Soft Selective Masculinity: The Case of Nail Artists in Saint Petersburg

Abstract

The article is written on the analysis of 15 semi-structured interviews with nail artists working in the city of Saint Petersburg. The beauty industry is identified as a “woman's” professional sphere according to symbolic and quantitative indicators. Care, provision of services and work on the creation of attractiveness are symbolically identified as the “woman’s” sphere in culture. Women outnumber men in professions of the beauty industry, and the clients are mostly women. The distinguishing characteristic of interaction between the nail artist and the woman client is that it includes emotional work and care in the situation of body contact. As opposed to the medical field, care is visible in the beauty industry because it deals with the client’s visual image; it can be controlled and evaluated by her. The purpose of the article is to describe the construction of masculinity by nail artists in the field of visible care of the woman clients’ bodies in the beauty industry. In the empirical part of the text, we identified and described the practices that nail artists follow within the framework of models of four structures indicated by Raewyn Connell; power relation, production relation, emotional relation and symbolic relation of the model. Men from the beauty industry which is identified as a “woman’s” sphere, produce hybrid masculinity which was named soft selective masculinity. Based on the research findings, nail artists provide emotional work towards their woman clients but not towards their colleagues. As working with woman clients, men provide three types of emotional work: controlling emotions, communication and attention. They create interaction with woman clients which is based on accessory masculinity, whereby, directly and indirectly, men benefit from the privileges of supremacy. Men opt for soft selective masculinity, if it doesn’t come into collision with their role of providers or becomes a condition for reaching it.