhad a university education.

All data collection was conducted by two of our all-female research team.Access to a typically masculinized workplace such as a fire station mightappear problematic for a female researcher, yet barriers turned on issues oftrust rather than gender, and the firefighters in particular were concerned thatwe might be acting on behalf of management. Indeed, access to emotionaldimensions of men’s subjectivities was, overall, enabled by the use of femaleresearchers. The men sometimes remarked that they found it easier talking toa woman. For example, among the firefighters, men would confide theirworries about their personal lives and families to the researcher in snatchedmoments away from the main group of men, when they would adopt a morereflective personal style. Nonetheless, our analysis of data involved reflex-ively taking account of how gender differences, as well age and social class,might inflect our material.

Combining interviews with workplace observation allowed us to explorehow social practice (along with contextual expectations, norms and values)contributes to the gender projects through which masculinity is brought intobeing by individuals moving between work and home. As Connell argues,‘[s]ocial practice is creative and inventive, but not inchoate. It responds toparticular situations and is generated within definite structures of social



relations’ (2005, p. 72). Thus, individuals’ negotiations of these structures andtheir implications for a man’s embodied identity are central to our analysis.Analysis of these processes is based upon our reading of the entire collectionof comparative data from all three occupational cultures, particular observa-tions or verbatim statements being included to illustrate key trends within thematerial. In the case of hairdressers, particular individuals have been repre-sented in order to highlight class-based differences within this occupationalculture.

Men at work: embodied or non-embodied?

In exploring how the negotiation of occupational cultures contributes toongoing gender projects, we take account of the ‘heroic male project’: that is,the imagery surrounding men’s engagement with the ‘public’ world whichoften links male subjectivity with ‘militarism, dreams of conquest and accom-panying physical endurance’ (Whitehead, 2002, p. 122). This heroic projectalso includes the man who ‘seeks to make his mark on and change the worldthrough his drive, energy, self-discipline, initiative, but, most importantly,through his financial acumen’ (Whitehead, 2002, p. 122).

Such performances link self-image with control of self and control of others,via alluring representations of powerful men successfully maneuvering in thepublic world (Whitehead, 2002, p. 123). Whether the working world enablesconformity with such images is another matter. Whether gender is done orundone in different occupational spheres (Butler, 2004) is the question wetherefore address by asking how different occupations with contrasting mas-culinized and feminized working cultures support different expectations ofwhat men should achieve, either in the body’s appearance, its actions or itspotential. As Woodward argues, ‘[e]very context or cultural field has itscontrols and expectations and its “imaginary”; that is, its promise of pleasureand achievement’ (1997b, p. 23). The implications of differing expectations —and imaginaries — for embodied masculinities are therefore constitutive of thegender projects occurring in the occupational environments we explored.

Having argued for the theoretical importance of investigating embodi-ment, we must recognize its methodological implications. In ‘The AbsentBody’, Leder (1990) characterizes the body as a vehicle for perceiving theexternal environment, an entity which makes itself felt primarily duringillness. If the body usually lies beyond the individual’s notice, how, then, canembodiment be investigated? Morgan suggests that in modern society somemen are seen as more embodied than others:

Many images of men in sport, at war and in doing sex are highly embodiedor, to be more exact, we are encouraged to read these representations in thisway. Pictures of stockbrokers, bishops or dons might not seem as embodiedas images of sportsmen or warriors. (Morgan, 2002, p. 407)



He warns that ‘if we fail to see their bodies in these cases this may be becauseof a prior framework of understanding that links men, bodies and action’(2002, p. 407).

This argument returns us to the notion of ‘particular situations’ and‘changing structure[s] of relationships’ (Connell, 2002, p. 81). If some men’sbodies ‘disappear’, this may reflect a privileging of those which conform tonotions of hardness, domination and physical competence. As our data show,embodied identity involves body-based perceptions, interactions and expe-riences within hierarchal landscapes of masculinity and gender relationsmore broadly. While certain occupational cultures cultivate the idea of body-based identity, we problematize assumptions that men who identify as ‘stock-brokers, bishops or dons’ (Morgan, 2002, p. 407), for example, are somehowless embodied.

Locating the men in our study within hierarchal landscapes of mascu-linity and gender relations requires us to take account of differences ofoccupational status, age and also social class. Bourdieu (1984), for example,describes the body as ‘the most indisputable materialization of class taste’.Yet if class constitutes a marker of identity, it needs to be recognized as oneamong a plurality of centres generated by the dislocations of modernsociety (Laclau, 1990). This perspective echoes Connell’s (2005) view ofgender as the outcome of social practices occurring in particular situationsand social relationships.

In addition, consumption features as another key arena for the construc-tion of social identities (Horne and Fleming, 2000; Miles, 1998, p. 2; Miller,1987; Mort, 1996), a practice concerned with the marking and creating ofsimilarities and differences. In consuming ‘lifestyles’, individuals locatethemselves in relation to other people, so making statements about the self.Yet while goods, leisure and services enable the pursuit of status, any narra-tion of identity is dependent upon an individual’s competent use of culturalforms and goods, with attached symbolic, cultural and social value (Chaney,1996, pp. 5, 16, 93).

Patterns of consumption and lifestyle emulation can, of course, be playedout through career choices, so constituting key elements of a man’s identity.Whitehead’s (2002) heroic male project is helpful here: while estate agencycarries associations of cool rationality, acumen, judgement and the manipu-lation of others, hairdressing is a skilled manual job associated with creativityand aesthetics. Firefighting holds the most traditional class-based connota-tions, representing one of the few occupations that celebrates the masculinephysical skills formerly associated with manual labour and hard, aggressive,physical proletarian masculinity (Baigent, 2001). Thus, firefighters’ heroicphysical work has traditionally enabled them to distance themselves fromwomen and other men employed in feminized office labour (Baigent, 2001, p.82), by drawing on positive images of hands-on, practical working classmasculinity (Cooper, 1995).



In negotiating the imaginaries associated with occupational cultures andthe narratives of masculinity they imply, men are located in working sphereswhere gendered relationships are often fraught. The local contextual under-standings of masculine and feminine skills and competencies in estate agency,hairdressing and firefighting can be the bases of claims to privileged mascu-line identities, but can also threaten these masculinities.

In hairdressing, for example, the emphasis on feminine care, nurturingand beautification, as well as the gay hairdresser stereotype, can be problem-atic for some individuals. However, being a straight man in a woman’s worldcan also confer special status, allowing access to a vital social life and poten-tial partners. The sales environment of estate agency enables men to draw onnotions of power, dynamism, persuasion and manipulation, but the industryis increasingly feminized (at least in less senior roles) as women’s apparently‘natural’ empathy and interest in property makes them increasingly valued inthis industry.

Among firefighters, teamwork is key and in the team, boisterous malesociability is valued and an individual’s performance is closely scrutinized.The gradual entry of women to the profession signals shifting understandingsof work that is appropriate for men and women and their natural capabilities.Some men associate this with an erosion of the brigade’s discipline, profes-sionalism and skill. The debate about women’s ability to carry out firefight-ing’s physical work is undercut with tensions around their potentiallydisruptive effect upon the complex hierarchies of male sociality that structurewatch life. For other men, working with competent female colleagues is apleasure.

In sum, distinct and contextual understandings of gendered competenciesand relationships pattern each occupational environment. Furthermore, wecan identify historical and class-based dimensions of particular occupationalcultures as they are manifested in markers of identity that men mightactively pursue when trying to ‘fit into the community and the social world’(Woodward, 1997a, p. 1) that constitute their occupational culture. This mightinclude the purchase of a particular suit, the cultivation of a particular fashion‘style’, or the demonstration of proficiency in ‘handling yourself’ in a close-knit team environment.

Who’s who?

Jenkins (2004) stresses that this question can only ever be answered contin-gently. For example, among his apparently ‘less-embodied’ groups of men,Morgan (2002) offers a category of ‘mirroring’ bodies. This apparently femi-nized body — linked with bodily consumption and commodification —suggests a passive experience of embodiment which might encompass men inservice industries such as hairdressing. Indeed hairdressers’ bodies are gazed



upon by clients and would-be clients and are a crucial resource for gettingjobs in trendy city centre salons, as well as attracting business by ‘looking thepart’.

Thus, clothes choice among most of the young and middle-aged city centresalon hairdressers in our study contributes to their sense of embodied iden-tity — in that men felt themselves being surveyed at work. However, this wasonly one part of the story. Dan,2 a gay stylist at Cameo Club (see above),described how successful male hairdressers achieve a hybrid identity whichis both macho and sensitive. He argued that straight men may thereforepresent as more gay than he himself might choose to appear. This appears toundo the gender order through destabilizing any simple straight/gay binary.In addition, the men in our study achieved the effective management of otherpeople’s bodies through the constant reinvention of their own youth-oriented, fashionable ‘looks’, particularly in up-market salons.

In our study’s neighbourhood salon, Raymonds (see above), ‘care’ is oftenemphasized above aesthetics. Raymond tended the hair and bodies of femaleclients in their seventies and eighties. This involved not only the feminizedwork of helping them into and around the salon and making endless cups ofcoffee, but also informal handy-man help in their homes. In undertaking theirodd jobs, Raymond achieved status in the local community.

Jack (48), a hairdresser at a trendy city salon near Cameo Club, deliberatelyplayed on the stereotype of the camp hairdresser, employing a flirtatious stylewith older female clients. He said these women think ‘they’re getting some-thing special when they have a man, for some reason’ and like ‘to get a bit offlattery from a man’. This view was echoed by the all-female team in his salon,who noted that some clients definitely preferred a man to do their hair.

In their separate interviews, both Jack and his colleague and friend,Gemma (41), reported that Jack became more attentive and serious (and lesscamp) with ‘young, skinny blondes’ whom he found attractive. It wouldseem that in the feminized environment of the salon, men like Jack mustposition themselves carefully. The camp stereotype can be appropriated aspart of the expectations of manhood in the profession, but individuals areaware of their performances, and the ambivalences surrounding them. Jackexplained that being perceived as gay because he was in hairdressing and hadblond hair had ‘perturbed’ him early in his career and he often went ‘theother way’ by acting ‘rough or macho’, as he put it.

He reported that he pretended to be a gas fitter on nights out and feigneda casual appearance. It would seem that one way of cultivating an unthreat-ening, nurturing relationship between straight male hairdressers and theirfemale clients is through an affectation of campness that allows men tonegotiate female sociality in an environment where women are often power-ful. In Jack’s case, playing with bodily, vocal and conversational stylesenabled him to achieve a special status in relationships with colleagues andclients and overturned expectations of masculinity, while simultaneously



asserting power, status and influence — even if such performances were notalways within his control. Gemma and another of Jack’s female colleaguesboth described him as ‘moody’: not only self-centred but also hilarious andgregarious. Jack, then, negotiated a special status as a man among womenthat did not compromise his sense of himself as a man among men. AsGemma noted:

I think, you know, because he’s not effeminate in any way at all, he loveswomen but the way he talks he’s like a woman in some ways, you knowlike, I don’t mean the way he speaks as in his voice, I mean he likes a goodgossip and a chat about everything and not a lot of men do that, they’re notvery open about, like my husband wouldn’t come in and tell me things thatJack does, well, he would, because he’s my husband, but he wouldn’t gointo work and tell his secretary these things, you know, but Jack does, hedoesn’t, there’s no barriers at all.

Estate agents might be seen as somehow less embodied than other men —relatively invisible when compared with the hairdresser mirrored around thesalon and exposed to passers-by through picture windows. Yet body man-agement is integral to appearing authoritative and securing clients’ trust asthey negotiate housing market uncertainties in a competitive field. By con-trast, firefighting appears a primarily physical job, embodying ideals of the‘last working class hero’ (Baigent, 2001) and ‘immaculate manhood’ (Cooper,1995). Yet as one firefighter said, tapping his temple, ‘it’s not enough beingmacho and all muscle, you have to have it up here’.

Commonsense and the ability to think clearly as part of a team in dan-gerous situations are valued above mere strength. Despite occasional,intensely physical life-or-death inter-dependencies, firefighting is lessgrounded in the stereotypically hard masculine body than popular repre-sentations suggest: with age and seniority other forms of cultural capitalbecome privileged.

The particularities of our participants’ situations therefore reveal not atransparent living out of stereotypes, but instead a complex environment ofsocial negotiation. If the feminization of hairdressing involves the clients’gaze on individuals’ style and appearance, for example, there are alsomore masculinized dimensions to their embodied identities. Individualmen move between performances of gender which reproduce, but also actto transform, hegemonic masculinity; to not only do but also undo genderin ways that serve their career aspirations. What Butler describes as ‘restric-tively normative conceptions of sexual and gender life’ (2004, p. 1) thusemerge as open to transformation. However, as she notes, such transfor-mations, or undoings are neither intrinsically negative nor positive. Whilstpotentiating critical distance and autonomy, they may simply allow sociallymediated survival.



Bodies we have

This discussion of the three occupational cultures introduces the ways inwhich the body, as something we have, might figure in the experience ofembodied identity. In other words, what we are examining is how represen-tations of particular kinds of male bodies play a part in who men think theyare. This returns us to Leder’s (1990) view of the body as the vehicle throughwhich we perceive our surroundings — something which itself disappearswhen our health is good. Our data show other contexts bringing men’s bodiesinto focus: for example, in reflecting on how to hold a client’s hair ready forthe next cut, on how to shake someone’s hand reassuringly or how to navigatethe walls of a smoke-filled room. Some circumstances do therefore bring thebody powerfully to the fore while others are indeed more ‘non-embodied’ inan experiential sense.

Our research among firefighters has revealed that the adrenaline buzz ofresponding to fire calls is central to the enjoyment of the job, and to a senseof oneself as a firefighter. Periodically, firefighters experience being at fires,where senses become overloaded with smoke and heat and where touch andhearing are vital for negotiating buildings. Job satisfaction comes from per-forming well as an individual and as a team, despite difficult circumstancesand physical extremes. Retired older men we spoke to report missing suchexperiences and watch wistfully if an engine passes, while men promoted tomanagement often resist further progression because they joined ‘to ride thewagons’. Conquering nervous responses is integral to job satisfaction. Morethan this, the mastery of fear and excitement stimulates men’s pride in them-selves and their work. These experiences are gendered in that notions of theheroic male project (Whitehead, 2002, pp. 118–19) contextualize them. Doingfirefighting enables the living out of a particular gendered occupational iden-tity and a broader gendered sense of self as physical, courageous, in controland capable.

That said, firefighting also brings reminders of the body’s fragility, of thetransience of embodied life, in the routine enactment of required tasks. Fire-fighting, as an older firefighter participant noted, is ‘a young man’s game’because young men perceive themselves as invincible. Age, however, makesmen aware that they share physical vulnerability with fire and accidentvictims, and some can develop a distaste for the sharp end of the job. Fur-thermore, our interviews with older men and their partners reveal that shift-work for an older man can be ‘knackering’ (as several men put it), as eachtour requires a longer recovery period. Indeed, firefighters come to embodythe routines of their shift pattern so deeply that one retired firefighter’s femalepartner reported that it took him three months to stop waking during thenight when his watch was on tour. Such data show that the materialities of thebody must be taken into account. Many younger men appear to imagine theiryouthful bodies contains endless potential — or, at least, this is how older



men remember their own younger self-perceptions. Once older, and havingendured the rigours of the job, the body’s unavoidable materiality impingesmore firmly on their sense of self and their ability to participate and performphysically as men, in the same way as before.

Being a watch member also involves participation in a variety of activitiesthat act to build team spirit and maintain fitness; for example, playing cards,volleyball or football. Waiting for the next fire call can be boring and frus-trating and games can be more about ‘letting off steam’ than fitness, anopportunity to wind one another up and provoke a response. The bodyfeatures strongly in this social sphere, where men become very familiar withone another in a bodily sense. Living together at the station for two nights atour, intimate knowledge of one another grows from bodily proximity onnight shifts and seeing colleagues in tense circumstances, physically drainedand exhausted. Referring back to our broader concern with links betweenmen’s work- and home-based identities, we find home and work elided in thefire station; men know which colleagues sleepwalk, snore, dream or talk intheir sleep. Personal physical idiosyncrasies become part of the group’s storeof knowledge and are central to the teasing that defines the group. Jokesabout physical appearance can signal acceptance, but also involve testing oneanother, the key being never to rise to taunts. These practices create the watchas ‘family’, as men describe it — a place where men come to belong andwhere their work-based identities emerge. It is in the domain of humour,teasing and testing that women’s entry into firefighting is viewed as prob-lematic, and where the homosocial environment is thrown into relief.

In addition, despite stereotypical associations with ‘the last working classheroes’ (Baigent, 2001) and ‘immaculate manhood’ (Cooper, 1995), men oftendescribe their distress when confronted with accident or fire victims. Thishighlights the complexity of men’s negotiation of an occupational identitywhere ‘getting the job done’ apparently overrides personal feelings. Whilefirefighting apparently requires the doing of traditional, working class mas-culinity, data relating to embodied emotionality reveal ways in which it can beundone.

For the estate agents in our study, however, class-based identities areevidenced more by patterns of consumption and signifiers of distinction,though these too are manifested in relation to the body. Many of these SouthYorkshire estate agents know and reflect upon their identities through con-trast with their families of birth. Thus, the theme of the self-made man recursin our data, with older men in particular reflecting on their achievements inclass terms. For some, making the transition from humble beginnings to anaffluent lifestyle through skill and hard work was a longstanding source ofpride. As they note, the distinction between physical labour and speech,thought and knowledge as means of earning a living is important to them.One young man compared himself to his father, who worked with his hands,while he himself was a ‘suit man’ who had the gift of the gab. Making this



transition is demanding, and an older estate agent man described his initialdiscomfort in an office environment with well-to-do clients when he hadgrown up on a council estate. He had modified his accent and was aware ofchanging his voice with different clients. In knowing themselves and reflect-ing on their life trajectories, therefore, these men continually measure them-selves against alternative styles of masculine performance.

Such forms of self-surveillance concern not just accent but other bodilypractices that are subtly implicated in encounters between estate agents, theirclients and their colleagues. In this competitive, individualized profession,constant striving to meet targets can be stressful. Paradoxically, estate agencycombines ideals of quality service with maximum profit — and the menlabour under their clients’ potentially negative preconceptions and are awareof being perceived as glib, untrustworthy salesmen. The success of the estateagent, therefore, depends on cultivating a prospective client’s trust. As ayoung estate agent just starting out on his career noted: ‘you are sellingyourself’.

For estate agent valuers, everyday work involves meeting many differentclients: families selling residential homes; landlords seeking investments anddevelopers requiring advice on projects. Data from our observational workshow how body management features in successful outcomes, yet this diver-sity of settings demands flexible practical mastery of winning bodily styles.For example, in meetings with investors and developers, men cultivate an‘impressive’ bodily performance, taking up space by crossing their legs abovethe knee or leaning back with their hands crossed behind their heads. Hand-shakes tend to be strong and eye contact sustained when persuading theinvestor that here is an agent ‘that people think they can do business with’. Inaddition, agents must look the part and valuers are invariably impeccablyturned out in suits and ties, markers of a class-based masculinity which isrooted in patterns of consumption and not production. Evidence of financialacumen can be flagged through possessions, dress and objects: many menwear designer cufflinks, shirts and scarves, and these choices are a focus forbodily self-awareness. One young estate agent we interviewed, new to theprofession, incurred debt by ostentatiously cladding himself in designer gear,evidencing the lifestyle he was aiming to sell prospective clients.

While moneyed investors and developers may represent a small section ofan agency’s client base, residential valuation appointments make up their‘bread and butter work’. Apparently mundane, these appointments involvelayers of emotional labour that again require bodywork. Since both client andagent are likely to assess one another’s motives and trustworthiness, theagent seeks control of this process from first entering the property. Valuationscan be tense, particularly when families or individuals have been forced tosell; ‘home’, with its connotations of family, generalized reciprocity and emo-tional warmth, contrasts starkly with market connotations of profit, imper-sonality and exact value. In the vendor’s home, valuers must show deference



while exuding professional confidence and selling themselves and theiragency. The management of bodies in space is important here: seated onvendors’ sofas, admiring their gardens/cats/kitchen extensions/dado rails,the agent ingratiates himself through conversational niceties, non-threateningbody language and considered advice.

One agent said, ‘you have to fit in ... be an actor’. The agent must somehowmorph into whomever he imagines the client expects; sympathetic, business-like, authoritative, gentle. Participant observation revealed one unusually talland impeccably dressed estate agent, visibly and awkwardly compressinghimself into someone less imposing, crammed onto the vendor’s sofa. Tea-drinking and lengthy domestic rituals can indeed undermine the professionalnature of the visit. Afterwards, agents may deplore the décor and questionclients’ honesty, revealing the fluidity of ‘front’ and ‘back’ stages (Goffman,1971[1959]) as the agent moves between appointments. The embodied effortof impression management is later apparent.

Many female interviewees described their estate agent partners behaving‘like children’ once back home — wrestling with their children and girl-friends, leaping round the house and doing ‘daft stuff’. Male participantsdetailed tearing off their suits once home, ‘a knee-jerk reaction’ that distancesthem from work roles and professional ‘fronts’. Whilst strategic body man-agement may become embodied and therefore invisible to the estate agent,data describing shifts between front- and back-stage behaviour throughoutthe day, that is then abandoned on returning home, reveal the bodilydemands that men undergo.

For estate agents, then, doing gender involves bodily practices which gen-erate a self identity as a man who ‘seeks to make his mark on and change theworld through his drive, energy, self-discipline, initiative’ (Whitehead, 2002,p. 122). These, nonetheless, include emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) onthe part of men managing not only clients’ potential upset but also their own.While men have been represented as relatively unemotional and incapable ofinter-subjective connection (see Williams, 2001), Hearn (1993) perceives themale-dominated workplace as emotionalized through the controlling of otherpeople’s emotions. Alternatively, occupations such as that of the estate agentcould be seen as increasingly feminized, evoking performances of masculin-ity that admit emotional expressiveness, just as public life now foregroundsthe tears of sportsmen or the raw anger of campaigners such as ‘Fathers 4Justice’. In terms of undoing gender, then, are these chosen forms of femini-zation, or as Boscagli (1992) argues, evidence of men’s distress as theirtraditional power comes under fire in a time of crisis?

Butler’s (2004) argument that individual bodily agency is conditional uponone’s place in a collective whole is helpful here. It undermines assumptionsthat the apparent feminization of a man’s emotions in specific occupationalcontexts is always either about a new way of managing a female clientin a hairdresser’s chair or generating profit by selling another house or



symptomatic of ‘new man’ tendencies towards revealing emotion. Our datashow that with a different client or house vendor, for some of these men, oreven the same man in different circumstances, emotional labour can repre-sent attempts to communicate, provide a service or listen to a client’s prob-lems. In addition, these emotional investments occur in gendered contextswhere power relations may allow emotions to be manipulated to their bestadvantage. Flam (2002) discusses Taylor’s (1998) account of how employeesmeet targets and earn income through both ‘sophisticated surface acting’ and‘deep acting for pragmatic purposes’. While the notion of ‘authentic’ emotionremains problematic, men’s emotional variability across contexts and moti-vations cannot simply be reduced to social constructions.

Hairdressers, like estate agents, need to inspire clients’ confidence in theservice they are selling — and appearance and bodily style are similarlyimportant. Having the capacity to transform both the bodies of clients and ofthemselves, hairdressers’ embodied existence might seem to confirm discur-sive notions of the body as a project with endless possibilities. However, in anindustry which privileges youth, pursuing the fleetingly fashionable lookmakes increasing bodily demands as men age, a reminder of the body’sultimate intractability and of the limitations of purely discursive conceptionsof the body. In each occupational culture, the body men aspire to divergesfrom the materialities of an embodied life where they grow old, overweight,unfit and are potentially injured. One of our hairdresser participants, a con-fident performer, said men of his age (he admitted to being around 50,refusing further detail) rarely remained on the shop floor. He stressed that heretained the energy to participate in hair shows, enjoying the excitement of hiswork, attracting many clients and training junior staff. Yet he also revealedanxiety about his appearance and uncertainty about what to wear whenclients expected someone younger. His choice of uniformly black clothingwas both a fashion statement and a disguise for his paunch. In his rented flat,an older landlady did his laundry, and his cooking was restricted to themicrowave. This additional evidence suggested a middle-aged man with thelifestyle of someone much younger, something he was ruefully aware of.

Another hairdresser participant in his late thirties demonstrated almosthyperactive energy and passion for his work, confirming his status throughstylish clothes and an expensive convertible motor car. The prospect of stillbeing self-employed and renting a chair in a salon when he was middle-agedmade his professional future feel precarious. Staying in the profession couldresult in a bleak future. And while bodily injury might seem to threaten onlyfirefighters, hairdressers’ bodywork involves repetitive actions and physicalstrains which can undermine functional health. One man’s wrists werescarred from operations after continual cutting had weakened his tendons —and chronic back problems arose from continually stooping over clients.Ageing and ill health thus emerge as aspects of men’s working lives whichbring embodiment powerfully into focus.



Conclusion

Our data have shown how men’s experiences of their bodies figure in theirembodied notions of who they are. To be a firefighter is to come alive with theadrenaline rush of longed-for fire calls and in their absence, young men inparticular experience frustration at not being the person, the man, that theywanted to be. In the salon and in the would-be seller’s private home, maleestate agents’ embodied sense of themselves as the purveyors of sought-afterskills and services can be challenged if ageing brings weight gain — or a tinyfront parlour renders the tall, authoritatively professional body cumbersomeand inappropriate. In addition, the data show how bodily appearance,whether as a focus for fire station banter, an aid to securing a client’s trust, ora fashionable look embodied, contributes to successful identification in theworkplace.

We began with Whitehead’s argument that ‘many men fail to achieve aseamless, constant, symbiotic relationship between their bodies and domi-nant discourses of masculinity’ yet still attempt to do so — and indeed theirmasculine subjectivity is invested in these attempts (2002, p. 191). This articlehas asked how those subjectivities emerge in a complex constellation whichincludes differences of not only gender and age, but also of class.

Class, as we argued, now reflects a plurality of centres, the result of thedislocations of modernity, in addition to the importance of consumption inmarking similarities and differences between men. Notions of the heroic maleproject (Whitehead, 2002, pp. 118–19), though helpful, require a nuancedperspective which takes account of men’s capacity to move between residualidentities such as the working class hero and the self-made man, someonedefined through suit, watch and car, rather than simply practical know-how.

In addition, the shifting gendered make up of particular occupations — aswomen become firefighters and estate agents and men become hairdressers— has implications for the nature of the relational identities of masculine andfeminine. To what extent do feminine practices of care and empathy amonghairdressers and estate agents represent a male appropriation of resourcesonce seen as particular to women? Or are we witnessing the feminization ofmany of men’s working practices across all three occupational cultures? Tosome extent our contrasting occupational cultures do represent ‘scenes ofconstraint’ (Butler, 2004), yet within them individual agency constantlymaterializes and our data show that gender is not only done but undone.

Stereotypes of the muscular firefighter, the glib estate agent and the glam-orous hairdresser do resonate with dominant discourses of masculinity thatmen in these occupations actively engage with. They constitute the body inrelation to which men’s embodied subjectivities are negotiated. Yet alongsideseeking the ‘seamless, symbiotic relationship’ which Whitehead describes(2002, p. 191), our data show men performing contradictory masculinities: thehome-handyman hairdresser; the older, yet clear-thinking firefighter and,



among estate agents, a continuing commitment to claiming a professionalidentity. These examples represent the ‘structures of practice’ which, asConnell points out, ‘respond to particular situations’ and are ‘generatedwithin definite structures of social relations’ (2005, p. 72). In this article wehave focused on their very different — and potentially unexpected — impli-cations for the materialities of men’s bodies — and individual men’s embod-ied sense of who they are. Gendered subjectivities, we argue, are generatedthrough men’s embodied engagement with prevailing body-based masculinestereotypes and sometimes highly local processes of inter-subjective negotia-tion and resistance.

Notes

1. Economic and Social Research Council-funded project, ‘A cross-generationalstudy of the making of heterosexual relationships’ (2001–2003) by Jenny Hockey,Victoria Robinson and Angela Meah.

2. To preserve the anonymity of interviewees the names of all individuals andbusinesses are fictitious.

References

Baigent, D. (2001) One More Last Working Class Hero: A Cultural Audit of the UK FireService. Published by fitting-in ltd, www.fitting-in.com.

Battersby, C. (1998) The Phenomenal Woman. Cambridge: Polity Press.Boscagli, M. (1992) ‘A moving story’: masculine tears and the humanity of televised

emotion. Discourse, 15,2, 64–79.Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction. London: Routledge.Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London:

Routledge.Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.Chaney, D. (1996) Lifestyles. London: Routledge.Connell, R.W. (2002) Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.Connell, R.W. (2005) Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.Cooper, R. (1995) The fireman: immaculate manhood. Journal of Popular Culture, 28,4,

139–70.Csordas, T. (2002) Body/Meaning/Healing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Davis, K. (2002) A dubious equality: men, women and cosmetic surgery. Body and

Society, 8,1, 49–65.Delphy, C. (1984) Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression. London:

Hutchinson.Donaldson, M. (1991) Time of our Lives: Labour and Love in the Working Class. Sydney:

Allen and Unwin.Flam, H. (2002) Corporate emotions and emotions in corporations. In Barbalet, J. (ed.)

Emotions and Sociology, pp. 90–112. Oxford: Blackwell.Goffman, E. (1971[1959]) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth:

Penguin.



http://www.fitting-in.com

Grogan, E. (1999) Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women andChildren. London: Routledge.

Grosz, E. (1994) Volatile Bodies; Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press.

Haywood, C. and Mac an Ghaill, M. (2003) Men and Masculinities. Buckingham: OpenUniversity Press.

Hearn, J. (1993) Emotive subjects: organizational men, organizational masculinitiesand the (de) construction of ‘emotions’. In Fineman, S. (ed.) Emotion in Organiza-tions, pp. 142–66. London: Sage.

Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley,CA: University of California Press.

Horne, J. and Fleming, S. (2000) Introduction. In Horne, J. and Fleming, S. (eds.)Masculinities: Leisure Cultures, Identities and Consumption, pp. v–viii. Brighton,Leisure Studies Association.

Jackson, S. and Scott, S. (eds) (2002) Gender. A Sociological Reader. London: Routledge.Jenkins, R. (2004) Identity. London: Routledge.Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso.Leder, D. (1990) The Absent Body. Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press.MacCormack, C. and Strathern, M. (1980) Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1961) The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul.Miles, S. (1998) Consumption as a Way of Life. London: Sage.Miller, D. (1987) Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell.Moi, T. (1999) What is a Woman?: and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Monaghan, L. (2005) Big handsome men, bears and others: virtual constructions of ‘fat

male embodiment’. Body and Society, 11,2, 81–111.Morgan, D. (2002) You too can have a body like mine. In Jackson, S. and Scott, S. (eds)

Gender. A Sociological Reader, pp. 406–22. London: Routledge.Mort, F. (1996) Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth

Century Britain. London: Routledge.Office for National Statistics (2004) Labour Force Survey. London: Office for National

Statistics.Taylor, S. (1998) Emotional labour and the new workplace. In Thompson, P. and

Warhurst, C. (eds) Workplaces of the Future, pp. 84–103. London: Macmillan.Watson, J. (2000) Male Bodies. Health, Culture and Identity. Buckingham: Open Univer-

sity Press.Whitehead, S.M. (2002) Men and Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity.Williams, S. (2001) Emotion and Social Theory. London: Sage.Woodward, K. (1997a) Introduction. In Woodward, K. (ed.) Identity and Difference, pp.

1–6. London: Sage.Woodward, K. (1997b) Concepts of identity and difference. In Woodward, K. (ed.)

Identity and Difference, pp. 7–62. London: Sage.Young, I.M. (2005) On Female Body Experience. ‘Throwing Like A Girl’ and Other Essays.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.



occupational cultures and the embodiment of masculinity: hairdressing, estate agency and...

Documents