Learning a critical gaze: producing gendered bodies in skin and spa therapy education and training

Abstract

This study scrutinises the production of bodies in skin and spa therapy education and training. More specifically, it focuses on how bodies are produced when participants are positioned and position themselves in classroom interaction and interviews. Drawing on a post-structural approach, inspired by Butler, regularities of description and self-description were analysed. This approach provided analytical tools for analysing how people engage with discourse in this micro-context of education and training, and enabled an understanding of how these processes are gendered. The results show how these educational arrangements enact a process where the students learn to adapt a critical gaze towards bodies, wherein they position themselves as self-aware and responsible through femininity. These self-governing processes produce particular relations to the bodies of others, disciplining others through disciplining oneself. Bodies are produced as biological entities that are unruly and – if left without discipline and correction – imperfect. At the same time, the imperfect body is produced through and produces normativity, offering alternative ways of producing normative femininity, alongside naturalising skin and spa therapy consumption and activity.

Keywords:

• Body and society
• gender
• beauty industry
• learning
• post-structuralist feminist theory

Notes

1. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Vocational Education is responsible for all matters concerning Higher Vocational Education. They analyse labour market demands for a qualified workforce, decide which vocational programmes are to be provided as HVE and allocate public funding to education providers (www.myh.se).

2. Financial aid for studies refers to the various grants and loans for which one may be eligible when attending a university, adult secondary education programme (Komvux), national adult education programme, folk high school or upper secondary school.

3. There are a number of trade organisations connected to Swedish training in skin and spa therapy. The largest, SHR (www.shr.nu), operates on a national level, and is connected to the international CIDESCO (www.cidesco.com). Some schools are connected to the international ITEC (http://www.itecworld.co.uk) and others to the Scandinavian SFKM (http://www.sfkm.org).

4. Statistics Sweden is an administrative agency that provides statistics for decision-making, debate and research (http://www.scb.se/en_/About-us/).

5. There are seven schools in Sweden that in total offer 12 combined training programmes in skin and spa therapy.