Making Beautiful

Male Workers in Beauty Parlors1

S. M. FAIZAN AHMED
Society for Social Research, Delhi

Many competing sociological debates intersect in the world of beauty parlors. There
is an increasing proliferation of male or gents parlorsa space where a new for-
mation of the male self is being produced and established through new cultures of care
and work. Because work has always been understood as central to the lives of men,
a major basis of their identity, it is often seen as being identified with masculinity.
Beauty and caring, on the other hand, are often viewed as something intrinsically
feminine. This article weeds out such notions by presenting life histories of men in
beauty work and argues that just as different work situations produce different mod-
els of masculinities, the same work situation also may prove an arena of a variety of
masculinities. The article also explores the possibilities and potentials of understand-
ing gender relations in South Asia that will prove helpful in making comparisons with
other masculinity studies.

Key words: barber; beauty; body; care; men; masculinity; work

This article is based on a central question posed in the classic work by

Paul Willis (1977)How do working-class boys get working-class jobs? In
this article, I seek to take forward the issue raised by Willis but shift the
focus of the question to ask, how do individual men get male jobs? I fur-
ther seek to expand the question to ask, if working-class men do not get
what are defined as male or masculine jobs, what choices do they make and
how do they address the question of being masculine while performing
work that is not male?
To address these questions, I chose to analyze the biographies of working-
class men who worked in an overtly feminized profession to track how they
entered this profession and what they made of it. I also hope to establish
that the assumption of a complete and segregated division of labor that
categorizes work as male or female differs across cultural contexts, even
within a single societal context like India. Through this article, I hope to
argue that other dividesprovincial town, urban metropolis, caste-class,
and so onare critical in framing the gender divisions of work. It is impor-
tant therefore to place gendered work and such employment practices
(Sharma and Black 2001) within the larger rubric of culture and political

Men and Masculinities, Vol. 9 No. 2, October 2006 168-185

DOI: 10.1177/1097184X06287763
2006 Sage Publications

168
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 169

economies of work and labor. This area has acted as a microcosm within
which to investigate wider sociological themes (Black 2002).
The research for this article was done among men who work in beauty par-
lors in two different placesmetropolitan Delhi and the provincial small town
of Munger, in the eastern state of Bihar. I use some working-class histories to
illustrate the ways in which men become part of a beauty culture. Individual
histories are useful in two kinds of ways. On one hand, they establish the kinds
of recurring patterns that occur within the broader field of employment. On the
other hand, they also enable us to get a view of how individuals make choices
within a particular set of material conditions and how these choices are strate-
gies in which individual autonomy, family needs, and gendered identities are
interwoven. Working for the sake of the family is a common thread that runs
throughout all the narratives in one telling or another so that work and gender
combine to give us a sense of how masculinity and work become the crucibles
through which masculinity is established and affirmed within a profession
defined as feminized within the gendered division of labor (Ateeq and Singh
1999; Singh 2001). The beauty parlors where the research was conducted are
part of urban landscapes and range from parlors located in five-star hotels, to
those that are part of a chain often linked with the cosmetics industry (Lakme
or LOreal beauty parlors are examples of these), to others that are part of res-
idential neighborhoods. At each level, beauty parlors cater to different classes
of clients. Although most beauty parlors are oriented to women, there is an
increasing trend of male (or gents) parlors. These male parlors are a devel-
opment from the street barber, to the barbershop, to the gents parlor, which
caters to a clearly male clientele.
What is distinctive about the male beauty parlors that are the focus of
this article is the way they straddle the crossroads between street cultures
of body care, of which the street-corner barber is the archetype, and femi-
nine cultures of beauty and body care that are performed by beauty techni-
cians or beauticians. These parlors combine the techniques, services, and
architecture of female parlors with the social aspects of body care that are
distinctively masculine. The combination and the differences will be
explored through this analysis to suggest that a new formation of the male
self is being produced through new cultures of care. Caring for the body
and the production of a new beautiful masculinity are a joint endeavor of
client and worker who share a particular view of the male body and the pre-
sentation of the masculine self.
In this article, however, I concentrate primarily on the workers in male
parlors to trace their individual and collective histories as workers. The
analysis is therefore framed within the debates and issues of how mas-
culinity and male identity are produced and established through work. The
choice of beauty parlors provides a critical space to question the assump-
tions of the links between maleness, masculine identity, and work given the
overtly feminized nature of beauty work. The identity of body care as a
170 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

feminine preoccupation and therefore a feminine occupation, within the

popular classifications of work, positions the male workers in an ambiva-
lent position vis--vis other workers, as well as in relation to their own
masculinity (Morgan 1994; Williams 1995).
The second delimitation is the choice of the kinds of parlors (and there-
fore the kinds of workers) chosen for analysis. The parlors were not those that
catered to the top rungs of the class hierarchy; nor were street barbers
included in the sample. Instead, parlors that were part of middle-class or
slightly lower middle-class localities were chosen for analysis. These are the
parlors where the circulation of global images of masculinity intersects with
the local images, knowledges, and access to consumer products that circulate
within the culture of the beauty business. The intersection of material condi-
tions in the local landscape and the seductive offerings of the global lan-
guages of body care and images are particularly interesting to explore
because they enable a view of a contemporary construction of masculinity.
The beauty parlor is also a space where a number of competing discourses
and practices of the body intersect (Mauss 1973).
The interviews with the workers were conducted both in Urdu and in
Hindi. Wherever necessary, quotations have been used (with translations) to
suggest the context and the ambience of the interview.

FIELDWORK AND METHOD

The study was conducted over a period of six months in metropolitan

Delhi and the small town of Munger. Structured questionnaires and infor-
mal interviews were used, the latter being conducted over many days with
the same people or within the same parlors. Repeated visits as a researcher
as well as in the role of customer enabled me to engage with the beauty par-
lor men and understand the nuances of their lives.
Because beauty parlors (both gents and ladies parlors) are part of public
spaces like markets, they are more open and easily accessible. Although I was
met with several refusals as well as some unexpected obscene responses, by
and large, beauty parlor workers were easy to talk to and interested in the work
I was doing. Because their job is to deal with all kinds of people (clients,
employersand me, as a researcher) and provide services to a whole range of
customers, they cannot afford to be silent. They talk with a certain sense of
humor, which reaches out and is inclusive of both client and anthropologist.
For me, therefore, entry into the field was not very difficult. I needed to ensure
that I did not get in their way when they were engaged with their customers,
and I also needed to be responsive and attentive to their temperaments.
Because I knew very little about this field when I began the research,
I had no real ideas about what I might encounter. I would step into the par-
lors and introduce myself as a researcher. Most of the men were happy to be
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 171

interviewed because, as they said, no one had ever bothered to talk to them
before. I had to keep pace with their work, their language, and their gestures
during the interview. I also took great care not to be a hindrance to them
while they were working, though what they did, and how they did it, was of
great interest to me. Whenever a client came in, the interview would stop. At
such moments, although I did not ask questions, my fieldwork continued as
I observed the work practices in the parlor and the relations between work-
ers and clients. Very few interviews thus went smoothly at one go. Mostly,
it took several visits and breaks to conduct an interview. But it is these
breaks that also gave me an insight into the nature of beauty work.
All of my interactions and interviews were conducted at the workplace
the beauty parlors. Thus, there was always a possibility that some workers
might not speak about employer-employee relations or their relations with
other workers. However, even these constraints did not stop them from speak-
ing their minds frankly after a point of time. They spoke at length, and
although some questions puzzled them or they dismissed them, after a while
they would come back to the question and seriously answer it.
The questions about masculinity and what they thought being a man
meant were only asked when a sense of camaraderie had been established
between the workers and me. Detailed probing also became easier as time
passed and they saw me hang around their parlor and talk to other workers.
In every beauty parlor, the junior employees were initially not very forth-
coming, but they were always inquisitive about the interviews that I had con-
ducted with the older men or with the employer/owner. They seemed to think
that the older workers were more experienced and more equipped to
answer questions. It was only later that many of them came forward thinking
that now it was their turn. Further, long and rigorous working hours made
it impossible to talk to them in a group, and no group discussions were held
or recorded.

JOINING THE PROFESSION: CASTE, WORK,

AND MASCULINITY IN A SMALL TOWN

In Munger, a small town of Bihar, all the workers in this profession belong
to a single castethe traditional caste of barbers, or nai. The barbers call
themselves Thakurs, and have their own associationthe Thakur Samaj
that addresses the concerns of its members. The Thakur Samaj set up the rules
for all beauty parlor workers. It is they who decide the working hours and the
holidays for all beauty parlor workers. Nevertheless, the Samaj is a restricted
association because it does not take up the issues and concerns of barbers or
beauty parlor workers who do not belong to their caste group.
The principles of caste and occupation intertwine to create a particular
kind of identity, which is both ascriptive in caste terms and achieved through
172 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

work. For workers, however, the caste identity is primary and their worker
identity is encompassed within caste. Despite this, however, it is quite clear
from the workers statements that individual members of the Thakur caste
are free to choose and pursue any career that they want. They are not
restricted by their caste in choosing a field of work. Nevertheless, there is a
form of legitimacy to beauty parlor work that includes and goes beyond the
traditional work of the barber. The primary work of traditional barbers or the
nai is to shave and cut hair. Within the idioms of purity and pollution that
govern caste ideologies (Srinivas 1953/2003; Dumont 1970/1980), cutting
hair and shaving are viewed as ritually impure work, and those who perform
this work are ranked as polluted in social caste hierarchies. The flip side
of this is that the shaved head and cleansed or shaved face are viewed as rit-
ually purified in the regimes of body care practices. Thus, cutting hair has
ritual, cultural connotations that go beyond truncated notions of beauty
care that are identified with modern beauty parlors. Traditional barbers
were also ritual specialists who performed a range of ritual services in their
patrons homes on specific occasions that went beyond the specificity of work
implicit in the term barber. For example, the barber took away the umbilical
cord after the birth of a child and shaved the childs head in the ritual of
mundan (the first hair cut). It is also the barber who acted as a messenger or
go-between during marriage negotiations. In contemporary society, many of
these services are no longer sought or provided by barbers.
The shift toward modern or contemporary beauty treatments and beauty
work in provincial Munger is relatively recent and can be tracked over a
period of approximately fifteen years. During this period, globally pro-
duced styles and images have started intersecting with local consciousness
of masculine body care and male beauty.
Like barbers, men who work in the beauty parlors of Munger enter the
profession through their kin networks. Entry is enabled partly because all
the workers are from traditional barber families. A worker does not need to
look around for a suitable place for training or working. Instead, careers in
beauty begin with working alongside a close relative. Further, joining a
beauty parlor is not met with resistance from the family because it is an
extension of a caste occupation and identity. Thus, in terms of individual
working histories, there was no case in Munger where the worker had actu-
ally run away from home or needed to do some special training to learn
beauty work. This is quite different from the processes and life trajectories
of the beauty parlor men in places like Delhi. The latter fall into the pattern
of migrant narratives, where shifting and uncertain employment mark indi-
vidual work histories.
Bhuwaneshwar Thakur is a young, twenty-three-year-old married man. He
can sign his name but is otherwise illiterate. At the time of the interview, he
was working in a salon at the Bazaar Chowk (the market center) of Munger.
He started working in a beauty parlor that belonged to his jija (sisters
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 173

husband) ten or fifteen years ago. His jija brought him into this profession
when his father died. Once he learned the work, he moved out of Munger alto-
gether and joined a beauty parlor called Shamim Hair Cuts in the small town
in Panipat in the north Indian state of Haryana. He also worked in the Gol
Market (the circular market, and a commercial center) in Delhi at Komal
Hairdressing. In addition to beauty parlor work, he sustained himself by work-
ing as a manual laborer in Rashtrapati Bhawan, the estate of the President of
India. However, he finally left Delhi and returned to Munger because in Delhi
he stayed in a squatter settlement that was destroyed by the municipality.
Bhuweneshwar says,

Yeh kaam maine majburi ke karan kiya hai. Bachpan mein mere pitaji ka
death ho gaya tha to jijaji hame yahan laye, u soche ki padha bhi denge aur
kaam bhi sikha denge. Lekin do kaam to ek samay main nahin ho sakta hai.
Humko issi kaam main ruchi lag gaya aur dekhte dekhte hum seekh liye iss
kaam ko. [I learned this work out of compulsion. My father died when I was
a child and my sisters husband brought me here. He thought that he would
educate me and make me learn this work as well. But two things cant hap-
pen at the same time. I became interested in this work and by watching
closely, noticing everything, and observing, learned it over time.]

He narrates how his jija helped him in his time of crisis. He considered
Bhuwaneshwar as his own and kept him and raised him. He learned the work
of traditional barberingshaving and haircuttingfrom his jija, and picked
up the other beauty-related work on his own during his travels outside
Munger.
A similar case is that of Shree Krishna Prasad Thakur, a man of fifty
years, who has been in the profession for at least forty years. His jija, Paras
Babu, also gave him the necessary formal training, and he worked for his
jija at Paras Beauty Parlour. As he says,

Unke yahan hum sirf kaam karte the. Lekin sara dimag to ham apne se hi
lagaye ki hum kaisa kare. Kaise hum in logon se upar uth kar ya thoda alag hat
kar kaam kiya ja sake. U log to purane hi tareeke se kaam karte the. [I learned
the work first with my sisters husband. But my mind was my own. As
I watched the men work, I used to think that the style of working was an old or
traditional style. I wanted to rise above or step back a bit from this old style.]

Throughout his narrative, I found that he held a strong sense of a self-made

man. He did not want to subscribe to the old pattern of ritual body work and
started experimenting with the different hairstyles by looking at pictures
and posters. That is how he became popular in the locality. He says, Likhta
to sab hai, lekin hand writing kissi kissi ka sunder hota hai. (Everyone
writes; only a few have beautiful handwriting.)
When he established his own beauty parlor, he set some rules for his own
workers. He does not allow anyone to give a body massage with hands; he
174 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

insists on the use of a machine for massage. He has defined the limits of his
own work through a distancing from the traditional styles and forms of work
of the nai or barbers through prohibiting the use of traditional working prac-
tices on one hand, as well as requiring the use of machines on the other,
simultaneously negating one form of body care and affirming a contempo-
rary one. This negation and affirmation is continued in the narratives of his
son Rakesh Kumar, who also joined this profession about eight years ago.
But as he says, they have turned the shop from a barbershop to a beauty par-
lor and have modernized their work. The negation of the conventional caste-
based pattern of work and the modernization of work as profession is
evident in the term beauty parlor that occurs repeatedly in his narration to
denote a modern work space, replacing the earlier term nai ki dukan (bar-
bershop) and symbolizing the transformation of a caste occupation to a mod-
ern profession of beauty care. Rakesh further insists, Main kabhi bhi nai
ki haisiyat se kaam nahin karna chahata hoon, balki ek beautician ke roop
main karna chahata hoon. (I will never work as a barber but rather as a
beautician.) The use of the word haisiyat in this context is interesting. The
word suggests both a status as well as a state of being, the guise in which a
person appearsin this case as a beautician, not a nai. The use of words like
beauty parlor are a signal of the deliberate distancing from the status of a
polluted caste to a modern profession divested of the connotations of pollu-
tion, dirt, and inequality inherent in the caste term and caste occupation.
When I interviewed Anil Kumar, Rakeshs cousin, there was an absence
of an urge toward modernity. He had a different story of joining the pro-
fession. Although Anils father joined this work initially, he left it to work
at a cinema hall where he still works, because it paid better. Anil says,

Hum ek din ghoomte ghoomte aye the mausaji ke dukaan par to dekhe bahut
bhir tha. Aur hamko sirf daarhi banana aata tha. To mausaji hamko bhira diye,
uske baad kaam karte karte seekh gaye baal kaatna bhi. Uske baad sab kaam
yaheen seekh gaye. [Once, I wandered into my mausajismothers sisters
husbandshop. The shop was really crowded. Because I was hanging
around and the shop was busy, my uncle gave me work to do, though I only
knew the work of shaving. After a while, I learned to give haircuts. I learned
the rest of the work over a period of time.]

From his narrative, it appears that he was not sure of a career. It just hap-
pened to him one day without any plan or definite direction. He accepted
his uncles proposal and continued with the work given to him without any
sign of resistance either from his family or indeed from himself. His
cousins were small and his uncle proposed that Anil join up with him. He
needed his own man to work with him.
Anils story demonstrates that kin networks are active in introducing
young men into the profession. Elder relatives play a crucial role in produc-
ing the beauty parlor worker, sometimes going to the extent of deciding what
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 175

a younger man is going to be in his life. The hegemonic elder man is an

active presence in processing the life and work of his younger male kin. At
the same time, it is also interesting to note that the menyoung and older
were not agnates but related through the women (sisters and mothers sisters).
The male-male bond of support was looped out in the case of the beauty
parlor men, through the women of their families, perhaps attesting to the fact
of the feminine nature of beauty care. But this looping out toward the women
also allows us to speculate that when a traditional caste occupation innovates
through new or different pathways, it needs a bridge to cross the waters of
modernity. The transformation from nai to beautician, from street corner to
beauty parlor, from hajjam to beauty care requires a series of transforma-
tions and learning practices to accomplish modernity.

JOINING THE PROFESSION: BEAUTY WORK AND

LIVELIHOOD IN A MODERN METROPOLIS

Delhi was another location where beauty parlor men were interviewed. If
the case histories of Munger demonstrate the reproduction of caste occupa-
tions (even if they are oriented toward contemporary global styles), the case
histories of Delhi are distinct in the variations through which men came to be
part of this profession. Most workers (even those who belonged to the nai
caste) emphasized tragic circumstances in their lives that forced them to enter
the profession. The concept of sacrificing the body to labor is a common
trope in working-class lives, noted by other studies as well (Singh 2001). The
distinction seems to indicate a difference in the acceptance of this work in
Munger and Delhi, with the Delhi men elaborating the pressures of circum-
stance that led them to become beauty parlor men.
Thus, Kisha Sindoria, who works in a ladies beauty salon called Red Rose
in the bazaar-cum-residential neighborhood of Kamla Nagar in north Delhi,
said that he joined the profession because he was short of money. When he
was eight years old, he met with an accident in which he was burned and
could no longer continue his studies. He was left with no choice but to start
looking for a job. He learned of a vacancy at this beauty parlor from his
cousin, Mahavir Singh, who was not much older than he was but who was
already working in a beauty parlor. Being the eldest son of the family, Kisha
Sindoria took his cousins advice and joined the profession.
A similar example is that of Deep Chand, a seventy-three-year-old man,
who belongs to a village in Rohtak district of Haryana and owns two barber-
shops: one in the north campus of the University of Delhi outside the gate of
Gwyer Hall (a post-graduate mens dormitory), where he started his career,
and another in Kamla Nagar, called University Hair Dresser. He is a tradi-
tional barber in the real sense, which means he belonged to a traditional
barber family. He does not know any work apart from the traditional barber
176 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

work of haircutting and shaving because in his time, no one wanted facials
and dyes. Neither did he ever try to learn this work. This is a very recent
trend, he says.
Deep Chands father died when he was eight years old, and his tau
(fathers elder brother) taught him barbers work. Because he needed to
support his family, he began working as a barber when he was ten years old.

Everyone in the village supported me. There was a person called Lala Meo
Lal . . . my ancestors also used to shave the men of his family. He considered
me to be like a member of his own family. That Lala spurred me on to do this
work. He encouraged me to put my initial rough razor on his cheeks. He
hardly cared whether I was a novice or an expert.

About his career in Delhi, Deep Chand says,

Sir Maurice Gwyerthe vice chancellor of the universitygave me this

shop [outside Gwyer Hall] in 1950 when Professor Swarup Singh, who was
from my village and who taught at Hindu College of the university [and was
a subsequent vice chancellor of the university], brought me to Delhi.

Here we can see a whole range of support networks that enabled Deep
Chand to establish himself, which includes his uncle, the professor from his
village, and the vice chancellor of the university. Over the years, through a
combination of craft skill, activating ties, and support systems, he has cul-
tivated his symbolic capital of networks among his clients. His client list
now includes students, students parents, alumni, university employees, and
officers all the way up the network ladder to the union minister of human
resources, who was initially a faculty member of the university.
Deep Chand still actively nurtures these support systems. He continues
to go to the homes of ministers and officers or those whom he considers to
be at the top of the social hierarchy to give them haircuts and shaves. All
the people who want Deep Chand to come to their homes, in the traditional
style of the nai (who would traditionally visit the homes of his patrons to
provide service), now acknowledge Deep Chands worth and standing by
sending him at least a three-wheeler auto rickshaw, or some vehicle, to
bring him to their homes and receive his service. The ambience around him,
which he has himself nurtured, almost gives the sense of a court barber
Shahi Hajjam. He has thus maintained and translated his village and caste
cultural practices, adapting them to a metropolitan context, with the addi-
tion of hair dryers and hair sprays.
On the other hand, Jagga Singh of Naaz Beauty Parlour and Mohammed
Iqbal of Modern Hairdresser accepted this profession as part of their fate.
Their respective fathers were barbers, and the boys just continued in the
same line of work. Jagga in fact inherited not only the shop but also his
fathers customers, some of whom have been coming to Naaz for more than
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 177

thirty years. Mohammed Iqbal, who migrated to Delhi with nothing more
than skill in his pocket, needed to build up a clientele. Both run their salons
in the Kamla Nagar bazaar area. At any given moment, customers walk in
off the street to get sandalwood facials, a cream massage, or a haircut in the
latest style displayed in movie posters. Their clients vary across all age
groups, and sometimes girls who want short and spiffy haircuts come in as
well. The parlors are equipped with up-to-date body care appliances and
stand testimony to the transition into a new culture of body care that Jagga
Singh and Mohammed Iqbal have made.
Mushtaque Ahmed tried to learn to be a mechanic like his father, without
much success. Nor did he do well at school. Feeling like a failure, he ran
away from home to Bombay, where he literally picked up his profession on
the footpath. Another footpath migrant introduced him to the owner of the
parlor where he worked. As Mushtaque says, Owner ne kaha, tum acche
ladke ho. Tum yeh kaam seekh lo. Bas unhon ne hi paise dekar mujhe course
karvaya. (The beauty parlor owner said to me, youre a nice chap, why dont
you do this work? He provided me with the money to do a course in beauty
work.) Among all the respondents, Mushtaque is the only one who has actu-
ally done a formal course. All the rest received some form of training on the
job, either from fathers or their Ustaadsmasters in the profession.
Unlike women beauticians of middle-rung parlors in middle-class neigh-
borhoods, who are often more formally trained and go through courses with
diplomas and certificates that are displayed on the parlor walls, male work-
ers literally pick up their skill on the job, hanging around watching others,
lending a hand and so on. Their training program, as it were, is marked
by informality and depends greatly on personal relationships and networks.
But Mushtaque paid a price for the help he received:

Arre bhaiya, hamari kya puccho, hamne to bartan manjeh hain, safaiyaan ki
hai, chai banai, atta gundha, janne kya kya kiya, farshon ki safaiyaan bhi kar-
wain . . . ladies center ki safai karo, gents center ki safai karo, sabkuch kiya
humne, kapre bhi dhoye. Kyonki mere pas paise nahin the aur kaam shikna
zaroori tha . . . Is kaam ko sikhne me sab apni sewa lete hain, khidmat kar-
waten hain. [Oh, brother! Dont ask me, Ive washed utensils, cleaned, made
tea, kneaded dough, and what not. They even asked me to clean floors . . .
clean ladies centers, and gents centers. Ive done everything, even washed
clothes. Because I had no money and I had to learn this work . . . in this trade
everyone extracts his pound of flesh, expecting service from a new recruit
like me.]

Those, like Mushtaque, who have not followed the family way and
whose work trajectory is therefore unorthodox, often do unspecified, unpaid
work as well as learning the beauty work on the job. Apprenticeship often
entails domestic work as a run up to beauty work, further crafting the link
between the feminine orientation of beauty work that mimes the diffuse and
unspecific nature of domestic and female work. Like female labor, a great
178 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

part of the work these men do is not recognized as work (except by them),
and in Mushtaques resigned resentment, there is an acknowledgement that
this was a due he had to pay to get paid work.
Not all men who work in beauty parlors feel as pessimistic or abject as
Mushtaque. Waseem Shaikh, who works with Mohammed Iqbal in Modern
Hairdressers, is a young, twenty-five-year-old man with an upbeat attitude
and an interesting story. Waseem joined this profession because of a friend
who he adored. He calls him Akbar Bhai. He says,

Akbar was like my brother. He taught me this work. He had a small shop,
Victoria. He was the first one who taught me this work. I loved watching
him while he worked. . . . Face bhi unka achcha tha, health bhi achchi thi.
Bas mujhe yeh hi lagta tha ke main bhi aise hi lagoonga iss kaam ko karke.
Main point yehi hai iss kaam ko sikhne ka. [He had a nice face, his health2
was good. I just used to feel that if I did this work Id also look like him. Main
point to learn this work is this.]

Like Mushtaque, Waseems family belongs neither to the occupation of

barbers nor to the profession of beauticians. His desire to become a beauti-
cian was met with a great deal of resistance from his family. He says, I am
a good shoemaker, like my father, and I still do some shoemaking. But his
real shauk, or desire, was to be able to look in the mirror. Joote banane
main shisha nazar nahin aata hai. (In the shoemaking business, there is no
mirror.) Captivated by the Akbar Bhais beauty, Waseem defied his family.
Looking good became the key trope in Waseems narrative on how he
became a beauty parlor man. He presents his story of the career choosing
him, not him choosing his career. Appearance is something that runs
through his discourse of himself and his career path. He talked about how
the charm of a good face brings in the customer. Waseems biography
counters the assumptions of the reproduction of laboring lives (Willis
1977), which position working-class kids as people with few options and a
truncated sense of agency. Waseems choice was expressive of his desire
and a highly self-conscious sense.

RITUALS OF BEAUTY WORK

Waseems narration highlights the importance of appearance and good

looks in the lives of men. The work of beauty care is therefore an important
location in which appearance is realized through a series of techniques,
skills, styles, and products. The achievement of appearance is a joint
endeavor between beauty parlor worker and client. This jointness of enter-
prise transforms the routine nature of beauty work into something that
resembles a ritual performance.
The focus of this section is the way the work of beauty is done. It is
important to recognize that although beauty work is not routinized or
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 179

monotonous like factory work, it is not anarchic. There are specific ways of
doing things, and workers perform different kinds of beauty work through-
out the day instead of one task. Intrinsic to this work is the organization of
the working day, in which time and space intersect to produce a distinctive
practice of working vis--vis not working. Because the workday in the par-
lor is not organized by the clock but around the availability of the customer,
on time and off time have very different dynamics within the workspace of
the beauty parlor. So whereas there are times when the worker takes off
time from work, these are in fact snatched moments in between working
and remain largely unspecified.
In this section, I outline the relationship between work and styles of
leisure within the space of the parlor. Leisure activities are conditioned by
various factors associated with the way people work. In particular, leisure
is related to the amount of autonomy workers have at work, the freedom to
make decisions and organize their work, the degree of involvement they
have in their work, and their level of intrinsic job satisfaction. During the
course of the workday, the workers create and construct their own styles of
leisure. It is these aspects (the organization of time, the question of satis-
faction or alienation, etc.) that place the beauty parlor within the world of
work. Despite the fact that it is the care of the self that constitutes the work
of beauty, the parlors are, and need to be, understood as located primarily
within the informal sector of the economy.
Part of the analysis will also outline worker choices and strategies. It is
not necessary that workers like all the tasks that they need to perform as
part of beauty and body care. Each worker has his own taste of work and
of customers. Thus, they adopt or develop strategies for escape or for dis-
tancing themselves from unwanted work and difficult customers. Waseem,
for example, who is extremely fastidious, says,

I dont enjoy dirty people who come to the parlor without bathing or wash-
ing their faces. I dont feel like doing work for them. At times I dont enter-
tain them at all. When I see such people coming in, I just leave the place. I
come here after having a bath, and if my customer comes in dirty then I dont
like it. At times, you get customers coming in whose hair and face or body is
full of dirt or dust; then I ask them to push off.

Others, like Bhuwaneshwar, left the beauty parlor twice because of the mis-
behavior of some customers. Although this may be detrimental to the worker
in the long run, it is a strategy of resistance of the weak to withdraw alto-
gether and leave the customer (and perhaps the owner-employer) in the lurch.
In all beauty parlors, the workday extends between nine and fifteen
hours a day. The workers have one off day in the workweek, which is
mandatory in both Delhi and Munger. The off day is determined by the
market location (Kamla Nagar market in Delhi, for example, shuts on
Monday, as do most of the beauty parlors located there), or as in Munger,
180 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

the day off is a decision made by the Thakur Samaj, which works like a
trade union to enforce rules of work on all the parlors.
During the course of the workday, workers do not have any fixed time
for a break. They take time out for themselves whenever they have no cus-
tomers. But this time out does not mean that they can leave the premises of
the parlor. Thus, they create a small space for themselves within the parlor
which could be a bench, a set of small chairs arranged in a group, the door-
way of the parlor, or even around the cash counter. Off time for each worker
depends on the availability of customers.
Although customers are primary, each worker devises ways and strategies
to counter the power of the customer over his time. These strategies are built
into the performance of work itself. Thus, whereas certain tasks require con-
centration, there are others that allow a workers eyes and mind to wander.
Haircutting, for example, gives no leeway for such wandering. Mohammad
Iqbal finds the cutting of hair of children the most difficult work because
children have to be literally held, which becomes quite tiring. He also hates
doing hard shaves, as he calls them, which require a great deal of concen-
tration. Hard hair, he says, troubles both him and his customer. Because so
much of the work of body care depends on getting work done properly to the
satisfaction of both customer and worker, if either of them is troubled or the
treatment is painful (as with hard shaves), the work cannot proceed prop-
erly. Beauty parlor work means satisfaction for both sides. Waseem echoes
this assessment. Tight shaves, as he refers to them, mean that he has to
change many blades, and even then the customers complain. That pisses me
off and I dont enjoy that work. Similarly, many workers find mehndi or
putting henna in the hair messy work because it spoils their clothes and they
get less money for it.
But this does not mean that the workers are uncaring in their work or of
their customers. Even though Iqbal finds childrens haircuts the most diffi-
cult, he and others take a great deal of care when they do this work. They are
always conscious of how they hold the scissors or the razor, and alert, in case
the child scratches his head or makes any sudden movements and injures
himself in any way. It is a form of responsible caring for the child customer,
where the work is not merely work but care, and the customers are not merely
body parts that need attention. Similarly, when applying bleach,3 workers
are extremely careful when preparing the bleach mixture. As Bhuwaneshwar
of Munger warns, too much ammonia in the bleach mixture can burn a cus-
tomers skin, so mixture banane main thoda sa care karna parta hai (one has
to take care when making the mixture).
Workers learn to recognize and interpret the gestures of satisfaction, read-
ing the body language of their customers without the need for words. During
head massages, for instance, if a customer squeezes his eyes tight shut and
there is a final loosening of the shoulders, these signals are read by the worker
as a feeling of gratification by the customer. The signs are interpreted through
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 181

the hands of the worker, who throughout the period of giving a massage often
lets his eyes wander to watch the overhead television, or chats with his
coworkers. Only his hands are on the job, so to speak, alert to the signals
emanating from the clients body. A slight shift of the shoulders or a slump-
ing away from the ministering hands will bring the worker back to full alert.
He might then change the rhythm of the massage or start the closing aspects
of the massage by gently rubbing the eyeballs and the forehead, signaling
through his hands, the end of a session. The final end is signaled by the
removal of the towel that is placed around the customers chest and shoulders
at the start of the session.
Care, work, and leisure are intertwined in the performance of work, and
every task allows the possible expressions of each. Some tasks require full
attention; other work allows the possibility for the worker to be partially
working and partially off. As in the massage described above, it is the
workers hands that are literally on duty, but the massage also allows him
to disengage with his eyes and his attention from the work at hand through
small talk he conducts with coworkers, or by watching television over the
customers head.

JANWAR SE INSAAN BANANA: MAKING

HUMAN FROM THE WILD

Beauty parlor men express their own sense of self-worth and have artic-
ulated a whole discourse around their work and their sense of male self.
Because this is a profession associated within the culture of caste with body
pollution of hair removal, nail cutting, and the excesses or debris of the
body, in caste and occupational ranking systems, the barber is ranked low
in the social hierarchy. This is further compounded by the association of
beauty work with a feminine orientation. Caste and feminine orientation
combine to create a particular form of social invisibility of beauty parlor
workers. Beauty parlor workers, however, do not accept the devaluation of
their work or themselves through their work.
Self-worth is deeply connected to respect. Respect is a theme that in one
way or another runs through all life stories. At one level, having respect is
articulated in a fairly stereotypical way, in terms of men who have respect
because they are honest, hardworking providers and breadwinners. But given
the caste and gender dimensions of this work, the language in which the ideas
of respect and self-worth are stated is both moving and extremely revealing.
Deep Chand, for example, talks about man as intrinsically dhula dhulaya,
purified and cleansed. Taken with the fact that Deep Chand belongs in the
caste hierarchy to the polluted caste of nai or barber, his comment on the
intrinsic purity of man tells a deeper tale. It is a way he has of confronting
and critiquing the hierarchies of caste rather than passively accepting the
182 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

hegemonic version of the structure of segregating pollution and those who are
polluted in caste ideology. He does not accept that purity is confined to higher
castes and instead locates purity as a potential available to all men. He talks
of becoming vegetarian as a way of cleansing and purifying his body and in
the process becoming the dhula dhulaya (literally, washed; a cleansed and
purified person) that he thinks is the mark of a man of respect. Working
within the hegemonic, he nevertheless finds a space and subverts the lan-
guage of purity to critique and comment on the hegemony of segregation.
At the same time, he adds his own twist to the telling. He talks about how
men have no need for dyes and facials, they dont need to show off, unlike
women who need these treatments to hide reality. It is his way of com-
menting on the contemporary business of beauty, with its various treatments
(like hair dye and facial masks) that hide or exaggerate reality. He insists that
beauty treatments are temporary and no one can remove wrinkles. It is only
women who need the appurtenances of these temporary treatments. In some
respects, he echoes a commonly held view of beauty workers as noted by
other studies (Black and Sharma 2001). Men, he claims, only need true char-
acter. His version of having respect is tied in with the language produced
through his work. Kam roti khana achcha hai, lekin kaam izzat nahin, he
says. (Its better to have less food in your belly than to have less respect.)
Although he is disparaging about beauty treatments, it is not as though he has
no notion of body care. His notion of the cleansed body draws simultaneously
from caste idioms, food purification, and body treatments.
Krishna Prasad Thakur is equally articulate about the need for dignity
and respect, though he is much more up front about equating respect and
conduct with mardangi, or masculinity. It is only when men know how to
conduct themselves that they maintain their masculinity. Besides, says
Krishna Prasad, good conduct builds trust, and trust is good for business.
Dignity, trust, and business together constitute a complex around which the
notions of the male self are founded. He stresses the value of working with
his hands and working hard. Hesitation and inhibition (sankoch aur jhijhak)
in the face of hard work make a man less manly, turning him into a woman.
Hesitation is shameful, whereas confidence is valued. In both accounts, it
is the control of the self that is primary, not the control of, or over, the other.
The question of dignity and appearance is also voiced in some of the
accounts. Rakesh Kumar, while agreeing that men have more karya
kushaltaworking capacitiesalso declares that being attractive or having
a good-looking appearance is extremely powerful. He envies women, who
he claims have this power. Saala, hum bhi kabhi kabhi sochte hai ki ladki
hote to kitna badiya hota. Hum bhi abhi das log ko nacha rahe hote! (Boy!
I sometimes wish I were a girl. If I were, right now Id be making ten people
dance to my tune). Waseem, of Modern Hairdressers, doesnt envy women,
though appearance is important to him as well. A good face and charm are
good for business, he says, and bring in customers.
 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 183

One of the points that many of the beauty parlor men made and were
adamant about was that they hated to be addressed by the term nai, the caste
name for barbers. They see it as a derogatory term that people use as an
abuse or an insult. Waseem feels like he has been slapped on the face if people
called him nai. He feels that the term seeks to reduce his status and the dig-
nity of his work, and through that, his dignity. Waseem and Bhuwaneshwar
both insisted that there were many terms that they thought were respectful
and dignified, unlike nai, which they all thought was derogatory. When asked,
they came up with a whole host of termshair cutter, beautician, hair dresser,
stylist, and salmani (a respectful way of addressing the community of
Muslim barbers)that carried connotations of a professional, skilled person
and were divested of the associations of low birth.
On being called nai, the men retort with irony and throw the insult back
at the abuser. Iqbal of Modern Hairdresser says he responds by saying,

Humari wajah se aaj tum insaan ban gaye ho, hum nahin hote to tum jaanwar
hote. Aur phir, hamaare samne bade bandon ko sar jhukana parta hai. [Its
because of us barbers that you are human. If we werent here, you would
remain animals. After all, before us, even big men bow their heads.]

The irony and the use of elaborate metaphorical language turn the insult
upside down. It is a way of capturing back the sense of worth and values
that the beauty parlor men accord to themselves, by refusing to buy into the
degradation in which the insult positions them.
Throughout the fieldwork, many stories centered on the ways in which
the individuals found support from their male kin or friends, or sometimes
even their employers. For all of them, learning to care for the body with the
skill of their hands was a way they had of caring for and creating a vision
of male beauty, which they thought valuable. It was a way in which they
made culture from nature, jaanwar se insaanfrom animal to human.
At the same time, beauty work was also a way of earning a living as
much as it was a way of being. None of them was seeking to move out
of the profession, though not many of them wanted their children to con-
tinue with it. Beauty parlor work was something they did to survive and
sustain themselves and their families, which they considered the primary
work of men.

CONCLUSION

Despite its existence in the informal and often invisible sectors of the
economy, beauty work and beauty care is made visible on the bodies of
clients who receive this care. The worker behind the beautified body, how-
ever, remains virtually invisible except in the way that he marks and shapes
the client body. In focusing on the workers, I have attempted to foreground
184 MEN AND MASCULINITIES / October 2006

a particular perspective on the world that the workers have as well as their
take on masculinity, a view and a perspective that finds little place in the
literature on modern beauty regimes or in the analysis of working-class
lives. It does seem to me that the questions of effeminacy, invisibility, resis-
tance, and autonomy are brought to the surface through an examination of
the lives of beauty parlor workers. These questions and these lives need to
find a place in the analysis of gender identities and masculinity studies in
ways that perhaps have so far not been addressed. This article attempts an
initial step in this direction.

NOTES
1. The research for this article was conducted under the University of DelhiUNIFEM
Project From Violence to Supportive Practice: Family, Gender and Masculinities in India. An
earlier version of this article, Living on the Razors Edge, was published in Psychological
Foundations: The Journal 14, no. 2 (2002): 105-110. I extend my deepest thanks to my teacher
and supervisor Dr. Radhika Chopra, who made this research possible. I am also indebted to
Dr. Deepak Mehta for giving me a nod for unexpressed and less articulate ideas. I express my
thanks to all my respondents who took time out from their hectic schedules to help me work on
this research.
2. In India, the term health is often used as a euphemism to refer to the state of the visual
look of the body. Healthy means well formed and filled out; the opposite term, describing a
body that is thin or spare, is down, or health down ho gayehis health (body) has gone down
(become skinny).
3. The term bleach is used by the beauty parlor workers for a specific kind of beauty treat-
ment: whitening or lightening the face and neck.

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 Ahmed / MALE JOBS 185

S. M. Faizan Ahmed was born in the Monghyr district of Bihar in 1979. He received his
Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in 1999 from the Department of Sociology, Aligarh Muslim
University, Aligarh. In 2001, he completed his Master of Arts in sociology from the
Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi with a spe-
cialization in sociology of science, gender studies, South-West Asia, and urban sociology.
Since then, he has been actively contributing to academic research on several issues. His
previous work includes research on construction of identity and the process of mobiliza-
tion in Aligarh Muslim University, partition violence in the Indian subcontinent, mas-
culinities in India, ethnography of cinema halls in Delhi, the students movement in
Aligarh Muslim University, and dialogue(s) with Islam(s) in Europe. He is president of
the Society for Social Research, Delhi.