GENDER & SOCIETY TEACHING MODULE

GENDER, WORK, & EMBODIMENT

Photo sourced from telanganatoday.com

Lesson Plan Authors: Sepideh Borzoo, University of Calgary

Chetna khandelwal, University of Calgary

Islam, Asiya. 2022. "Plastic Bodies: Women Workers and Emerging Body Rules in Service Work
in Urban India." Gender & Society 36(3): 422-444.

Summary
This article builds on interview narratives with young lower middle-class women service workers
in India to offer the idea of “body plasticity” as a prerequisite for women’s work in the service
industry. This “body plasticity” can be empowering and at the same time regulate these workers.
The author discuses corporal aesthetics labour such as makeup and body language, and refers to
it as malleability or plasticity of the body done by women working in cafes, shopping malls, and
call centers. They do this to fit the need of urban middle and upper-class consumption. The
author offers plasticity as a resistance to as well as openness to change and spotlights the ways
through which women negotiate body work and bodily aesthetic norms within the service
industry in urban India. Young lower middle-class women are in an in-between class considered
a cheap and docile labour force. These women do body labour of modifying their appearances as
a way to fit into the ideal image of middle-class service worker and create a professional identity
for themselves. The author illustrates how participating in the service economy has an enabling
effect of allowing women to challenge traditional respectability and change their surrounding
environment.

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Reason for selection

Given the importance of subtle body policing and regulation in workplace, it’s an interesting and
useful piece to introduce to students studying gender and work. Since this article focuses on the
embodied experience of workers in the female dominated and feminized service industry,
instructors might find it helpful to elaborate further on other types of gendered bodily work such
as aesthetic labour, body labour, as well as emotional labour that women employees take on in
interactive and non-interactive service work. To what extent do employees abide willingly by the
workplace body rules and to what extent criticize, challenge, and even resist them? Rather than
suggesting that the workers are without agency and malleable subjectivities, the paper highlights
the enabling as well as limiting effects of such labor.

Kamran, Sidra. 2021. "A Patchwork of Femininities: Working-Class Women’s Fluctuating

Gender Performances in a Pakistani Market." Gender & Society 35(6): 971-994.

Summary
Kamran’s (2021) study conceptualizes the complex ways in which working-class Pakistani women
at a gender-segregated market embody a self-constructed and agentic patchwork performance
consisting of multiple femininities in order to gain symbolic as well as economic capital. Kamran’s
(2021) data consists of 42 semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations of women
working at Meena Bazaar (a women-only market). The paper presents a tiered analysis of women
embodying a patchwork performance of femininity. Analysis at the organizational level revealed
that employers benefitted from encouraging stigmatized (or pariah) as well as idealized (or
hegemonic) femininities. Employees are trained to leverage both forms of femininity in
appropriate scenarios - i.e. loud pariah femininity needed to be embodied to attract customers
and build economic capital but gendered idealized discourses used to control existing employees
and recruit new ones. Simultaneously, on the individual or personal level, Kamran’s (2021)
analysis suggested that working-class women strived for performing hegemonic femininity to
secure their honor and gain symbolic capital. They also exerted agency on an individual level by
curating and embodying a patchwork performance of femininities that switched between pariah
and hegemonic modes when necessary, rather than creating a preset hybrid version of the two.
The author also comments upon working class women’s creation of patchwork femininities
strategies that help them embody respectable femininity during times that made access to
hegemonic femininity difficult.

Reason for selection

The development of a smooth transition between embodying pariah femininity and hegemonic
femininity isa strategic entry to the gendered labor performed by the women of Meena Bazaar
to gather symbolic as well as economic capital. While embodiment of certain pariah and
hegemonic femininities was mandated by employers, the workers exercised agency in their
unique ways of managing both. Their strategies could be unpacked in class discussions exploring
to what extent do the employees at Meena Bazaar employ contradictory femininities to resist

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loss of symbolic or economic capital? The article elaborates working-class women’s embodiment
of femininities in a women-only work environment, leaving space for instructors to supplement
this reading with research on the expression of femininities outside of gender-segregated
workplaces.

Suggested Readings
Barber, Kristen. 2016. "“Men Wanted” Heterosexual Aesthetic Labor in the Masculinization of
the Hair Salon." Gender & society 30(4): 618-642.

Kang, Miliann. 2003. "The managed hand: The commercialization of bodies and emotions in
Korean immigrant–owned nail salons." Gender & Society 17(6): 820-839.

Kay Hoang, Kimberly. 2010. "Economies of emotion, familiarity, fantasy, and desire: Emotional
labor in Ho Chi Minh City’s sex industry." Sexualities 13(2): 255-272.

Korkman, Zeynep Kurtulus. 2015. "Feeling labor: Commercial divination and commodified
intimacy in Turkey." Gender & Society 29(2): 195-218.

Misra, Joya, and Kyla Walters. 2022. Walking Mannequins: How Race and Gender Inequalities
Shape Retail Clothing Work. Univ of California Press.

Otis, Eileen M. 2016. "Bridgework: Globalization, gender, and service labor at a luxury
hotel." Gender & Society 30(6): 912-934.

Activities:

Option One
Rationale:
This exercise is designed to help students understand the components of service interactive job
and think critically about the reward system in our society.

Length:
30 mins

Instructions:
First students are asked to pick a service interactive job in a fast-paced working environment.
Depending on the size of the class, students can be divided up into groups.

Second, they are asked to identify a list of tasks that workers in these jobs need to perform. These
tasks should cover physical, emotional, and aesthetic labour. Students will debrief and
brainstorm in small groups to list the tasks in order of difficulty and/or importance for the job in
a ladder or pyramid. They will also write down an estimated time that employee will allocate to
each task during an eight-hour shift. This will be followed up with class discussion. The instructor

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will ask each group to discuss their focal service job with the different aspects of their tasks and
write them on the board. The instructor will lead the class in a critical discussion unpacking
student rationales for the order of difficulty or importance in which they placed the individual
tasks.

Third, they have $120 [number of hours worked a day (8 hrs) multiply by the hourly rate
(minimum of $15)] to distribute for each task that the employee complete. Students will debrief
in their small groups and report back. The instructor will ask each group to allocate a specific
amount to each task and add them to the task list on the board.

The instructor will then ask the class to note any differences in embodied and emotional aspects
of the service jobs outlined by different groups. Differences will be underlined on the board.

Fourth, students will share their reflection on the reward system in our society and its fairness in
small groups. This will be followed up with a class discussion.

Option Two
Rationale:
This activity aims at introducing different forms of control targeting embodied identities of
workers with a focus on the case of modeling career.

Length:
15-20 mins

Instruction:
After explaining notions such as aesthetic labour and display work, their similarities and
differences, students are asked to write down some forms of body control experienced by
models. Based on students' responses, the instructor will write down different forms of body
control on the board.

Then, students will be provided with different scenarios adopted from Saltzman’s report on
embodied experiences of models in fashion industry (2017, retrieved from Fashionsta.com) as
well as Safronova and colleagues’(2017) report in the New York Times. The anonymous quotes in
the report can create scenarios for students that illustrate gendered and embodied aspects of
the work.

Have students identify different types of body control, based on scenarios, from the least to the
most extreme form of body discipline on a spectrum. Once the students are finished, they would
discuss in a group why they put different types of body discipline in such order and if their order
needs to be modified. Students would discuss different forms of body control in the spectrum
and their consequences for the employee. Additionally, students will be encouraged to reflect

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upon the ways in which the forms of body control serve the employer’s capitalist goals despite
its racialised, patriarchal, gendered, ableist, or colonial implications.

Content advisory (to be issued before scenarios are presented to students) - Certain
disconcerting topics such as body dysmorphia, racial discrimination, ableism, and body shaming
are mentioned in the scenarios below. If you need to disengage from discussion or leave the class,
please feel free to do so. If you need to speak with someone afterwards, please note that the
instructor will be available.

Scenario #1:
The modeling experience, as someone who has first-hand encountered it all, and also as a black
woman with curly hair, isn't easy at all... Sometimes, because I have a walk that exudes attitude
or because I represent the diversity the industry needs, that in itself gets me declined jobs and
should frankly be the opposite. —Anonymous

Scenario #2:
I was once shooting a lookbook where the stylist, helping me dress, used this chance to feel my
body up much more than necessary and continued to do so throughout the entire shoot.
Countless times have I had to undress in undesirable public situations, but even now I can
remember the disgusting feel of this man's hands tracing my body. —Anonymous

Scenario #3:
I started modeling when I was 13 years old. Since the beginning, I was always told that I have too
big hips and thighs and that I should lose weight. I was never fat. I just have a larger pelvis and
different bone structure from the other typical models. Since, I've always hated my body. I've
never had anorexia or bulimia but I was starving myself from time to time. I guess I've developed
body dysmorphia. I've realized this is a common problem which models have; I was chatting with
other models who seemed to be even skinnier than me and they thought about themselves [as]
how fat they were. —Anonymous

Scenario #4:
I didn’t see anyone who had a visible disability in the mainstream media or in the entertainment
world, for that matter. And it was something that was really bothering me. There’s not a lot of
me out there. I have taken this role to open up the conversation of diversity and inclusion. My
disability is very, very visible. And people sometimes see that before they see me. Those same
facial expressions that I get from just taking the subway every morning, at a photo shoot it’s no
different. It’s the same facial expressions. —Anonymous

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Scenario #5:

I’ve had photographers say to me: “You’re so beautiful because you have such dark skin but you
have such Caucasian features.” What is that supposed to mean? I’m only attractive because I
have Eurocentric features? I’ve had people say to me: “You’re lucky because you kind of fit in
between this white and black skin color. It’s never been: “You need to lose, like, 20 pounds.” It’s
always been this struggle of five to seven pounds in this one little area. It’s so hard to maintain
that and you can so easily fall off of that. I’ve had instances where my agency has asked me to
take down pictures from Instagram because they don’t think it represents my best look. It’s one
thing when they ask you to change your body and you don’t feel good about your body. But when
you feel good about your body and then someone tells you that you shouldn’t, it’s a whole
different story. —Anonymous

References
REVEALING CONFESSIONS ABOUT THE MODELING INDUSTRY FROM THOSE WHO EXPERIENCE IT
FIRST-HAND. STEPHANIE SALTZMAN. MAR 29, 2017
https://fashionista.com/2017/03/model-fashion-problems-treatment-abuse-health

What It’s Truly Like to Be a Fashion Model. Valeriya Safronova, Joanna Nikas and Natalia V.
Osipova. Sept. 5, 2017.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/fashion/models-racism-sexual-harassment-body-
issues-new-york-fashion-week.html