Copyright by Vivian Deidre Rodríguez Rocha 2018

The Thesis Committee for Vivian Deidre Rodríguez Rocha Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:

Styling binds: U.S. Latina Women and Intimate Labor at a Beauty Salon in Austin, Texas

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Supervisor: Gloria González-López

Rebecca M. Torres

Styling binds: U.S. Latina Women and Intimate Labor at a Beauty Salon in Austin, Texas

by

Vivian Deidre Rodríguez Rocha

Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Dedication

A mis abuelas.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I’d like to thank my advisor, Gloria González-López, for her constant support and her kind words of advice, both intellectual and emotional, all through the course of my research. Gloria, you’ve been a true mentor and ally, I know that your insights and suggestions will continue to guide my research practice and values for years to come. To Rebecca Torres, thank you for your valuable insights regarding new directions for my research. To my parents, thank you for your support, which in more ways than I can count has allowed me to get to where I am. To Pavel, because I know you already know. And last, but not least, I’m forever grateful to the twelve Mexican and one Honduran immigrant women who shared their stories with me. I hope I’ve done right by all of you. Mil gracias.

v Abstract

Styling binds: U.S. Latina Women and Intimate Labor at a Beauty Salon in Austin, Texas

Vivian Deidre Rodríguez Rocha, MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2018

Supervisor: Gloria González-López

This thesis locates the significance of Pretty & Groomed, a Spanish-speaking hair salon in south Austin, in the lives of the immigrant community that has emerged around it. The lively salon owned by Sara, an immigrant woman from Mexico, is often used by clients and stylists for a variety of purposes that go beyond styling; clients network, offer goods and other services for sale, share common anxieties about life after migration, get personal and styling advice from the operators, find help in preparing special events such as bautizos and quinceañeras, or simply have a family outing. Through in-depth interviews with thirteen women, including clients, the stylists and the owner of the salon, I explore the role of Pretty & Groomed, as a transnational Latin American space, which contributes to the recreation of U.S. Spanish-speaking immigrant cultures. Focusing on stylists’ embodiment of their work, and clients’ salon- going practices, I use intimate labor theory to complicate narratives of salon-going through the lenses of race, gender and consumption. Ultimately, I position styling in the ethnic beauty parlor as a form of reproductive labor for this Spanish-speaking community vi of immigrants settled in south Austin, and I offer a view of the hair salon as a political and politicized site.

vii Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1 Relevance of the study ...... 6 Theoretical frameworks and literature review ...... 9 Incorporating gender in theories of migration ...... 9 Centering immigrant women’s reproductive labor ...... 11 Immigrant women’s entrepreneurship in transnational place-making 12 Methodology ...... 15 A ‘bolilla’ Mexican student in Austin: Some reflections on the subjectivity of the researcher...... 19

Chapter 1. Pretty & Groomed: a hair salon for the Spanish-speaking community25 I. The everyday making of a Spanish-speaking beauty parlor in South Austin ...... 27 II. Situated readings of Sara’s business ...... 34 “Everyone benefits, even though I’m at the forefront”: Sara’s approach to entrepreneurship ...... 34 “What I have is experience”: Skills and attentiveness for professional development ...... 37 III. Fostering a Spanish-speaking community ...... 42 “See you in two weeks!”: The appeal of a transnational Latin American space ...... 42 Sharing “dirty laundry” and good news: A community beyond professional lines ...... 44 Conclusions...... 48

Chapter 2. “Un trato personalizado”: Intimate attention and reproductive labor in the work of hair stylists ...... 51 I. Hairstyling in the continuum of intimate labor ...... 53 “You’re my client, I won’t judge you”: Building relationships of trust and intimate knowledge ...... 55 “I listen to what they need from me”: Offering care and nurturing attention ...... 57

viii “A soft hand”: Navigating touch and personal boundaries ...... 60 II. Professionalism in the work of Pretty & Groomed Stylists ...... 63 Assertive negotiation ...... 63 Skills and knowledge ...... 66 Taking money ...... 69 III. Mediating notions of modernity, beauty and race...... 71 Conclusions...... 76

Chapter 3. “I get the look I want”: immigrant women as clients in the Spanish- speaking beauty parlor ...... 81 I. Negotiating pleasure, hard work and social expectations through salon-going practices ...... 83 “Why not treat myself?”: Hard work, pleasure and reward ...... 83 “Una manita de gato”: Looking good for every occasion ...... 90 II. Complicating the need to look good: Gender, race and consumption ..... 95 Disciplining the gendered body ...... 96 Negotiating personal and social expectations ...... 97 Race, beauty and colorism in immigrant communities ...... 98 Consumption, social mobility and respectability ...... 101 III. Following a stylist “por cielo, mar y tierra”: Loyalty in exchange for quality ...... 104 Conclusions...... 107

Conclusion. Styling binds: Spanish-speaking immigrant women creating community at the beauty salon ...... 109 Surprises, challenges and new directions for research ...... 115 Going to the beauty parlor as a family outing ...... 115 Deconstructing Mexican-hegemony in Latina and Latino studies .... 117 Social media and migration ...... 119 The hair salon as a space for advocacy and outreach ...... 120 Contributions of the study ...... 121

ix Appendices ...... 124 Appendix A. Study participants ...... 124 Appendix B. Interview script...... 126 Appendix C. Oral consent scripts ...... 128 Script to request oral consent for participation in research ...... 128 Guion para solicitar consentimiento oral para participar en investigación ...... 131

References ...... 134

x Introduction

It was a typical day in the summer of 2017 at the beauty parlor after five in the afternoon. The place was packed full as usual and noise levels were high: a kid was crying on one end of the room, a blow-dryer and two hair trimming machines were on at once, the radio was blasting ranchera music loud enough to be heard above the machines. The stylists were talking with their clients and clients awaiting their turn were talking among themselves, or with the family members that had come along for the outing. A woman who seemed slightly disoriented walked in and sat on a chair next to the door. She looked out of place to me mostly because she was very clearly an American and this salon caters primarily to a Latin American, mainly Spanish-speaking, immigrant clientele. This was the first time I’d seen an American in the shop. Her skin was reddened by the sun, and although her auburn hair looked unkempt and oily she walked in looking lost rather than looking for a service. Most importantly, she lacked the characteristic “buenas tardes” salute that all clients give upon entering the salon. She sat for a while and then went across the room to the bathroom. When she came out of the bathroom she stopped by the entrance to the back room, pondered for a minute and then walked straight in. She removed her jacket, turned on the A/C and proceeded to lay down on the stretcher that is set there for depilatory procedures. None of the stylists took notice of this because they were all busy with clients. The woman fell instantly asleep and stayed there for a while. Eventually, one of the stylists went into the back room and found the woman asleep. She kindly woke her up and asked, in English, if she needed a haircut. The woman stood up and walked out of the room indifferently without an answer. She walked towards the door of the shop, stopped and took a look around. The room fell silent for a moment, all eyes on her. The stylist asked again, “are you okay? do you need a haircut?” 1 The woman answered something that none of us could understand. She stood there for a second awkwardly and then left. Everyone seemed slightly confused. By then it was clear that she was probably homeless and had come in looking for refuge, rather than a haircut. Some of the clients said they saw her walk in, some said they thought she was just going to use the bathroom. Then, the noises grew louder again, between the blow-dryers, the machines and the murmurs. There was some nervous laughter. The stylists looked to each other to understand what was going on. Sara, the owner of the salon, on the other hand was not concerned. She kept styling her client’s hair as she noted cheerfully, “Well, she was tired and she got to sleep for a little while: we’ve done our good deed for the day.” I open with this anecdote because, although exceptional, it highlights most of the issues around Latin American place-making, reproductive labor, ethnicity and race, that I will unpack along this thesis regarding the role of the ethnic beauty parlor for the Spanish-speaking immigrant communities in Austin, Texas. It was precisely Sara’s attitude towards her business as a warm and welcoming hub for the community —rather than an exclusive space, some high-end beauty parlors claim to be— that lead me to conduct my research at her shop. I did not set out to do my fieldwork on a beauty parlor from the start. Instead, I landed on this topic after a long and complicated process of trying to design my research in a way that would allow for my informants to remain anonymous. I first arrived at Sara’s beauty parlor thanks to a local Chicana activist and entrepreneur who kindly offered to show me places around town where I could recruit informants for my research. After I told her about my intentions to interview Latin American immigrant women, Sara immediately offered her salon as a place for me to connect with women and conduct the interviews. “You can use the back room to talk to them in private” she offered.

2 Upon consulting with my advisor, we decided that focusing my research on the beauty parlor made sense beyond recruitment matters. Noting that women are prone to open up about their personal lives with their stylists, my advisor suggested I’d based my research on the beauty parlor as a site with the potential to become a resource for its clientele through measures such as the ones implemented by advocacy programs like CUT IT OUT®, a Chicago-based initiative by the Professional Beauty Association (PBA) to train stylists to identify signs of domestic abuse and “safely refer clients (…) to local resources” (Professional Beauty Association n.d.). I later found out that, in fact, the

CUT IT OUT® initiative has not yet reached Austin hair salons, but by then the idea that the beauty parlor can be seen as a political and politicized space had become fixed in my mind and I decided to pursue this line of research further at Sara’s beauty parlor. My work inserts itself along the lines of current feminist research on gender and transnational migration which, following the pioneering efforts of migration scholar Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, recognizes that “[g]ender is one of the fundamental social relations anchoring and shaping immigration patterns” (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994: 3) and that “aime[s] to bring migrants’ subjectivities, political agency and personal voices to the forefront of analysis” (Silvey 2006: 27). I have made a purpose of centering women’s lived and embodied experiences for the development of situated understandings of both structural and intimate aspects of their lives. To this purpose, I collected life stories through the methodology described by French sociologist Daniel Bertaux (1991), which pays close attention to both the biographical details of the interlocutors and how these are articulated through the historical and social context that comes through in their narratives. But what are the elements that define the Spanish-speaking ethnic beauty parlor as a political site? And how are they expressed through quotidian and mundane gestures of Latin American immigrant women’s everyday life? Upon beginning my observations at 3 Sara’s hair salon these became my overarching empirical questions. Answering these questions requires the articulation of multiple theoretical frameworks. On one hand, we must look to theories of gender and migration, and in particular to the international demand from immigrant women’s labor in the global North to account for the particular ways in which the migratory process affects women and to understand how and why the women in my study came to find themselves in need of the particular services provided at the ethnic beauty parlor. On the other hand, we must account for the ways in which ideas of gender, race, ethnicity, class and Latin American cultures —mainly Spanish-speaking societies— in general shape the practices and aspirations of immigrant women after migration, and their expectations when attending the beauty parlor. The above are relevant conceptual frameworks underlying my research; I will expand on them further in the Literature Review section. I address my research questions by focusing on the three different elements that come into play in the making of the ethnic beauty parlor: first the shop and its physical location, then the stylists, and finally, the clients. In the first chapter I focus on the hair salon as both a physical, grounded space, and as a place constituted through lived and embodied practices of transnational place-making that transcend styling matters. Inspired by theories of transnational spaces (Boyce Davis 2013) and immigrant adaptation through entrepreneurship (Verdaguer 2009), I take note of the many uses that the salon serves in the lives of the people that inhabit and produce it. I focus particularly on Sara’s vision of her business as warm and welcoming for the Spanish-speaking community and her entrepreneurship as an endeavor for collective, rather than individual, benefit. In the second chapter I turn my attention to the stylists. Through one on one interviews and extended observations of their interactions, I center their opinions and perceptions about their work to develop a situated understanding of their professionalism. 4 Based on their embodied experiences with clients I use intimate labor theory (Boris and Parreñas 2010; Zelizer 2005) to position styling as a form of reproductive labor for the Spanish-speaking immigrants that go to this salon. Moving away from portrayals of styling at the ethnic beauty parlor as low-skill and feminized, I offer an analysis of styling as complex and multilayered labor that is also heavily gendered. The third and final chapter delves into clients’ motivations and expectations when attending the ethnic beauty parlor. I engage critical race theory around hegemonic notions of beauty in U.S. Spanish-speaking communities and Latin American countries

(Candelario 2000; González-López 2008), and immigrant women’s adaptation and consumption practices in migration (Silvey 2006; Faria 2013; Cornejo Villavicencio 2018) to explore how clients negotiate their salon-going practices vis à vis the expectations of their spouses, families, and immigrant communities at large, and what they are ultimately trying to communicate through their aesthetic choices. I look closely at how these choices and aspirations are shaped by complex racialized, classed, and gendered social forces.

In writing this thesis, I have aimed to honor and respect the voices, testimonies and lives of the immigrant women who kindly shared their stories with me. Spanish is my native language and I have personally translated all of the quotes I take from their interviews to reflect as best I can their meaning, using the original Spanish to capture both, linguistic meaning as well as cultural nuances, especially when translation falls short. I have changed all the names and kept descriptions of my interlocutors vague in order to protect their identities, but I’ve tried my best to portray them as inspiring and complex figures as revealed to me in the course of our conversations. I hope my work does right by them.

5 RELEVANCE OF THE STUDY

While studies about hair salons and beauty parlors are in no way abundant, these spaces have no doubt garnered the attention of western sociologist and anthropologists consistently since the 1970s. Sociologist Danielle Soulliere locates in that decade the “first attempts to describe hairstylists as a social group and to discuss interactions that occur in the hair salon” from an ethnographic perspective (1997: 43). Building on these traditional ethnographic approaches, nowadays feminist scholars the world around have successfully positioned the beauty parlor as relevant field of study where some of the most compelling aspects of gender, class, race, labor, well-being and sociality in general intersect, thus producing a sort of “microcosm within which to investigate wider sociological themes” (Black 2002: 3). Feminist engagements with the beauty parlor have been adamant about the role of the beauty industry in reinforcing unattainable beauty ideals that are particularly detrimental to women (Wolf 1992; Gimlin 1996). By carefully attending to clients’ and stylists’ experiences at the beauty parlor, however, feminist scholars have also shown that women engage with the salon critically, so that it becomes a site where monolithic and racialized notions of beauty are simultaneously buttressed and contested through women’s practices and choices (Black and Sharma 2001; Candelario 2000). The gendered aspects of normative beauty notwithstanding, the hair salon is also marked as a female and feminized space. This is particularly true for ethnic beauty parlors in diasporic communities in the United States where, as critical race scholar Ginetta Candelario notes, the costs of setting up shop are more affordable than other commercial or manufacturing ventures for “poorly capitalized or less-educated [immigrant] women” (2000:133). Additionally, because hairdressing in the domestic sphere is considered a woman’s work, women are socially positioned to be familiar with 6 hairstyling techniques and other services provided in the hair salon (Candelario 2000; Babou 2008). In that sense, the beauty parlor is particular in that it congregates mostly (though not exclusively) women working in a feminized labor such as hair-dressing, for the social reproduction and successful social insertion of other women. As sociologist Paula Black emphasizes, “the well-groomed woman is produced […] through the work of another woman who too is required to sell her bodily performance as part of the experience being consumed” (2002: 11). Thus, centering women’s labor and its role in social reproduction is critical for feminist analyses of the beauty parlor.

I position my research along the lines of feminist efforts to center women’s labor in the hair salon, and further, to reposition hair styling as complex, against traditional readings of styling as low-skill feminized labor (Eayrs 1993). In doing so, I build on the work of critical migration and postcolonial feminists who have strove to show the how emotional labor and relational work come directly into play at the hair salon, demanding of stylists that they master a wide variety of social skills beyond the technical skills required to perform their work (Sharma and Black 2001; Soulliere 1997; Jacobs-Huey

2003; Toerien and Kitzinger 2007). Looking particularly at the ethnic beauty parlor, Candelario has noted that its presence, much like with ethnic funeral homes, signals the penetration and actualization of an immigrant community in their receiving country (2000: 133). In my analysis I seek to complicate these ideas by introducing intimate labor theory to look at styling as an articulation of multiple kinds of reproductive labor that encompasses care labor, body work, relational work and emotional labor through affective and embodied processes that ultimately facilitate the reproduction of the Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrant community in their destination countries at large.

7 Interestingly, after conducting an extensive search for scholarship about Mexican hair salons in the United States, I was able to find only one article regarding this topic. A transnational collaboration between Mexico-based scholars Erika Montoya Zavala and Ofelia Woo Morales, with U.S.-based scholar Anna Ochoa O’Leary, the 2012 article focuses on Mexican immigrant women’s experiences in self-employment, tracing their pathways to becoming salon owners. Their main findings highlight Mexican women’s “strategies… for the creation of self-employment opportunities” and their reliance on ethnic support systems and immigrant networks to become self-employed (Montoya et al.

2012). However, the authors do not attend to actual interactions at the hair salon nor to the social and community impact of these businesses in the ways that I explore in this thesis. In that sense, my work follows in the steps of a recent wave of research focused on the beauty parlor as a political and politicized space that has become salient in the last decade. Through this lens, a sparse but riveting scholarship has emerged that opens up new and creative avenues to look at beauty parlors. From a geographic perspective, for example, Jennifer Fluri (2009) and Caroline Faria (2013) have shown how discourses of western modernity and anxieties about tradition come in contest at the hair salon in Afghanistan and South Sudan respectively, in a global context that links consumption and (western ideals of) beauty to progress and development. Ginetta Candelario’s (2000) work which I’ve cited above, reveals the Dominican beauty parlor in New York City as a vehicle for women to negotiate racial readings of themselves and construct their racial and ethnic identity through a twin process of reifying and contesting racialized notions of beauty. Importantly, the beauty parlor is not only a potential site for the dissemination and performance of (trans)national, racialized and gendered identity, but also a religious and classed one. As Erin Augis’ (2014) research on a Sounith hair salon in Senegal has 8 shown, stylists occupy a privileged position to impart religious and political messages to their clientele. Conversely, Cheikh Anta Babou (2008) has shown how Senegalese women who become hair-braiders in the diaspora can also mobilize their new employment to contests caste and traditional gender roles. These recent publications show that particular and situated analyses of the beauty parlor must center the subjectivity of the people around it, and the contexts in which the salon emerges, in order to better understand its role at a given time and place. Emulating these situated understandings, and building on the aforementioned scholarship, my thesis contributes to reveal how a seemingly mundane space like the ethnic hair salon is connected to wider transnational community building processes and is, in fact, a site in which the nation is prolonged through women’s reproductive labor. It also responds to the gap in scholarship regarding the role of female-owned ethnic businesses in the

Spanish-speaking, Latin American immigrant communities in the United States.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND LITERATURE REVIEW

Incorporating gender in theories of migration

Recent feminist perspectives in migration scholarship, especially in Geography, fall strongly within an approach that focuses on both, the subjectivity of the migrant person as well as the sociocultural, economic, and political contexts as mutually constituted (Yeoh and Ramdas 2014). Incorporating gender in theories of migration goes beyond simply considering women’s experiences and their economic contributions as a variable, but rather understanding their own motivations for migrating, and importantly, understanding the role of gender as an organizing principle in shaping such processes, including settlement and community formation (Pessar 1999; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994,

9 2000). Feminist scholarship on women and migration, for more than two decades, has addressed gendered aspects of migration, which have been overlooked in mainstream migration theories. Interestingly, mainstream scholarship on immigration in the social sciences eventually shifted their focus from the economic and political context to the very subjectivity of the migrating person (Massey 2015). Feminist approaches to gendered migration have attended to mobility on many scales, from the local to the transnational, as well as to the reciprocal relationship between these sites. Taking subjectivity as an axis of inquiry, these approaches have shown that, regardless of scale, mobility is in fact articulated through instantiations of the intimate: bodily needs, aspirations, reproduction and personal interpretations of necessity and survival are deeply entwined with global capitalism, international market economy, transnational flows of capital and people and so on (Sassen-Koob 1984; Hondagneu- Sotelo 1994; Salazar Parreñas 2001). Scholarship on gender and migration has also delved into the role of the state and social institutions in promoting and sustaining fixed gender roles transnationally, whether through outreach programs, employment programs, or more generally though state-wide agendas aligned with global capital, transnational kinship ties and national identity discourse (Silvey 2006; Goldring 2001). These observations suggest that gender roles are not static, but rather constantly negotiated by men and women during and after migration (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). Hence, one of the most salient contributions of feminist scholars has been the understanding that “mobility across borders is not necessarily empowering, while immobility is not inherently disempowering” (Yeoh and Ramdas 2014: 1198). Focusing both on the migration experiences of cisgender women and men around the globe has contributed to an understanding of the ways in which both,

10 femininity and masculinity are socially constructed. In the end, migration affects men and women differently but both processes are gendered all the same.

Centering immigrant women’s reproductive labor

The role of the demand for reproductive and gendered labor in shaping migratory flows from the periphery to the core, following the international division of labor in capitalism, has also been central to feminist studies of migration (Chang 2000; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003; Salazar Parreñas 2001; Sassen 1988). Findings on this topic have emphasized how the image of the migrant women worker is construed around colonial and racist tropes that dehumanize their needs, devalue reproductive labor, and makes women vulnerable to abuse and exploitation (Yeoh & Ramdas 2014; Silvey 2006). However, as Silvey (2006) has shown Third World women’s incorporation into the global labor market can simultaneously empower them in ways that include and surpass neoliberal narratives of development, i.e. both through increased consumption and economic empowerment and through the collateral dismantling of the nuclear family and reconfiguring gendered power dynamics inside their households, their communities at large, and the state. By noting that reproductive work at the global scale both profits from women’s oppression and opens new avenues for women to empower themselves, feminist scholars have sought to explore how women cope with and adjust to the contradictions of globalization that helps undo gender roles on one scale while reaffirming them on another. Microscales in migration –such as individuals and subjectivities– and macro scales –global capitalism, labor markets, etc.– are articulated through other “intermediary social structures” (Pessar 1999: 58) such as households, social networks, communities,

11 and nations. Thinking about households and social networks as intermediary structures can help us better understand the role of immigrant women’s entrepreneurship as a gateway for immigrant assimilation and the expansion of their communities locally.

Immigrant women’s entrepreneurship in transnational place-making

Migration theorists have identified immigrant entrepreneurship as a particular sign of immigrant’s incorporation to receiving nations (Light 1972; Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Traditional approaches to ethnic and enclave businesses describe them as businesses that are owned by a person who belongs to an ethnic or cultural minority (Auster and Aldrich 1984; Light and Bonacich 1988; Gilbertson 1995; Light and Gold 2000). The category of ethnic entrepreneurialism as developed by earlier theorists, however, had a culturally racist bias built-in. By looking at “cultural endowment of distinct groups to explain entrepreneurial activity” (Valdez 2011: 22) scholars reproduced stereotypical cultural descriptions to explain the entrepreneurial “orientation” of some ethnic groups as opposed to others. Recent scholarly work with an emphasis on feminist and intersectional approaches has questioned these assumptions and pushed to broaden the scope of ethnic entrepreneurialism studies beyond high venture businesses and highly masculinized trades (Le Espiritu 1997; Pessar and Mahler 2003; Mahler and Pessar 2006; Verdaguer 2009; Valdez 2011). Focusing on a wider range of ethnicities and on what is often (contestedly) described as “survival entrepreneurship” –day laborers, petty traders, domestics and informal businesses in general– (Verdaguer 2009), scholars have shown the rich diversity of entrepreneurial experiences between ethnic business owners and the profound differences that characterize business owners of the same ethnic or cultural

12 group depending on their race, class, and gender positions (Valenzuela 2000; Light and Gold 2000; Morawska 2004; Robles and Cordero-Guzmán 2007). While these perspectives have brought forth gendered analysis of ethnic entrepreneurship, they have focused solely on the different motivations and processes by which immigrant men and women become business owners (Valdez 2011). In the processes of setting up their businesses, immigrants mobilize their cultural, economic, and social capital at once. Their cultural background and expertise often lay at the heart of their enterprise, which in part explains why ethnic beauty parlors are often owned and operated by women (Candelario 2000). For them, social networks may become at once advisors, helping them navigate the local market, investors or creditors, especially for undocumented immigrants who often the participate in co-ethnic informal lending systems, and consumers (Verdaguer 2009; Valdez 2011). While decidedly not all ethnic businesses depend on co-ethnics as their clientele, a large amount of them do, particularly those operating at a smaller scale. Coincidentally, these small businesses may also supply the community with products, or in the case of the hair salon, styling traditions from the homeland that are hard to find outside the ethnic market. Despite this particular relationship between small ethnic businesses, their co- ethnic clientele, and immigrant’s social capital and ties (both cultural and physical) to the homeland, rarely has scholarship on ethnic entrepreneurship focused on the role that ethnic businesses and their owners play for their immigrant communities, especially for U.S. Spanish-speaking communities. For this analysis I want to suggest that rather than as a sign of unilateral incorporation to the receiving nation, ethnic businesses and their owners make space for transnationalism to be enacted and exercised. Indeed, as Delgado notes, “an ethnic business represents a barometer of the extent to which a community is willing to support ‘its own’,” and, importantly, to offer “nontraditional social services” to 13 its co-ethnics so that they can become further acclimated to life in their new settings (1997: 447). Scholarship on transnationalism takes into account “the strength and enduring quality of home ties and homeland oriented practices” (Goldring 2001: 506) in its understanding of the migratory experience. Catering to their own ethnic community and commoditizing culturally specific products that both capitalize on and reinforce home ties and practices means that ethnic businesses take on a special role in transnational ethnic place making within receiving countries. I read this process following Boyce Davies’ notion of ‘Caribbean diaspora spaces’, that is “those locations in which there are distinctly identified re-creations of Caribbean communities following migration” where the people, business communities, and emerging forms of entertainment “[contribute] to the re-creation of Caribbean culture in diaspora” (2013:1). After Davis, I understand ethnic businesses to take an active role in shaping their environment through the people that frequent it and the activities that take place in them, thus effectively transforming foreign places into distinct transnational ethnic spaces.

Because differences in entrepreneurial ventures between men and women reproduce the gendered division of labor (Verdaguer 2009: 117), thinking about immigrant women’s businesses should lead us to consider the role of their businesses not only in the production of ethnic spaces, but further, in the reproduction of the immigrant community and its ties to homeland. Along these lines, in this thesis I explore the role of Pretty & Groomed as a transnational Latin American space located in Austin, Texas, which contributes to the recreation of U.S. Spanish-speaking immigrant cultures and the strengthening of ties to the homeland, in this case in particular, Mexico, in the migration context.

14 Understanding how ethnic businesses produce transnational ethnic spaces, and more precisely inquiring about the role of women-owned businesses in sustaining immigrant communities through transnational place-making, pushes us to think about the impact of women’s entrepreneurship in more complex terms. Furthermore, understanding how these places come to be can help illuminate valuable practices that can be reproduced by other ethnic spaces to resist the increasing marginalization and exclusion of Spanish-speaking immigrant communities in the United States.

METHODOLOGY

Research for this project was conducted over the summer and fall of 2017 at

Pretty & Groomed1, a beauty parlor owned by a Mexican immigrant woman in south Austin. In discussing the upsides to diverse methodological approaches to conducting research with immigrant women, Victoria Lawson makes an eloquent case for combining methodologies like in-depth interviews with epistemology and context analysis to better respond to questions of intersectionality such as “examining the ways in which overlapping social relations of gender, class and ethnicity constrain or enhance the opportunities faced by migrants” (2000: 178). Heeding to this call, my methodological approach combines the collection of life stories with lengthy sessions of participant observation at the hair salon. Life stories, as proposed by Bertaux and Kohli focus on “life trajectories in social contexts in order to uncover the patterns of social relations and the special processes that shaped them” (1984: 215). This was especially important to me as I wanted to understand not only one particular moment in the lives of the women I interviewed but the larger role that ethnic beauty parlor played among the local immigrant communities.

15 The majority of the data was collected through semi-structured interviews and the rest was collected through field notes regarding my observations of everyday happenings at the salon. In the course of my fieldwork I interviewed thirteen women in total, all between the ages of 21 and 65 years of age approximately2 (Annex A). Nine of them were customers at Pretty & Groomed, three of them where stylists, and one of them was the salon owner who also works as a stylist full time. Including the stylists, twelve of the women I interviewed work or have worked in the service industry ever since arriving in the United States; either at restaurant kitchens and registers, waiting tables, housekeeping for private homes or hotels, or as self-employed entrepreneurs in catering and styling. Only two of them are currently unemployed but caring full time for their infant children. Eleven out of the thirteen women I interviewed had migrated from Mexico from the ages of 12 onward; one of them had migrated from Honduras, and one more was a first- generation American born to Mexican immigrant parents. Except for the woman from Honduras who had arrived less than a year before, all of the women I interviewed had been in the United States for several years, either permanently or on a come-and-go basis in the case of those whose residency or visa status allows them such a possibility. While I did not openly ask women about their migratory status, all of them referred to it at some point or another during our conversations, either speaking openly about it or indirectly pointing to it. The majority of the women I interviewed –seven in total– are undocumented; some of them entered the country illegally, enlisting the help of a middleman or “coyote” while others crossed the border with a tourist visa and eventually overstayed their permits. Additionally, one of the women I talked to came to the country undocumented, but once here she married a first-generation Mexican- American and gained legal citizenship through him. Three of the women I interviewed, importantly, the younger ones, have legal residency through their parents, who had come 16 to the United States in the early 1980s and benefited from the 1986 Amnesty. One of the stylists is an American citizen born to Mexican parents. And lastly, another stylist comes and goes often with a tourist visa, which, however, does not allows her to work. From these women, the one who had most recently arrived had been in the country for less than a year, but some of them have been in the United States for over 20 years. Eight of my informants were either married or in steady romantic relationships cohabiting with their partners; two of them had been previously married and then separated; four women, and significantly the two youngest and the two oldest ones, were single at the time of the interview. Out of the thirteen women, only two did not have any children, the remaining eleven had between one and four children, ranging from newborns to fully grown adults depending on the age of the informants and when they first became mothers. Except for one, all of the women I interviewed had received, at the very least, primary or elementary education. Six of them had at least some secondary education, and the other five had reached high school, although only three of them finished it. Additionally, three out of the four stylists had studied either cultura de belleza or beauty technician before migrating or alternately gone to the beauty school in the United States. The interviews were based on a very general script and encouraging the interviewee to elaborate at length on each of the questions with little intervention from the interviewer (Annex B). I chose this particular format as it allows for a significant amount of information to be retrieved regarding both the personal experiences of the participants as well as their contexts. Importantly, semi-structured interviews also allow for probing in case of ambiguity or unclear answers on the part of interlocutors (Hammer and Wildavsky 1990). To complement my empirical analysis, I took copious field notes and journaled after each visit to the hair salon to collect my observations, informal 17 conversations with clients and stylists, and overall reflections for the day. I was born and raised in Mexico City, and Spanish is my first language; my generous familiarity with both language as well as Mexican and other Spanish-speaking cultures were invaluable in this research project. Participants were recruited directly at the hair salon from among the female clientele who came looking to get long beauty procedures, including haircuts, hair color, perms, depilation, hair-dos and blow-outs, and make-up or make-up tryouts for special events. In the context of ever-escalating deportations during the Obama presidency

(Thompson and Cohen 2014) and blatant anti-immigration policies put forth by the current administration.3 I designed the research to protect the anonymity of my informants. With that in mind, the interviews had to take place right away, during women’s visit to the beauty parlor and with no follow-up required. This allowed for no personal identifiers of any kind will be collected at any time during the interview. Each interview took on average one and a half hours to complete. Oral consent for participating in the study and for recording was obtained before each of the interviews

(Annex C). All of the interviews were audio recorded; the participants could choose not to be recorded and still be interviewed, but this was never the case. Participants could also choose not to answer a given question or answer it off the record. They could also opt out of the interview at any time, in which case, the audio or notes collected thus far would be destroyed, however this was never necessary as none of my informants ever requested to stop the interview. All of the above was conducted in accordance with the Institutional Review Board’s requirements at the University of Texas at Austin, which approved this research project in the Spring of 2017. Each interview was then transcribed in detail, and I conducted a qualitative analysis of the resulting texts following a Grounded Theory approach through line-by- 18 line codification, looking for emerging reoccurrences, patterns, and possible themes to be discussed as findings (Charmaz 2006; Miles and Huberman 1994). While the number of interviews I conducted was not enough to achieve saturation due to the constraints of time and resources characteristic of a Masters-level thesis, I rely on my extended observations at the hair salon, informal conversations with clients and stylists beyond the context of the interviews, and extant literature about ethnic beauty parlors to supplement my empirical analysis. Although the vast majority of my informants are Mexican, and only one is Central

America, I use “Latin American immigrants” and related concepts to refer to my informants and their communities in this thesis. This does not mean, however, that I am generalizing my findings to other Spanish-speaking communities in the United States. I am also keenly aware of the diversity with regard to the complex migration histories and patterns for other women and men migrating from Caribbean, as well as Central and South American nations.

A ‘BOLILLA’ MEXICAN STUDENT IN AUSTIN: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE RESEARCHER

“Are there güeras in Mexico City for real?” remarked Ernesto incredulously after I told him that’s where I’m from. He said he would have guessed I’d be from Jalisco or Zacatecas, because, to his knowledge, those are states in Mexico known for having white- skinned Mexican-born people. Before I could answer, Doña Consuelo, the eldest of the stylists and a very assertive woman, retorted that of course there are güeras in Mexico City and everywhere else, because of mestizaje. With a hint of defensiveness that I interpreted as a vindication of the resilience of indigenous populations, Ernesto quickly responded that that is not the case, that there are places where there are absolutely no 19 güeros, no blonde or light-skinned people because “the Spaniards were never able to get there.” This brief dialogue is very emblematic of my personal experience conducting research at this particular hair salon, but it also reveals the larger and corrosive effects of conquest and colonialism in Latin American societies, and the profound racial and class divides between Latin American populations that persist to date. In Mexico, and for Mexican people in the diaspora as well, I am consistently described as a “güera.” Güera is a loaded word that is associated with white-skin —literally, piel blanca—, a wide array of light skin tones, as well as phenotypic traits that evoke European blood and ancestry, and thus, it is laden with racial and class privilege (González-López 2008; Belausteguigoitia 2009). Consequently, in the United States I’m am usually read as a white person —I “pass” as white—, a fact that seldom was I allowed to forget while doing my fieldwork. This became clear to me from the very first day I visited the hair salon. “I saw you and thought, argh… this “bolilla,” I’m going to have to speak to her in English” intimated Sara to me immediately after she learned that not only did I spoke

Spanish, but I was in fact Mexican. When a few weeks later, Ernesto, who couldn’t believe I was from Mexico City, again referred to me as a potential bolilla, intrigued, I asked what that meant. “Bolillos, like the bread” he explained, “we call gringos that because they are the color of bread.” “You know, both sides have a way of calling names to each other. They call us wetbacks, we call them gringos, bolillos. We call them gringos because of their eyes, you know, green.” In a way, being white passing at the salon meant that people initially felt a certain aversion toward me, like Sara, who loathed that she would have to speak to me in English. However, that aversion quickly fell away and gave way to what felt like a moment of closeness in which people went from seeing me as a bolilla, to seeing me as a 20 paisana, a co-ethnic, with whom to share an aversion towards true gringos. I can’t help but notice that, in this second moment, however, I went from being a potential gringa, to being an actual güera, with all the privileges and imbalances that persist within the colorist division between güeras and morenas from back home. As Sara noted once in the course of a conversation we were having with one of her clients about the imminent approval of SB4 and the arbitrary detentions it could trigger, “you [meaning me] have nothing to worry about, no one is ever going to stop you and ask for your papers.” This was, without a doubt, how my privilege was most starkly expressed in the context of this venue: despite being Mexican, speaking Spanish, and having one of the most common last names in the Spanish-speaking world, I would never be under the same scrutiny as the people I was interviewing, because I’m white-passing. There is, of course, more to being white passing than skin-tone, because in Mexico, class and race are deeply entwined. I grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Mexico City, I came to the United States to attend a top public university under a student visa, and I am completely fluent in both languages, three facts that, aside from my skin color and the rest of my phenotypic characteristics, set me apart from most other people at the beauty parlor. In more ways than I can count, every day I spent at Pretty & Groomed made me acutely aware of the privileged position I occupy and represent, especially in U.S. Spanish-speaking communities, and it is from that keen awareness that I attempt to enter into this research. I also want to note that my position was not uncontested by the people I met in the course of our quotidian conversations. One hot summer day Mexico’s soccer team was playing in a match with a European team during work hours at the salon and Sara declared there would be a carne asada during the match. Everyone was welcome to attend, clients, stylists, and me. Sara’s son prepared an extra spicy salsa for the feast and I 21 added a couple dollops to my tacos. After only one bite I got so enchilada —I had my mouth burning hot. My eyes were watering, my nose dripping, and I quickly became the laugh of the shop. As people mocked me, they were quick to question, “wasn’t I Mexican?” Even Miriam, the American-born stylist made fun of me: “te enchilaste?” she asked, was it too spicy? She then shook her head as she warmly patted my back and added with a nuanced tone in her voice: “güera…” Conversely, in other situations, the traits associated with güeras were positioned by both stylist and clients as desirable and beautiful. For instance, on one occasion when

Sara was trying hard to convince Rosa, a client of hers, not to get a blonde hair shade, she pointed out that they were both morenas and hence they could not get away with wearing light hair colors. To further explain her point, she used me as an example, noting that the color requested by Rosa would look natural on me –because of my blue eyes and pale skin–, whereas they, being morenas, “would have to wear make up every day.” Another day a young woman named Jacinta came into the shop distraught begging Sara to “please do whatever it takes but get this [dark] color off my hair.” When later Jacinta and I engaged in conversation she shared with me her aspirations to become a stylist herself. She noted that she loves getting her hair colored, but this practice has, in her words, “ruined [her] hair.” “I used to have it bien bonito, así clarito como tú” she said, “so pretty and light like yours.” Rejecting whiteness and white-phenotypes through derogatory monikers like bolillo and gringo, while simultaneously adhering to white-supremacists beauty standards in our aesthetic values and choices, is a deeply ingrained aspect of our Mexican cultural heritage (and in this I include myself as well as my informants). This tension is further informed by our experience as migrants, transplanted into a culture that reifies whiteness and positions morenas and morenos as attractive only to the extent that they are 22 exoticized and sexualized (Calafell 2001; González-López 2008). Upon arriving in the United States, I myself have found colorism and passing as white a hard thing to navigate. Here, I often get told by American people that “I don’t look Mexican,” a comment I still don’t know how to respond to because, while it is profoundly racist, it piercingly reveals to me the privilege I embody both here and back home. To paraphrase everyone who teased me at the salon: Am I truly Mexican if I am güera and I can’t tolerate real spicy salsa? Am I truly an immigrant if I don’t have to worry about getting stopped by an immigration official, for example?

Although these jokes were all in good fun, the truth is that there is a deeper racial politics to this dynamic where my belonging and ethnicity was questioned, and my privileged position was called out. Teasing me offers my interlocutors a way to symbolically call into question the structures upon which that privilege is built. I’m grateful to have had these constant reminders to keep a critical attitude towards my positionality going into this research. While it remains true that I could not renounce the privilege I embody —even if I tried—, there are several things I have tried to do to wield it mindfully. First, I have tried my best to conduct this research and present the results in a way that protects the identity of everyone I encountered during my fieldwork. Second, throughout this research I have attempted to let my informants speak for themselves and not speak over them. I’ve been mindful of making space for their experiences instead of filling the space with my own readings of them. And third, I have attempted to leverage my position inside academia to note the immense value of immigrant’s women work and entrepreneurship and how it constantly benefits and furthers their communities, an aspect that is often overlooked. As a feminist researcher, I have placed Spanish-speaking immigrant women’s life stories, paid work in the beauty salon industry, and community

23 engagement at the heart of this thesis and I am honored to have been able to use both my own work, as well as any unmerited privilege I also have, in order to do so.

______

Notes 1. I use a pseudonym to protect the space, the owner, my informants and the clientele. 2. For the purpose of anonymity, I did not ask women about their age. I rely on estimations based on their accounts and their appearance, as well as other intimations made in the course of our conversations, to calculate an approximate age, which I refer to in vague terms in this text on purpose. 3. Executive Order. No. 13766, 2017; Executive Order. No. 13768, 2017; Executive Order. No. 13769, 2017.

24 Chapter 1. Pretty & Groomed: a hair salon for the Spanish-speaking community

“Can I get un cuora for the Candy machine?” asked the boy. “Sí, but only if you share with your siblings,” replied his mother giving him two quarters and a warning. The boy came back with a handful of m&m’s half melted from sitting under the window in the Central Texas summer heat. As he walked back he was immediately swarmed by his brother and sister who were expecting their share of the bounty. Licking the confetti-like stains from his sweaty palm the boy turned again to his mother, but before he could say anything, she remarked firmly: “No. That’s it. Sit down. We’ll go and eat right after we leave.” After a significant wait, it was finally their father’s turn. Fifteen minutes later the whole family was out the door, bidding good-bye to Sara, the rest of the stylists, and other clients still in line, saying they’d be back soon: “¡Gracias! See you in two weeks! The above is a typical scene at Pretty & Groomed, Sara’s hair salon in South Austin, that lends credence to what social-work scholar Melvin Delgado has described as ethnic businesses’ “influential role in the community that goes beyond the usually associated with a commercial establishment” (1997: 447). In this chapter, I explore how this hair salon, owned by a Mexican immigrant woman, operates as a transnational space that caters to a working-class Spanish-speaking clientele in ways that exceed the main purpose of a beauty parlor. The salon is constantly packed with clients who are mostly Mexican immigrants, frequently accompanied by their entire families; people looking to do business and offer professional services; friends stopping by to say hi; people looking to sell or buy things (other than hair products); Spanish-speaking sales representatives delivering samples and publicity and even the stylists’ families hanging out and helping around.

25 Upon this realization, one of the main empirical questions that arose from the data gathered during this research had to do with the many functions that the space seems to hold: Why is this salon used for so many different purposes that divert from hairstyling and beauty work? And how do these multiple purposes define the personal and social relevance of this space in the lives of the Spanish-speaking immigrants who frequently visit it? To answer these questions, I open this chapter with a description of Pretty & Groomed and the everyday practices that shape it. I pause to describe the genealogy of the salon, the characteristics of the locale, the coming together of the space, and some of quotidian interactions I was privy to in the course of my three-month fieldwork. I then analyze these experiences in conjunction with the interview I conducted with Sara, the owner of the beauty parlor. I follow a gendered approach to migration theories of adaptation, and in particular, ethnic entrepreneurship and transnationalism frameworks to reflect about the role of ethnic businesses and Sara’s approach to entrepreneurship in the reproduction of the Spanish-speaking community that emerges in the context of the beauty parlor. To better understand these issues I deploy the Anzaldúan concept of “Nepantla” as a site of epistemological in-betweenness to provide a situated reading that centers the experiences of Sara, the owner of the shop, and other Spanish-speaking immigrant women and men that come to the beauty parlor on a regular basis. Through this chapter I argue that Pretty & Groomed takes on a salient role among the Spanish-speaking community created by its clientele and operators due to is a laid- back, accessible quality that evokes a Latin American space that feels home-like, thus appealing to immigrants’ affects and familiarity. By creating bonds through attentiveness and providing a safe space for earnest conversation and networking, Pretty & Groomed fosters the emergence of an immigrant community in some sectors of the Austin 26 metropolitan area. Ultimately, through this chapter I aim to reveal the role of mundane and everyday interactions and immigrant women’s entrepreneurship in transnational place-making and community building.

I. THE EVERYDAY MAKING OF A SPANISH-SPEAKING BEAUTY PARLOR IN SOUTH AUSTIN

Pretty & Groomed Salon is a beauty parlor located in South Austin just shy of the city limits between Austin and San Marcos. An “Open” neon sign shines behind the clear glass windows of the storefront. Above, the marquee displays the salon’s logo in red, white and blue over a black background. Inside, large mirrors hang on the side walls behind the working stations, two on each side of the room. Each station is fitted with a barber chair and four sets of matching bookshelves that have been adapted to hold the stylists’ choice of tools and props: scissors, electric hair trimmers, hair dryers, irons, curlers, and so on. A mix-match of Mexican hair styling products such as XiomaraÒ gel and trademark American AquanetÒ hairspray, along with oils, water spray bottles and towels sit on top of the counters. Red and black stripes are painted on the mint colored walls from which hang two oil paintings, one of Tejano music star Selena, the other one of a brown-skinned man with a naked torso and a tattoo of the Piedra del Sol, the famous Aztec calendar stone, on his chest. The back wall is lined with chairs for clients who are waiting for their turn and, on the right corner, is a shampooing chair. Right in the middle of the back wall, a small window at eye level opens up to the back room, a relatively private area that, save for this window, gets no natural light. The walls in the back room are painted white, and the overall feeling is a lot more intimate. This room is smaller than the main room and it also has a smaller linen closet. A waxing bed, a large styling and make-up station and a second shampooing chair are set at the

27 fore, and towards the back a large couch, a coffee table and a refrigerator sit under what is left of a large industrial extractor hood, the first indication that the space has been recently transformed from a restaurant into a beauty parlor. Now in her early forties, Sara, who migrated from the northern city of Monterrey, Mexico, over fifteen years ago, is the successful owner of the lively beauty salon. In fact, Sara decided to adapt the space after running El Borreguito, a Mexican food restaurant, and, simultaneously, another salon a few blocks north for over two years. The rent for the salon space was going up and El Borreguito wasn’t doing so well, plus, the workload was overwhelming: every day she served breakfast and lunch at the restaurant before heading to the salon for the afternoon shift, the busiest one of the day. Sara used to work over sixty hours a week. She was also struggling to find stylists to fill the morning shifts, so it made sense to scale down and focus only on the salon. Because overall the hair salon was more profitable than the restaurant, she convinced her socia, a business partner from the restaurant to keep the lease on the place and join her in relocating her previous hair salon to this more affordable venue. Sara needed her partner to agree because as an undocumented migrant she would have been unable to lease the premises and register the business all on her own. Sara’s business partner, Cecilia, is a Mexican-American school teacher and painter in her early forties who is active in the local Chicana art scene in Austin. Aside from co-owning El Borreguito first, and Pretty & Groomed afterwards, Sara and Cecilia also live together. Sara’s insistence on always referring to Cecilia as “mi socia” rather than “mi pareja” both commonly translated to English as “my partner” lets on that their partnership is not necessarily a romantic one, but it transcends the traditional aspects of a business partnership. While the space has been carefully adapted, there are clear indications of the changes it has undergone. The chairs, neatly lined up behind the storefront windows and 28 on the opposite wall for clients to wait for their turn, are the same ones that were used at the restaurant. The refrigerator sitting in the back room under the industrial extractor helps make sense of the markings on the floor where the stove used to be. And finally, the eye-level window in the middle of the connecting wall serves little purpose now, but was, in the restaurant, the place through which orders were dispatched from the kitchen. Most of the special equipment, like the barber chairs, the mirrors, the waxing bed and the shampooing chair, is rented by the month, which allows for some flexibility and adjustment of the distribution of the space without having to commit to large purchases.

The rest of the furniture, including the stylists’ counters, the towel shelves, the couch and the coffee table where brought over from the previous salon or directly from Sara’s home and repurposed to fit the new space. On one occasion a stylist who had been in Mexico for a couple of months came back to work only to find that all the stations were taken. The very next day I found Sara and her socia in the back room skillfully repainting a fiberboard TV counter the same dark hue as the rest of the furniture. A few days later a new workstation had been set up for Doña Consuelo, a woman in her sixties, the returning stylist. “Good as new! Who could tell the difference?” remarked Sara confidently, to express that the cabinet looked like brand new —nobody would notice it wasn’t the same kind as those in the main room. She said to be pleased by how quickly they had managed to adjust the space to fit one more stylist and transform the TV counter into a station that looked remarkably similar to the other ones. By the time I interviewed her, Sara’s optimistic, make-do approach to business (and life in general) had become clear to me. After coming to Austin as a single mother with two small children she quickly learned what she deems every migrant’s skill: the ability to “hacerle a todo”— to do just about everything in order to get by.

29 It was this ability that landed her her first job as a stylist upon arriving to the United States from Mexico, all those years ago. Having worked for over three years as a saleswoman in the beauty department of a large department store, she had a great knack for sales, but she lacked the adequate language skills to look for a job in that area. “I thought, well… what do I know how to do? Well… cutting hair!” She learned the basics of haircutting in Mexico as part of her beauty training, but she had only ever cut her sons’ hair before coming to the United States. Now in her forties, she looks back at how she got that first hair-dressing job she laughs:

I went looking for a job by foot! [laughs], can you imagine? I took my son with me. So, I arrived at a salon that was near where we lived and I asked for a job. I asked the lady if she would give me a job, I told her that I had done my son’s haircut. She said, ‘ok, come back on Saturday’. And I said, ‘Ok!’ I didn’t even have professional equipment, but above all I had a very positive attitude [laughs again]. After a couple of weeks working at that salon, Sara befriended another stylist who taught her the tricks of the trade and took her to buy professional tools. “It was there that I really learned how to cut hair”, she remarks. After working there for three years, Sara moved to a different salon in which she worked for five more years, “But always in my mind I had it that one day…” she says, conveying that one day she would have a salon of her own. Today, her salon employs mainly Mexican immigrant stylists and its clientele is made up entirely of Mexican and Central American immigrants and their families, who are often first-generation Americans. Sara relies on her brother, her school teacher socia, and her son, to profitably manage the full-time operation of the venue. Housed in the back room, next to a stack of colorful top-brand MATRIXÔ hair products for every hair type and condition, a collection of amulets for good fortune –a green candle, an image of San Judas Tadeo, patron saint of hope and “difficult cases”, wearing a green robe, holding a golden coin to his chest and a star shooting behind him, and a “money tree” 30 with a red ribbon attached to its trunk– do their share to keep the clients coming.1 “I always have a candle burning to attract good fortune,” Sara declares. She adds that she buys green and yellow ones “to attract what I need to live,” meaning money. Then she explained to me the logic of a series of requests that she had written on the plastic container of the large green candle, all in caps:

Fist, at the very top, my full name; below PREVENIR, but it’s not in the way you think, though, it’s not “to prevent” but so that I might be able to foresee… to be ready for what’s coming; then ORRO, which means gold, but I spell it with a double R so that it arrives faster; then TINO –good aim– so that I can be in the right place; then BONANZA to call for abundance; and finally RICO –a good feeling–, to bring pleasure to my work. On a regular day, Pretty & Groomed opens up at 10:00 am, but Sara will often open as early as 7:00 AM or stay as late as 11:00 PM to accommodate clients’ special requests. A special event early in the morning, combined with a late night shift the night before, may prompt clients to request an earlier-than-normal appointment to get their hair done before a wedding party, a graduation or an early morning bautizo. Because most of her immigrant clients work long hours during the day themselves, the morning hours during the weekdays are often slow, but afternoons and weekends are the busiest times at the salon, and while Sara tries to close shop by 9:00 PM, the truth is most days the work extends well past that time. Clients walk in and sign up on a registry –a ruled notebook sitting on top of a plastic trolley cart next to the entrance– and wait until their names are called. Every day after 5:00 PM and all weekend long clients will often have to wait upwards from an hour for their turn, and some will wait longer than that to be seen by the stylist of their choice. Despite the slow week-day mornings, the place is rarely empty. Women who are looking to get lengthier treatments done, such as hair coloring, up-dos, or styling treatments, come in during the morning on their day off, and men who work nearby come 31 in during their lunch breaks hoping to avoid the lengthier afternoon waiting times. People looking to do other kinds of business also come by often during these calmer hours: A client stops by not for a haircut, but rather to promote her new business selling empanadas and to leave behind some samples and business cards and the stylists will gather around to catch up, try the pastries and place their orders; another client who works at a restaurant nearby comes at the request of one of the stylists to do some cupping and herbal healing on her as she’s been having lower back pain for a while and the rest of the stylists will take a chance to ask for recommendations about their own ailments; a woman comes in looking for Sara because she saw a post on Facebook about some garden furniture for sale; sometimes, an old couch or a set of discarded tables or drawers will sit outside of the shop with a “se vende” sign, prompting passerby’s to walk in and inquire about the items for sale. Families also abound in the salon. As the opening lines of this chapter suggest, clients usually come in with their whole families in toll. Sisters in their late teens wait while their younger brothers get their haircut, pre-adolescent boys escape into their phones for hours at a time while mothers in their late thirties and early forties get their roots retouched, toddlers play around the mounds of loose hair next to the barber chairs before the stylist has had a chance to swipe them up, or they ride the mechanical car that sits on the hallway leading to the bathroom and beg their parents for a quarter to get some sweets from the candy machines by the entrance. The stylists who have school-aged kids also bring them in after school is over and they will hang out in the back room doing homework and watching videos until their mother is done for the day. Their mother will occasionally check in on them or send them long distance kisses while walking to pick up a robe from the linen closet.

32 Sara’s own family is constantly at the shop. Her brother Fernando –a former construction worker in his mid-forties whom she trained as a stylist herself– also works there. Cecilia, her socia, and Rodrigo, her son, who is now a young man in his early twenties, both come around often. Her younger sister and adolescent nieces and nephews from Monterrey also come and visit during the summer and spend time at the salon. None of them visit idly, instead they often lend a hand around or get things done on themselves. Between clients, one stylist might work on her own daughter’s hair, a shy ten-year-old who often sits in the backroom playing with her iPad. Sara will use some down time to give highlights to her younger sister, and when she’s back at work her adolescent nieces will swipe the hair from the floor between the stylist’s stations or help fold the clean towels that Rodrigo washes at a nearby laundromat every other day. On special occasions, such as when Mexico’s team is playing in a football match, Rodrigo will bring a grill to the back alley of the salon. “We are going to have a carne asada, for those who want to come” announces Sara in anticipation of the big day. Cerveza y tacos con salsa flow in through the emergency exit in the back room while

Rodrigo, grills for the whole party. Stylists take breaks to eat a taco, and their spouses, children, sisters, and even parents join them later in the day to eat at the salon and watch the game and maybe get their hair blown or their ends trimmed while they’re at it. Clients who happened to stop by that day also get offered beer and tacos. Baladas, rancheras, salsa and cumbias are always playing at the salon, but this time people are asking for songs. “Play one from Juanga” requests a client munching on a taco. “[Juan Gabriel] was from [Ciudad] Juárez, like me” he explains, getting emotional about the world-famous composer and singer who had recently passed away —a beloved son of Ciudad Juárez. Beer flows freely and there’s laughter and dance, and after a stylist’s sister complains of neck pain on account of her work at a cooking line, Sara’s brother sets up a chair to give 33 impromptu neck and head massages to anyone who wants one. By the end of the day everyone is tired and full to the brim, and happy because Mexico won the match: “¿Ya ves? ¡Sí se puede! See? Yes, we can!” remarks Sara’s son cockily to everyone who had mentioned having low expectations for the match.

II. SITUATED READINGS OF SARA’S BUSINESS

“Everyone benefits, even though I’m at the forefront”: Sara’s approach to entrepreneurship

“When we come here we learn to do just about everything, hacerle a todo” retorted Sara after I commented on the number of different jobs she has had ever since arriving in the United States as a single mother not even twenty years old, almost fifteen years ago. Aside from working at four different hair salons and owning two, she originally worked as a waitress at a restaurant in San Antonio and later, when she had her own restaurant in Austin, as a cook and manager. To do just about everything, or to become a jane/jack of all trades, is a trait of resilience that Sara identifies, from her own experience, as part of working-class migrants’ journeys. Scholarship on immigrant adaptation often points to these kinds of resilience strategies, along with enclave formation and acculturation, as part of settling into their receiving nation (Portes and Manning 2008; Rosales 2013; Bhimji 2010; Chinchilla and Hamilton 1996). Sara’s pathway to becoming a professional hairstylist and a salon owner, from looking for a job by foot and without the proper tools, to transforming the space from a restaurant to a hair salon and improvising workstations with furniture she has at hand, also emphasizes the skills implicated by the notion of hacerle a todo. These survival skills are also passed down by kin and other immigrants, as revealed by a woman

34 interviewed by scholar Fazila Bhimji when interviewing undocumented street food vendors in Los Angeles. “My grandmother always told me, when you don’t have money, offer to wash dishes for somebody” (Bhimji 2010: 456), said the woman, to explain how she had managed to set up her pan dulce stand outside of a 99-cent store and struck a deal to store her pastries inside the store by helping around and trading favors with the owner. Like other women before her, upon arriving to the United States, Sara felt thrust into uncertainty. She left a job as a saleswoman in Mexico in pursuit of better opportunities, but ignorance of the language was a barrier and being illegally in the country greatly limited her choices of employment, so she entered upon what has been described by Gloria Anzaldúa as Nepantla, “tierra desconocida,” an unknown land that is both a physical space –in Sara’s case in a foreign land– and mental state of consciousness (Anzaldúa 2012; González-López 2006, 21). Nepantla comes with the uncertainty of leaving behind her life as she knew it. But in that space she transforms and adapts. Just like the women interviewed by Bhimji, Sara navigated her new situation by striking a deal with a salon owner to cut hair at her shop. She found a niche in which her previous work experience was useful and her language-skills were an asset rather than a barrier. With that, she starts on a road that will lead her to work at different hair salons, learn to cut and style hair on the go, open up her first hair salon, find a socia to partner with, open a restaurant and then transform it into yet another hair salon. Through her journey she has come to master the skill of hacerle a todo a resilience that comes from learning to navigate the precariousness of undocumented immigration. Sara’s vision of her business is in her own words one in which “everyone benefits and everyone is able to make a living, even though I’m the one at the forefront.” In order to better understand Sara’s pathway to professionalization, entrepreneurship and self- employment, as well as her interpretation of success as collective and individual at once, 35 I follow the lead of feminist epistemologies that question the prevailing masculinist gaze to social and scientific inquiry that is often conflated with neutrality and objectivity (Harding 1986) and argue for the development of situated knowledges as a means of resisting the process of othering and binarization that prevail in the production of ‘legitimate’ scientific knowledge (Haraway 1988; De la Cadena 2006; Lugones 2016). Critical race scholarship has carried that notion further, denouncing the role of whiteness as the standard for universality and neutrality not only in the epistemological process but also across all areas of sociality. As a result, feminist scholars of color have developed epistemological categories that arise from their own situated and intersectional experiences (Anzaldúa 2012; Crenshaw 1988; Boyce Davies 2013). Sara’s pathway reveals a lot about what a situated approach to professionalism and business can look like for immigrant women who become entrepreneurs from the ground up: through hard work, intense manual labor –literally painting cabinets and walls–, the –often unremunerated– help of family, friends and acquaintances, and a lot of trial and error. Becoming an entrepreneur is also part of Sara’s experience in navigating through the uncharted territory of Nepantla after migrating to the United States. Research on ethnic entrepreneurship has shown that Latin American immigrants in particular are often driven into self-employment and entrepreneurship due to limited opportunities for employment (Volery 2007). In Anzaldúan Nepantla, experiences of non-belonging such as this one foster the development of a particular awareness and, following González- López (2006), a particular set of resources and skills to better navigate them. In the case of Sara, these skills and awareness become expressed under the notion of “hacerle a todo” or to learn –out of pressing need– to do just about everything, including business ownership, in order to get by.

36 Decentering the traditional understandings of entrepreneurship tied to business innovation for personal gain and success for its own sake (Swedberg 2006), Sara’s beauty parlor has thrived on the grounds of collective benefit through a diverse, experience- based model, informed by her creativity, inventiveness, and specific needs. This approach to entrepreneurship is somewhat typical of Latino businesses as García-Pabón and Klima’s research among Latino entrepreneurs has shown. According to their extensive surveys, Latino entrepreneurs often operate without a business plan or formal business training (García-Pabón and Klima 2017), thus implementing solutions on the go. This make-shift and make-do approach to business, as we will see next, has been key to the development of Pretty & Groomed as a warm and welcoming hub for the Spanish- speaking community.

“What I have is experience”: Skills and attentiveness for professional development

“Good as new! Who could tell the difference?” exclaimed Sara’s optimistically after she and her social were done painting the new, improvised styling station for Doña Consuelo, the returning stylist I introduced above. Like this station, the whole of Pretty & Groomed has been decorated entirely by Sara and her socia, with the help of friends and family. In that sense, engaging the community has been a part of the shop from the start. Some of the paintings on the walls were painted by her socia, others were painted by her socia’s friends, a circle of Austin-based Latina and Chicana artists who contributed their share to the salon. The furniture, mismatching pieces that used to house books, clothes, and pans in their previous lives, have been upscaled to fit their current roles; they were hand-painted in matching colors by Sara and her troop to look like they were freshly bought.

37 Thinking about professionalization in neoliberal terms often involves a transition from informality to formality, where the former stage is considered of lesser competence than the latter (Tang 2008). The process of professionalization, regarded as a forward or progressive movement, encompasses for instance, having an adequate space to provide services, planning for the future of the enterprise, having formal training, keeping business separate from personal life/pleasure, and becoming more and more specialized in a field or activity rather than “juggling multiple hats” at once. Referring particularly to the professionalization of the hair salon Gimlin describes that it is made to mimic the environment of a doctor’s office, with separate spaces for different purposes such as a reception, a waiting area, service area, and a register area (1996, 517). According to Gimlin, this distribution puts in place a series of procedures that enforce social hierarchies among the salon operators and also between them and the client, like for example making sure the stylist never has to deal with money directly, and that clients have a chance to relax and feel pampered from the moment they enter the salon (idem). My fieldwork at Pretty & Groomed, however, suggests that the path to professionalization can be a lot more contingent, messy, and unintentional than the structure put forth by the dominating neoliberal narrative. Also, it suggests that by allowing her businesses to develop organically rather than under strict planning, prioritizing attentiveness towards clients and focusing on stylists’ expertise and potential for growth, Sara has made it better suited (and profitable at that) for her needs, the stylists’ needs, and their clients’ needs. For instance, making do with what she had at hand and finding creative uses for things she already had meant that the salon would come together without a big investment. Additionally, while there is definitely an aesthetic endeavor behind the arrangement of the salon, there is also room for oddity – like having a mechanical car for children block half the hallway to the bathroom–, quirky 38 personal touches –as shown for instance by Sara’s collection of good luck charms and amulets, and stylists pictures of their loved ones on their workstations– and, above all, there is room for practicality, as evidenced by the mismatched collection of trash cans, towels, robes, and the odd furniture for sale sitting outside the salon more often than not. All of these elements come together to serve a purpose beyond aesthetics, and though they may at times complicate the reading the space in traditional hair salon terms, they make clients, stylists, and their families feel welcome. “Our clients, well… they like the calidez to feel pampered, well… who doesn’t?” reflects Sara. Then she adds,

You come to get a hair-cut, you have a little chat, we take our time with you, we make you feel good: “come, let me fix your brows” you know? An offer as small as that but that you can tell it makes them feel good, and also know that you did a great job, not only because they are paying. But what I’ve seen many times is that at other places they don’t even say hi to the client or anything. Sara’s notion of professionalism includes not only a job well done and accommodating to clients, but a quality of calidez, warming up to clients and being attentive in a way that she knows makes her Spanish-speaking community feel welcome, thus becoming a functional and pliable Spanish-speaking space for Latin American immigrants that fosters transnational community building. This, I argue, is paramount for understanding this beauty parlor both as an ethnic business appealing to a Latin American and Spanish-speaking clientele, and as a community-oriented space in which people can network and through which the community can further itself. As I will show in the course of this chapter, Spanish-speaking immigrants look for services within their own communities for a wide variety of reasons, besides cost. But nonetheless, Pretty & Groomed is meant to be affordable for a working-class clientele. Most of Sara’s clients are construction workers, service industry workers, domestic

39 workers, gardeners and cooks, many of whom are male and trim their hair religiously on a two-week basis. Men’s haircuts are 15 dollars, women’s haircuts are 30 dollars, and shaving and waxing are 15 dollars respectively. Other services have different costs depending on the length of the hair and the materials that will be needed. After the salon moved to this location Sara increased the cost of all of the services, and so far, only a few clients have protested. She attributes this to the quality of their services, among which attentiveness is primordial. Rather than requiring a formal and rigorous training from her stylists, Sara professes a learn by doing approach to every service that is offered at the salon, in part because it reflects her own experience. Some of the less seasoned stylists will often look to her for advice, and instead of giving them detailed instructions she will encourage them to experiment for themselves or to observe someone else doing a procedure. After she opened her first salon, Sara trained her brother Fernando, a man in his mid-forties who worked previously as a construction worker, to become a stylist, and it is only now, five years later, that Fernando is attending his first official Barber course because he’s looking to expand the range of services that are provided in the shop. Sara’s most recent apprentice is Miriam, one of the youngest stylists. Born in San Antonio to Mexican parents, Miriam, who is now in her late twenties, watches the rest of the stylist closely as they go about their work and often practices newly learned techniques on her school-aged daughters’ hair.

“I know what I know, and my clients know it, if not, why would they come looking for me so often? What I have is experience, and a license does not give you that…” Proclaimed Doña Consuelo, a consecrated stylist from Mexico City in her sixties, echoing Sara’s philosophy towards professionalization in the course of a conversation

40 that I had with her and Fernando about the process of getting licensed as a stylist by the state. While it is required by law that stylists be certified and thus trained in their profession, the stylists I interviewed agreed that the certification process is easy to pass with a basic skill level. At Pretty & Groomed, framed and on top of every workstation are a series of licenses belonging to some of the stylists in the shop. At any given point, in the front room of the salon there are enough licenses on display to give the appearance that every stylist has one. However, the truth is that there are more stylists that work in the shop than there are licenses. For instance, Doña Consuelo, who is the eldest and most experienced stylist, refuses to get a license, as shown by the quote above. She comes to the shop only twice a week in the afternoons and lives in Austin only part of the year. She was trained as a stylist in Mexico City and, over the last five years, she has split her time between her home in Mexico and her sister’s home in Austin. When she is in Austin, she works at the salon for extra income on her spare days and looks after her younger sister’s school-age daughters the remainder of the time. Clients long for her when she’s away and line up for her when she is in town. Traveling back and forth to Mexico she’s able to provide her clients with a link to the trends and practices of their home country. She doesn’t have a state license, because she sees no point in getting one being as experienced as she is. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years,” she declares assertively. Getting a license would be costly, and also, she doesn’t want to give any indication that she is working while she is here, because she travels in and out of the country on a tourist visa. However, as Doña Consuelo remarks, this does not detract from her professionalism and the quality of her work; her clientele doesn’t care about it either, they trust her and look for her advice nonetheless. In fact, some of her clients appreciate the fact that she was trained in Mexico as one of her greatest qualities. During one of my 41 visits to the salon I witnessed a conversation between Doña Consuelo and a first-time client who was impressed by her work. Excited to have found her, she commented on how hard it is to find people here who can cut her hair the way she is used to from back home. “It’s been so long since someone cut my hair like this! I always struggle to get [stylists] to cut my hair this way!” she exclaimed in amazement. Mobilizing these affective attachments to familiar styles and practices from their homeland, offering a laid-back approach to professionalism that allows stylists to learn by doing and work without a license, thus validating their previous expertise and potential, contributes to make Pretty & Groomed a place that Latin American clients are happy to patronize, and, as I will show below, feel happy to return to. Before she left the salon, the client made sure to take down Doña Consuelo’s number and asked her about other services she provided. It was clear that she had been longing for the familiarity that Doña Consuelo’s technique had offered her.

III. FOSTERING A SPANISH-SPEAKING COMMUNITY

“See you in two weeks!”: The appeal of a transnational Latin American space

The possibility of offering a familiar sense of styling that resembles what their clients knew back home is one of the greatest qualities of Pretty & Groomed salon, and it is almost in direct opposition with the notion of a “universal” aesthetic experience. Indeed, this contributes to the logic of transnational placemaking in that it reinforces the ties to the homeland both, aesthetic and emotional. Reflecting on her experience visiting salons in London as an immigrant from India, Rupal notes: “I rarely visit white beauty parlors in England. I actually find them cold and intimidating –the immaculate white women in white coats, clinically perfect, either with their scrubbed English rose 42 complexion or their permanent tans. My feeling of not belonging is accentuated” (2002: 88). Instead, Rupal adds that every time she travels back home she looks forward to the familiar kitschiness, chemical smells, Bollywood soundtracks, and general ambiance from her hometown’s beauty parlors. Scholarship on transnationalism is useful for thinking about the role that a place such as Pretty & Groomed may acquire among their Spanish-speaking clientele. After Goldring, transnationalism refers to “the strength and enduring quality of home ties and homeland oriented practices” in the context of the migratory experience (2001, 506).

Catering to their own ethnic community and commoditizing culturally specific products that both capitalize on and reinforce home ties and practices means that ethnic businesses take on a special role in transnational place making within receiving countries. The notion of diasporic “Caribbean spaces” developed by Caroline Boyce Davis to reflect about transnational place making illuminates this process further. Boyce Davis deems as such “those locations in which there are distinctly identified re-creations of Caribbean communities following migration” where the people, business communities, and emerging forms of entertainment “[contribute] to the re-creation of Caribbean culture in diaspora” (2013: 1). Ethnic businesses take an active role in shaping their environment through the people that frequent it and the activities that take place in them, thus effectively transforming foreign places into distinct transnational ethnic spaces. In that same way, Sara’s salon offers an alternative for Spanish-speaking and immigrant clients to come to a space that feels refuge-like because it conjures a Latin American space. As with Rupal’s example of the Indian beauty parlor, this does not require the salon to operate following neatly determined procedures and guidelines, nor the stylist to follow a dress code: in fact, it is quite the opposite. The place is alive with Latin American music, people are 43 never quiet, Spanish is the only language spoken and cultural staples such as regional food, beauty products marketed in Latin America, and cultural-specific and religious practices such as quince años, primeras comuniones and bautizos and remojos –blessings of newly acquired properties such as cars and houses– are a regular cause for client’s visits. Thus, in line with Boyce Davis, the salon becomes a space through which Latin American culture is recreated in the migratory context. As I will address in the following section, the familiarity and relaxed quality of the space also gives way to earnest and open conversations between clients and stylists, that strengthen their bonds.

Sharing “dirty laundry” and good news: A community beyond professional lines

“That’s how it is with [one’s] children, [you have to be] always keeping check, siempre hay que estar detrás de ellos,” volunteered a client after a loud argument broke up in the middle of the shop between Sara and her son, Rodrigo. A young man in his early twenties, Rodrigo and his roommate had agreed to make some repairs at their landlord’s house in exchange for temporary housing. However, the roommate decided to back down last minute and Rodrigo was ready to do the same. Sara insisted that he had to finish the job he had agreed to. She encouraged him to look at it as a learning experience and told him that was what being an adult and having your own business, “tener tu negocio,” was all about. Rodrigo responded upset and the fight ensued. Fernando — Sara’s brother—intervened promptly, telling Rodrigo to be respectful, not to raise his voice to his mother in the middle of her workplace. Doña Consuelo, who was sitting next to me when the fight broke up, looked to me and shook her head in disapproval. “This is not okay,” she said, “dirty laundry shouldn’t be aired in public.” However, clients did not seem disturbed. In fact, after Rodrigo left the shop irate, some of them offered their

44 opinions about the fight. They showed their empathy towards Sara’s frustration while validating the hard work involved in raising a child. This scene, which in dry ‘professional’ terms could be deemed as informal, is actually part of the calidez that Sara referenced as an aspect of her professionalism: a feeling of warmth and attention that makes clients feel at home. Stylists talk among each other as well as with their clients while they come and go from the back room to the front room. When Sara is with a client, she never hesitates to pick up the phone. And, aside from that particular argument, I saw her publicly reprimand her fully grown son for not following through with a commitment more than once. Not only are the boundaries between business and personal blurred in at Pretty & Groomed, but the often-prescribed separation of business and pleasure is also lightly followed. The fact that most of her clients are returning clients speaks volumes to how pleased they are in the space and with the quality of the salon. Festive occasions where shared between clients and stylists. Once, a client whose wife had recently given birth arrived in the salon with the nine-day-old baby and his wife: “we came to introduce her” he said, proudly holding the baby up for all to see. Afterwards, he handed out pink coated candy to everyone there. Congratulations were offered and pictures were taken, and then he got a full service of haircut, shaving and hair coloring. Another time, Sara asked a client about the progress of his land-buying endeavors, and when he responded that he had just gotten his plot and had spent the weekend working on it, a general cheer erupted in the shop. Barbecues were sometimes organized impromptu, when the heat became unbearable and Rodrigo, Sara’s son, was willing to put up with the grill. Clients are always welcome to a taste of meat and a beer, and when there isn’t any, Sara always offers them a Coke, or a piece of fruit, which she keeps stacked on the fridge in the back room. 45 When these gatherings take place —at times prompted by a national celebration such as a football match between Mexico and another country, or by the celebration of the Mexican independence— the ties to the homeland become more evident. However, when they are motivated by no reason other than conviviality they can still be clearly read as an act of transnational community building, particularly because fear and anti- immigration sentiments in the current political climate severely limit the spaces where Spanish-speaking immigrant communities might participate in such exchanges. The fact that families visit the salon as a unit, speaks to these same limitations. For instance, when

I asked both stylists and clients why they thought that families attended the salon together, the most common answer I got was that since both parents work full time, the little time they get to spend as a family is precious. Underlying this answer, however, was the anxiety of the possibility of separation: the very real fear of a family member being potentially deported motivates the family to move as a unit as much as possible. Significantly, another Mexican-owned hair salon located right next door to Pretty & Groomed keeps several signs taped to the walls, that are visible from the outside, asking their clientele to make sure children are under parental control. The signs at the salon next door, written all in caps, read: 1)"FAVOR DE ESTAR PENDIENTES DE SUS HIJOS" (PLEASE

BE MINDFUL OF YOUR CHILDREN AT ALL TIMES); 2) “FAVOR DE TENER A SUS HIJOS EN ORDEN”

(PLEASE KEEP YOUR KIDS IN ORDER); 3) “NO BRINCAR EN LOS SILLONES” (NO JUMPING ON

THE COUCHES). Hence, Pretty & Groomed is a welcoming space, among other reasons, precisely because it allows for families to be together and enjoy themselves unlike other hair salons. As opposed to what Gimlin (1996) describes as a ‘professional’ salon with clearly demarcated spaces, the space at Pretty & Groomed is fluid, with no separation between the waiting area and the service area, and no reception to speak of but a ruled notebook 46 sitting on top of a cart. Operators play many roles at once, they wash and cut their clients hair, sweep the floor, freshen up the towels, and charge for their work themselves. This negates the social distance between the operators and their clientele. By allowing for these exchanges, the salon becomes a place where clients refer each other for potential jobs or, when they have businesses of their own, sell their own products among the stylists and the salon’s clientele. The space lends itself to be useful beyond the description of a hair salon. Importantly, by becoming a community-engaging space, the salon takes on a decidedly political quality that allows clients a safe engagement with political discourse that may prove risky in more public arenas. Conducting my observations on the verge of the approval of the Texas SB-4 Bill which bans sanctuary cities and increases the authority of state police to inquire about the immigration status of detainees, I was able to witness first-hand the emergence of what Augis describes as an “internal publics” among the salon’s community (2014: 202). While a woman was getting her hair done for an upcoming bautizo a conversation emerged following the passing of the bill and this relatively private space in the back room of the salon was turned into an informal forum in which several female clients volunteered their opinions and fears. One of the clients shared with the women in the room what she had learned they should do in case of an emergency:

Rosa said she was worried about [SB-4] being implemented because it would allow for police officers to ask for papers on the spot. She recalled a video that has been going around about a mother who is followed by the police while shopping with her kids. They suddenly ask for her papers and she’s detained on the spot while her children scream and cry begging the police not to take her away. Rosa was shaken by that image. She said a friend from her church group told her that she had consulted with a lawyer and the lawyer said every family should have at hand at least 15 thousand dollars per person to respond to an emergency, five thousand for bail payment, three thousand for the lawyer and the 47 rest to allow for the trial expenses while the procedure lasts. She also learned that they’ve been recommending immigrants to prepare notarized instructions as to what they want to do with their properties and who will look after their children in case they are ever apprehended. (Fieldnotes, Summer 2017) This kind of impromptu happenings show the value of places like this, where Spanish-speaking communities formed by immigrants feel welcome and free to safely express their thoughts and anxieties about the political views of a state that denies them opportunities for belonging and citizenship. It also creates a space for Spanish-speaking immigrant women to share advice and show solidarity towards one another in the face of growing anti-immigration tensions that may leave them feeling isolated. By making their clients feel welcome, free to speak their minds, and providing a place where they can interact with each other sharing fears, triumphs and problems, as well as exchanging advice and opinions, the salon becomes a sheltering space in which the community formed by the Spanish-speaking clientele, who are mostly Latin American immigrants or of immigrant descent, can meet, network, and expand.

CONCLUSIONS

This chapter illustrates the multiple social uses of the beauty parlor where I conducted my research, and its relevance for the Spanish-speaking community of clients, stylists and entrepreneurs that emerges around this space. More than a beauty parlor, this beauty salon is a vibrant and lively transnational space where homeland traditions and homeland oriented practices combine to create a familiar, welcoming and lively space for Spanish-speaking immigrants to network, learn about employment opportunities, offer their professional services, sell their products, sustain their cultural practices –such as getting ready for bautizos and quinceañeras–, share their aspirations, desires and triumphs as well as their anxieties and fears, and build and sustain community ties. 48 Sara’s, the owner of the shop, plays a central role in this development. Her approach towards her business is one that deviates from the path of formality in favor of allowing close bonds to emerge between her, the operators and their clientele. However, in striving to create a welcoming environment she has also followed the lead of her clients and employees. As I will continue to show in the following chapters of this thesis, Sara takes the time to notice the expectations and pays attention to needs of her clients and the stylists who work at the salon, and uses that information to, in her own words, create a space “where everyone benefits.” In that sense, the beauty parlor is co-produced by Sara, the operators, and the clients at once; each of them relating to the beauty parlor according to their own experiences and needs contributing to make it a community- oriented space. The salon has developed as simultaneously welcoming, familiar, commercial and functional specifically for the Spanish-speaking immigrant community around this particular area of South Austin have indeed made way for a transnational Latin American space to emerge; a space that, without being tied to a particular territory, allows for the

Spanish-speaking community to reproduce and further itself and its cultural practices and traditions in a migratory or diasporic context. The informal feel of the space helps clients feel at ease in a place that does not reproduce the aseptic and aesthetically dissonant model of white upscale beauty parlors. The relaxed, and kid-friendly environment welcomes stylists’ and client’s children as well as entire families into the beauty salon. The shared space and informal ongoing conversation often gives way to share both successes, business tips, personal recommendations and political anxieties that the whole community can identify with. Ultimately, through Sara’s approach to entrepreneurship and professionalism, and by allowing her clients and employees to partake of her business and appropriate it 49 according to their needs, she nurtures and reproduces her Spanish-speaking community in a way that merits recognition and further inquiry. In the following chapters I will continue to explore this issue, while also attending to the roles of stylists and clients in the everyday making of the beauty parlor. In the next chapter I will turn to stylist’s experiences of migration, and their ways of relating to their Spanish-speaking community/clientele through their embodied, reproductive labor. ______

Notes

1. This is a common practice among business owners in Mexico as well.

50 Chapter 2. “Un trato personalizado”: Intimate attention and reproductive labor in the work of hair stylists

“I like giving them un trato personalizado, individualized attention,” expressed Sara, the owner of the salon, when I asked her about the most important aspect of her work as a stylist. She also commented: “For me it is the attention, I think. I become familiar with clients and what they like.” Sara’s remark on trato personalizado was echoed by every single one of the stylists in the shop. Attentiveness may indeed be a requisite of different types of work in the service industry, but how is it expressed in the context of hairstyling at Pretty & Groomed? And why is it so salient? Claudia, an immigrant stylist from Zacatecas in her early twenties similarly reflected,

The most important thing is to know how to talk to a client, because she may be asking for something and you think “well, of course I know how to do this haircut or color or whatever, but that will not suit her,” but then you say to her “let’s see what we can do with what you are telling me [you want] and with what you have,” you have to be very patient and very polite. Although staying on top of current styling trends is central to their job so that they can orient clients towards choices that will make them look good, stylists pointed to some aspect related to attentiveness as the most relevant skill to mobilize in their work setting. Miriam commented,

For me the most important thing is letting them know from the start that they can trust me. Sometimes I even give them some of my services as a gift, and it helps a lot because they notice that I’m doing everything for them to feel good and I’m not doing it to charge them extra. Miriam is a Mexican-American hairstylist in her late twenties born to Mexican immigrant parents. Whether by listening to a client’s problems, softly washing their hair so they feel relaxed, throwing in an extra service free of charge, or kindly letting them know that a certain style may not suit them, as each of the stylists I interviewed described their

51 approach to attentiveness in their work, it became clear that styling as a profession emerges at an intersection between body manipulation, care, trust, aesthetics, and technical skills that could altogether be better described under the logic of intimate labor. The above narratives as well as my lengthy observations of these stylists’ interactions with their clients at Pretty & Groomed, confirm previous research. For instance, the few scholars looking at the work of stylists have shown that, contrary to the notion that styling is simple, low-skill and superfluous, “hairdressers do complicated work” (Eayrs 1993), and that they occupy a unique social position for the “dissemination of cultural ideas” of hegemonic beauty, race and modernity (Gimlin 1996: 506; Fluri 2009, Faria 2013). The variegated dimensions of the tasks involved in professional styling and the diverse roles that stylists take on on a regular basis range from fashion and beauty work (Gimlin 1996), to body work (Soulliere 1997), to emotional labor (Sharma and Black 2001; Toerien and Kitzinger 2007) and tasks akin to those of a professional therapist (Schroder 1978; Eayrs 1993). Following Boris and Parreñas, intimate labor emerges where money and intimacy come together in the context of work. Attentiveness is a central component of intimate labor: it involves knowledge of personal details, tending to personal needs, and affective interactions in the service of social reproduction (Boris and Parreñas 2010). In this chapter I argue that, for Sara, Doña Consuelo, Miriam, Claudia and Fernando1, the stylists at Pretty & Groomed, developing the required skills to perform their work and navigating the intricacies between attentiveness and assertiveness is at the heart of doing a good job: being professional. I do so by looking at stylists’ opinions and perceptions about their work, and at their interactions with clients, to understand how they define and embody professionalism.

52 I begin by interrogating stylists’ day to day tasks and quotidian exchanges at the salon to explore how intimate labor comes into play when providing a styling service. I then analyze how through assertiveness, confidence in their abilities, and charging for their services stylists embody their professionalism during their interactions with their clientele. Finally, I explore what stylists consider to be their responsibilities towards their clientele as an immigrant community. In so doing I take note of how notions of hegemonic vs ethnic beauty, identity and race come into view in the process of styling and the ways in which stylists position themselves as mediators for the performance of gendered and racialized expressions of ethnicity, fashion and beauty.

I. HAIRSTYLING IN THE CONTINUUM OF INTIMATE LABOR

Intimate labor refers to work situations in which intimacy becomes commodified. After Boris and Parreñas, intimacy in this context must be understood broadly, that is as a “material, affective, psychological and embodied state” (2010:1). In that case, physical proximity, closeness and the gentle touch of a stylist running her fingers through a client’s hair, are as much a form of intimacy as gaining a client’s trust, getting to know her styling preferences and learning about her personal life and afflictions in the course of a hair-coloring session. Because each of these practices may, at different times, be called upon as necessary for the satisfactory performance of a stylist’s job, and because money is exchanged for these services, they are indeed a form of commodified intimacy. Intimate labor produces pleasure and comfort, tends to particular needs, and requires operators to know “intimate details about another person that could be embarrassing to that person if known to others” (Boris and Parreñas 2010: 4). It comes about through a series of labor processes that articulate care work, emotional work, and

53 reproductive work. Rather than a particular form of labor being defined as intimate, the logic behind the notion of intimate labor suggest that it be determined on a case by case basis. Through the following examples I position styling as intimate labor as it engages the manipulation of client’s bodies according to their needs and wants (care labor), developing bonds of affect and intimate knowledge while suppressing or controlling stylist emotions (emotional labor), and performing work oriented toward bodily upkeep, the reproduction of daily life, aligning appearance and self-ascribed identities, and maintaining community ties (reproductive work).

By noting the importance of attentiveness and its manifestation through expressions of softness, trust, patience, and generosity, all of which engage different types of skills, stylists’ experiences point to the possibility of understanding the labor processes required for hairstyling at once as beauty work, i.e. the processes engaged in styling the body, and intimate labor. Thus, the notion of intimate labor broadens our understanding of various kinds of gendered labor that, at different times, necessitate the establishment and maintenance of particular social relations that engage intimacy for the purposes of sustaining the intellectual, affective, emotional, physical and other needs of family members, employers, clients or strangers at large (Boris and Parreñas 2010). By placing these types if labor “between a continuum of service and [care]” that engage intimacy for the purposes of sustaining the intellectual, affective, emotional, physical and other needs of family members, employers, clients or strangers at large (ídem) rather than as distinct and separate, an intimate labor lens enhances our understanding of the work of stylists as complex and multilayered.

54 “You’re my client, I won’t judge you”: Building relationships of trust and intimate knowledge

“You learn a lot about their personal lives” said Doña Consuelo, a stylist from Mexico City in her sixties, “because when you are doing their hair they start talking about their husbands, their girlfriends, their wives, their families back in Mexico” she continued. “One hears a lot of things here” she remarked intriguingly to suggest that not everything she knows about their clients is safe for sharing. Indeed, as Zelizer notes, intimate knowledge of a person –like the kind that Doña Consuelo suggests she has about her clients– has the potential to embarrass or damage the person if it were to be made known (2005). The relationship of trust that emerges between stylists and their clients has long posed questions in the minds of scholars (Soulliere 1997), and it has been described as resembling that of a doctor and a patient (Earys 1993). Clients rely on stylist’s prudence in keeping their stories confidential, and stylist often acknowledge this implicit commitment. Gimlin, for instance, has suggested that this is how customer loyalty is achieved and maintained (1996). Following her remark about providing individualized attention to clients, Sara added that “once you make a client feel safe and that you know what you are doing, then they say, ‘you do what you want [to my hair], I trust you.’” This implies that the trust between stylist and clients two-fold. It not only means that clients trust stylists with their personal information but also that they trust them to do what will make them look best. Because through conversation, operators “gain information that enables them to accurately assign hairstyles and build a relationship with their clients,” cultivating trust is an essential skill that stylists must develop in order to do a good job (Soulliere 1997). In this way, stylists perform emotional labor that happens simultaneously to the sharing of intimate knowledge, and both are mobilized for the purpose of creating a

55 trusting environment for clients. In building their trust, Sara, lets their clients know that she will not judge them nor take sides:

They ask for my advice and I tell them… sometimes they ask me can I talk to you? I tell them, of course, I tell them, it is better to talk to someone who you don’t know and that you know will listen to you. Because I will not criticize your life, you are my client and I don’t know your personal life, but sometimes it is a good thing to let out what you are holding inside and let go so that you can visualize something more. Or my opinion can be helpful, I tell them, because I am not going to take sides. Emotional labor may require of stylists that they suppress or handle their emotions like Sara assures her client that she will do (Hochschild 2012). However, as the following remark by Doña Consuelo lets on, it is a task that requires mastery and effort.

I mean, here you see a lot of things, you find out a lot of things [about clients]. I always talk to my client about how to fix her hair and how to do her make-up, but sometimes she feels a need to talk about her personal affairs, and I feel like telling her “but why don’t you separate, why don’t you leave him?!” but I know she has no one here, she knows no one, she doesn’t speak English… so much anguish, so much anguish. Contrary to Sara’s assertion that “you’re are my client and I don’t know your personal life,” hers and Doña Consuelo’s accounts show that stylists do gain substantive knowledge about their clients’ personal lives, but that they will not interject or volunteer an opinion that reflects that knowledge unless prompted to do so by client’s themselves. Not only does not taking sides or volunteering an opinion about clients’ life requires them to engage their skills for emotional labor, but at this particular salon, clients’ stories are further complicated by their experiences of migration, some of which are shared by stylists and might even be triggering for them and evoke “so much anguish—mucha angustia” and feelings of frustration and pain in themselves (I explore this further in the following section).

56 These shared experiences, however, help bring stylist emotionally closer to their clients. In talking to their stylists, for instance, clients feel relaxed and safe to volunteer information about their migratory status, which they know they share with some of the stylists and other clients, which as I’ve suggested in chapter one can lead to an open conversation about the situation of the local immigrant community at large, the problems that immigrants face and what potential solutions might look like. We can thus see that building relationships of trust and intimate knowledge is at the heart of stylist’s claim to professionalism and securing a clientele, and hence a livelihood, is contingent upon their success on this endeavor. But relationships of trust between clients and stylist also exceed the economic aspect and become nourishing and sustaining for the community that emerges around the shop.

“I listen to what they need from me”: Offering care and nurturing attention

On a particularly busy day of summer at the salon during what the stylists’ described as “graduation season,” Marisela and her sister Julia, both immigrants from Michoacán in their early thirties, came into the shop with four kids in toll, all between the ages of 3 and 5 years old approximately. Marisela was getting a hair-do and Julia had come along to help look after the kids, a girl and a boy who were Marisela’s and two boys who belonged to a third sister who was currently in labor at the hospital. While Doña Consuelo styled Marisela’s hair into an intricate up-do for a wedding party later that evening, Julia asked to get her brows done, thus leaving the four kids completely unattended. Claudia, who was exhausted from doing make-up all morning on graduating high-school students, signaled for her to lay on the stretcher. “Can you do threading?” Julia asked, to which Claudia replied she wasn’t familiar with the technique, “We use

57 wax,” she remarked. Claudia, who trained to become a stylist after dropping out of high school two years upon arriving to the United States, cleansed Julia’s eyebrow area gently with lotion and cotton wool, then used dark eyeshadow to trace a shape and showed Julia on a mirror how the finished result would look: “I would mostly take out hairs form this area” Claudia said, delicately hoovering her little finger over Julia’s lid, “and some from up here” she added, pointing her finger to the side of Julia’s forehead. After some back and forth Julia was finally satisfied with the shape and Claudia started applying the wax. She first tested the temperature on her inner wrist, then applied a small amount to Julia’s face and asked if it wasn’t too hot. Julia became visibly uncomfortable immediately after Claudia first pulled the wax, she winced and twisted on the stretcher. Noticing her discomfort, Claudia applied pressure with her finger in the areas where she had waxed and used an aloe lotion to help ease the stinging. Despite the kids running amok around her and pulling on Julia so that she was constantly raising her head to call on them, Claudia spoke gently to her and asked for approval before moving forward with each wax application. She asked her over and over to lay her head back and gently guided it with her hands back to the desired position. Finally, after just one brow was done, Julia, who seemed angered by the pain, said: “you know what, I can’t take it anymore, just stop. The wax is too irritating for me.” “Okay, let me just clean you up,” responded Claudia understandingly trying hard not anger the client further. Focusing on making Julia feel looked after, Claudia offered her more soothing lotion and provided an ice pack wrapped in cloth to help calm the pain, she also offered advice on how to treat her skin to reduce the inflammation or any other reactions she might have later. This interaction provides an example of how stylist’s work as intimate labor involves emotional labor, care labor and body manipulation. Claudia, already exhausted by a long morning on her feet, still offered Julia a gentle and caring touch, tended to her 58 needs and wants, comforted her when she was in pain and did not object to the children hoovering around them, despite the multiple interruptions they posed to her work process. Sharma and Black (2001) have pointed to stylists’ capacity for recognizing what a client needs in a particular moment as one of the skills engaged in making a client feel good, which they consider to be part of their job description. Often, making a client feel good may involve them suppressing/handling their own feelings and exhaustion (emotional labor), or providing physical relief to pain or discomfort (care work) under circumstances that may be challenging to them because their own affects may be triggered. In these cases, stylist can also mobilize their own experiences to show empathy and to offer clients a nurturing attention just as Claudia did with Julia. Sara’s recounting of a conversation she had with a client who had illegally migrated from Mexico several years back, and who shared with her that his mother was about to pass away back home, can offer some further insight into this process:

I told him, Te acompaño en tu dolor, I’m with you in your pain. It is very difficult to have someone we love go through this, but I can also tell you that what matters the most is what you give to people while they are alive, because when we are about to leave this… this body is just a container so we can feel, touch, and see, but what matters is what you feel and what you have made that person feel” and he said to me, “so do you think I should go [see her in Mexico]?” I told him, “well, we have to be here, there are a lot of ways to help and I think that you have been doing your part in helping her and supporting her all these years, and you have to be here now to support your children, your family that is here as well, and your mother knows that.” And he said, “yes, she told me to stay here, to do what I had to do” and I shared with him “you know, I lost someone as well, my son, more than three years ago, he was in Mexico and I couldn’t travel, so it was very hard for me, but he always asked me to take good care of his son, he always told me, ‘don’t worry about me but please take care of my son,’ so that is what I do every day,” and that helped him feel better. Sara’s use of her own personal story to offer solace to a client in pain shows how styling as intimate labor brings together affect and attention along with skilled

59 conversation and empathy for providing comfort. Her ability to navigate her own painful account while simultaneously engaging with the technical aspects of styling his hair –just as Claudia did while shaping Julia’s brow through her discomfort– point to what Toerien and Kitzinger have described as “navigating multiple involvements” as part of service work; that is attending to the relational aspects of the work (i.e. conversation, nurturing attention, emotions that come up) and the physical aspects (i.e. the actual techniques for haircutting) simultaneously (2007: 648). In listening to what clients are asking for, anticipating their needs and providing caring attentions and empathic understanding while dealing with their own personal exhaustion, grief or discomfort, stylists position caring and comforting a client at the center of their work. Attentiveness, however, is not in competition with their styling responsibilities, as they engage in both tasks at once, and oscillate back and forth between checking that the client is satisfied with the procedure and their affective and care needs for the duration of their appointment are being met. Both these engagements are at play all the time as part of their professional personae.

“A soft hand”: Navigating touch and personal boundaries

“Tienes la mano bien suavecita, you’re making me fall asleep” Jacinta, a young mother from Jalisco in her early twenties said to Claudia, in order to compliment her soft touch and how relaxed it was making her feel. Jacinta came into the shop one day looking to get her hair colored. Because her hair had been dyed a very dark hue Sara felt she could not guarantee her the results she was expecting, and so Jacinta resigned herself to getting a haircut. Sara had to run an errand, so it was Claudia who ended up cutting Jacinta’s hair. At the hair washing station, Claudia gently guided Jacinta’s head to the

60 sink, asked about the temperature of the water, and softly ran her fingers through her hair, prompting Jacinta’s comment about her softness of hand. Reaching out for the shampoo, Claudia’s torso stretched up above the client’s head, her breasts directly above the client’s face as Jacinta complimented her on her perfume “qué rico hueles,” she said, you smell nice. Claudia was taken aback by the compliment as she realized how close her body had been to Jacinta’s face, “gracias” she answered shyly. The work of styling demands closeness and touch in the process of providing services for bodily upkeep. Like any other labor, styling is performed through the body, but unlike most kinds of labor, it is also performed on the body. While providing a service, operators move in close to clients, they massage their scalps, gently touch their faces while doing their make-up or shaving them, even in a quick 15-minute haircut, to paraphrase Gloria Anzaldúa, the space between their bodies “shrinks with intimacy” (2012, 20). Closeness and touch prefigure hairstyling as an intimate labor as they involve bodily intimacy, which is not to be read exclusively in sexual terms, but rather as manipulating bodily parts for the comfort of clients (care labor). This includes the process of styling a client’s features, such as hair, brows, beard, and applying make-up and hair color for bodily upkeep and in order for their appearance to further align with clients’ self-ascribed identity (reproductive labor). But it is precisely this need for proximity and bodily manipulation, and the reproductive function they fulfill, that simultaneously contribute to stigmatize intimate labors, and prefigure them –styling included– as low- skilled, gendered and racialized forms of employment (Boris and Parreñas 2010: 2). The possibility that stylists be sexually harassed by their clients is ever present. Unprompted advances of a sexual nature as noted by Claudia and Miriam, the youngest of the stylists, happen regularly to them. Indeed, styling like waitressing and other 61 service-based jobs are particularly positioned for harassment to occur (Hall 1993), and the physical proximity demanded of styling further complicates this trait. The quotidian sexualization of stylists also opens the door to potential relationships if and when a stylist welcomes the sexual advances or feels attracted to one of her costumers (Guiffre and Williams 1994). Having had this experience previously Claudia shares with me how she handled it:

I had a little while ago a relationship… well, I wouldn’t call it a relationship, more like a past time with one of my clients, well, it was one of Sara’s clients. Imagine that when I met him he was about to get married, but his wife was in Mexico, so when he got married and came back here he wanted to keep doing the same. And I agreed to it at first but then I regretted it. I thought, what am I doing? And I started to keep my distance little by little.

Overall, Claudia reflected that from that experience she learned to better assess clients and to think twice before going out with them, as she is concerned about staying out of trouble both with their clients and their potential romantic partners or spouses.

As soon as I meet a client for the first or second time I try to find out everything about him, and that way I know, I can anticipate if he’s good for me or not. And, I mean, I’m not saying that I do this because I want or don’t want to go out with them, but simply because I don’t want to have any trouble with somebody else, because I know what people say about us stylists… When I asked what she meant by that she replied: “Well, they always say we are very coquetas, that we flirt with our clients.” Hence, in their exchanges with clients, stylists are forced to navigate the lines between offering a comforting touch and keeping clear personal boundaries because touch itself foregrounds a kind of intimacy. In their research about beauty therapy, Sharma and Black echo this notion when they touch on the need reported by the professional beauticians they interviewed to present themselves in a “serious,” meaning “desexualized,” manner so as not to give the wrong impression to their clientele (2001: 923). Because according to circulating discourses in Latin American

62 cultures “beauty culturalists are reputed to have loose sexual morals” (Candelario 2000: 132), it is imperative for stylist at Pretty & Groomed to master their skills to manipulate their client’s bodies in comforting and soothing fashion, while clearly indicating that they are doing it in the context of, and exclusively for, the duration of the service they are providing, and for an expected remuneration. Attentiveness, for stylists, engages complex work processes that are at once performed on their clients and embodied by themselves as intimate labor. These work processes meet at the intersections of body, trust, closeness, empathy, affection and various types of remunerated labor. Ultimately, building relationships of trust and intimate knowledge in the context of the salon, providing a nurturing attention and offering a soothing and gentle –yet context specific– touch, helps the salon feel like a safe, welcoming space for a clientele whom, as Sara indicates, might be lacking this welcoming attention or, as she puts it, “us Latinos are muy faltos de atención” elsewhere in the city as an immigrant population in an increasingly migrant-averse space.

II. PROFESSIONALISM IN THE WORK OF PRETTY & GROOMED STYLISTS

Assertive negotiation

“I can only guarantee a good job on the parts of your hair that haven’t been treated previously” said Sara, pointing to the roots of Jacinta’s hair (the same client as above) and the slight growth that showed her natural hair color. While it is true that the stylists at Pretty & Groomed often go out of their way to comfort clients and provide a service according to their needs and wants, it is also true that being assertive with their clients as to the limits of their abilities is a fundamental aspect of their work. “You need to start bringing them to get their hair cut from when they are very little, so they learn

63 that nothing is going to happen to them” explained Miriam, a mother herself, to the young mother of a small three-year-old boy who was crying and refusing to let her get anywhere close to him with the trimming machine. Finding a balance between what a client is asking for and what can be accomplished “with what they have” is key for stylists, and a subtle negotiation often takes place in these exchanges. “We can do a test on some strands and see if the color comes out” was Sara’s suggestion to Jacinta upon her insistence that she “please do whatever it takes but get this color off my hair.” In dealing with the fuzzy toddler Miriam enlisted the help of Fernando, Sara’s 40-year old brother from Monterrey, who had both more experience and more patience for dealing with small children during haircuts: “you don’t need to use the kiddy chair, you can sit on the big chair like your brothers” he offered the kid, and with that, the boy was motivated enough to let him get started, “I won’t use the machine” Fernando added. Stylist often have to find creative ways to guide clients towards a particular procedure or style that they think might suit them better, and as I will address later, these perceptions are often guided by racialized preconceptions mapped onto the bodies of immigrants of color, such as the majority of the clientele at Pretty & Groomed. Part of their professionalism, according to stylists themselves, comes from their capacity to engage in such negotiations and guide their clients towards something “realista,” something that can be achieved, as Doña Consuelo often jokes; something that stylists know how to accomplish and that they believe will look good and keep clients satisfied. As an earlier quote from Claudia points out, trying to steer a client on a different direction from what they are asking, because in the professional opinion of the stylist the look they request is either not achievable or might not suit them, is a tricky endeavor, “you have to be very patient and very polite.” Navigating these situations requires stylists 64 to mobilize certain skills anchored in their experience and abilities for communicating delicately. Stylist’s at Pretty & Groomed identified this as an aspect of their professionalism that is salient particularly because, as some of them intimated to me, they often find that “some clients, they come in and the shape of their head is really ugly and really weird and they want to go out looking all nice and good…and you think, but how?!” On a day when only Claudia and Fernando, who are not as experienced as either Sara or Doña Consuelo, where at the salon, an adolescent girl came in looking to get a

“long Bob,” an intricate haircut with a slant that starts at the nape of the neck and increases towards the chin. The following excerpt from my field notes described the interaction that ensued:

The girl was about to turn fifteen and was looking forward to her quinceañera party. She understood Spanish but communicated mostly in English, code- switching occasionally. She explained what she wanted done, Claudia, who doesn’t speak English seemed intimidated by the interaction. Then replied in Spanish that she didn’t do the Bob and told her she should come back tomorrow when Doña Consuelo would be in. The girl then reconsidered and explained she didn’t really wanted a Bob and showed her a picture. She said she just wanted a straight cut below the ears with no layers. Claudia showed the picture to Fernando to see if he was willing to do it. Fernando said he didn’t do the Bob either, but he gave Claudia some pointers on how to do a straight line like the one the young girl was asking for. He encouraged Claudia to try it. She hesitantly agreed, and the girl was willing to have her try it, she seemed determined to get her hair cut right then and there. (Field notes, Summer 2017) This passage as well as the previous quotes from this section, show how a negotiation develops between clients and stylists, and the back and forth that they engage in in order to display a professional approach to their work: they are honest about what they can and cannot do, both in terms of their training and the clients particular characteristics, but they are also willing to listen to what clients want from them and build on their experience to try new things, as Fernando suggested Claudia to do. By the 65 end of the haircut the young girl was pleased and discussing potential up-dos with Claudia for her fifteen-birthday party and speaking mostly in Spanish, which I took as a sign of confidence on her part –a further sign of the trust that stylist build with clients through their work. When I later asked Claudia why she had agreed to make the haircut after she had been so hesitant at first, she told me she did it because “After I told her I didn’t do the Bob and she agreed to a different style I felt like that was a job that I could guarantee, because I would never agree to do a look that I couldn’t guarantee the result unless the client takes responsibility.” Through their confidence in their experience and skills and in having sensitive and frank –albeit polite– conversations with clients, stylist can manage to provide their services in a way that safeguards their professional image while still making clients feel looked after, cared for, and trusting.

Skills and knowledge

When Jacinta, whom I introduced above, first came into the salon wanting to get her hair colored, Sara took her time assessing her. She sat her down at her chair, untied her pony-tail and gently ran her fingers through her hair, spreading it across her shoulders, inspecting it carefully. She held it up and let it fall one strand at a time, she looked at the roots of her crown, behind the ears, at the nape of the neck. She parted it down the middle and running her fingers all the way to the ends she paused to observe its fried edges. Then, she assertively started on her diagnosis:

Sara: You used black dye, right? Jacinta: [Shyly] Yes. Sara: [Still manipulating the client’s hair] Hmmm… you colored it about a year ago, true? Jacinta: [Mortified] Yes.

66 Sara: [Letting go of the hair] Ok, very well. Look, I can only guarantee a good job on the parts of your hair that haven’t been treated previously [signals the length of growth close to the roots of Jacinta’s hair]. You see, black dye doesn’t come off and no color takes hold on top of it. [Starts manipulating her hair again] You applied the color yourself, right? Jacinta: [Ashamed, contorting her face as if she had been caught doing something improper] Yes. Sara: [Satisfied to have been right] See, I can tell because the color is not all over your hair, there are places, like the back, where you didn’t spread it all over and your natural color comes through. Hmm… you used –don’t tell me– you used store-bought dye, right? Jacinta: [Again ashamed as though making a confession] Yes. Sara: What brand? Jacinta: One that I my sister brings from Mexico. [Sara shoots Claudia and me a look that says, “didn’t I tell you?”] Sara: [Authoritatively] Well if you don’t know the brand I cannot know what is in the dye. I can’t put anything on your hair unless I know what you used to treat it because it could do a lot of damage. (Field notes, Summer 2018)

Not only possessing but actually displaying their knowledge and skills in a way that is readable for clients, is another aspect through which stylists constitute their professionalism. Conducting ethnographic work at a hair salon, Soulliere found that “stylists communicate their expertise by providing professional advice and clarifying client instructions” and through the use of special products that allow them to distinguish their knowledge of styling from that of “laypersons” (1997: 53, 57). In this particular case, Jacinta’s visit to the salon coincided with a conversation I had with Sara during our interview in which she mentioned that women often lie to her about what they have done to their hair:

Us women we are… we hide always what we do because we think people won’t notice. I always ask [my clients] did you color your hair? “No.” Are you sure?, I ask again. “No.” And I’m like “well, here I can see that you colored your hair like six months ago.” “Oh! That’s right, I forgot” they tell me. “But do I still have the color?” they ask, and I tell them, “well of course! The color doesn’t come off. It fades out, but once it is on its there for good. So, if you ask me to do something to your hair, and I take down all your information, and you withhold information from me, then the color is not going to turn out good and you are going to blame me, so you’re hiding things from me and if I believe you, then what will you say? You are going to think that I don’t know how to do my job, but it is all because of the information that you are giving me.

67 Jacinta’s visit was a great opportunity for Sara to lay claim to her expertise both for Jacinta and for myself to witness. This explains, in part, why Sara’s exchange with Jacinta seemed a little bit inquisitorial and why at a given point she turned towards Claudia and me to communicate her frustration, but it also offers insight into stylist’s embodiment of professionalism. Through her gestures, the way she manipulates her client’s hair, her signaling to the reasons why she could tell what the Jacinta has done to her hair previously (self-applied, box dye) and so forth, Sara sets the tone for her client – and me as an observer– to respect her work and trust her knowledge of the craft.

As the most experienced stylist at Pretty & Groomed, Doña Consuelo is looked up to by all of the other stylists at the shop. She is also very respected by the salon-goers. Elena, a woman from Guanajuato in her forties who came to the United States as a teenager and now has four American-born children, first met Doña Consuelo five years back through Fernando, Sara’s brother, who also works at the shop. Her ex-husband was a close friend of Fernando from his days working as a construction worker. Ever since then, Doña Consuelo has been coloring Elena’s hair whenever “I don’t feel like doing it myself at home,” she tells me. This time she came into the salon to “start getting my hair under control” anticipating her daughter’s quinceañera party in late August. Anxious about how the lightening procedure was evolving she asked “Will this be the final color?” to which Doña Consuelo replied admonishingly:

No, niña, no. I’m working. Tú serena, stay calm. I am going to put on a treatment, but first I need to lighten your roots, but I’m going to wash the rest out because I don’t want to over-process the length and particularly the tips that are splayed. I’m going to wash it and then tone it. It will be ash blonde by the end, maybe an 8 or 9 in the blond palette. Like Doña Consuelo, stylists often communicate with their clients, using styling parlance, or what Soulliere has called “hair talk” (1997: 52). Their dominion of hair talk

68 affirms their mastery of the task but still heeds to the client’s concerns about how the process is coming along. Such “displays of expertise” after Soulliere, also help stylists position themselves as experts in relation to their clients. Gimlin has suggested that this is a way through which stylists at high-end salons who tend to upper-class clienteles may attempt to “nullify the status differences between them and their clients” (1996: 512). In this case, however, I see it as a mechanism for the opposite: because stylists and their clients share so many experiences leading to their migration and after arriving in the United States, their social proximity inside the salon is often only contested through stylists’ positioning as professionals within that space. This is not to say that it creates a hierarchy in terms of social position at large, but merely that inside the salon stylists consider themselves in charge, perform their professionalism, and expect their clients to acknowledge their expertise in their particular field the same was as they acknowledge their client’s expertise regarding their own professions. As I learned from Sara,

Most of our male clients they work in construction, and when they are… sometimes, when it’s their first time with me they are almost climbing inside the mirror, and they are all “arreglame aquí, cortame acá, adjust this, and that” but in time they trust me and it’s like I tell them, if I ask you to build a house I’m not going to be telling you how to do this and that, you’re the expert, so let me do my job and if by the end you don’t like it you can tell me to fix it but before I’m done… espérame tantito, wait a little bit, I’m just getting started and you don’t know how it is going to turn out but I do.

Taking money

“When you are a professional you can change your fees according to what you do and if clients are regulars or not,” said Sara on one occasion when she, her brother, Fernando whom she trained as a stylist herself, and me were the only ones at the salon. They were talking about the distribution of the space and possible adjustments to be made now that their female clientele was growing. They wondered if they could increase the

69 prices of their services, and Sara went through the stylists, who weren’t around, evaluating their potential one by one. Her assessment was that Doña Consuelo, Fernando and herself could get away with upping their fees, but Claudia and Miriam, who is her apprentice and hasn’t had any formal training, were still “green” or inexperienced, “están muy verdes” she noted and added that Miriam, in particular, is “muy necia” a very stubborn person who sometimes doesn’t budge well with clients’ demands.2 Ultimately Sara decided that she wouldn’t try to implement a fees-relative-to-skills system because she thought “it would mean that not everyone is benefitting [from the adjustment].”

Several issues come into play when stylists are charging for their services. As Sara relates, skills are a consideration, but not the only one. At Pretty & Groomed, each stylist takes their pay directly from clients but then immediately hands it over to Sara, except for their tips. Sara then looks at the registry notebook and calculates how much each stylist made for the day. Fifty percent of each stylist’s daily earnings goes to the salon and the remaining fifty percent to the individual stylist. It is Sara who sets the price for everything, but Miriam’s statement that “Sometimes I even give [clients] some of my services as a gift” indicates that they have some autonomy as to what the extent of each service entails. It is often the case that Miriam and Claudia, the two youngest stylists whom Sara described as “green” have a harder time negotiating the value of their work in the context of both the skills it requires and the multiple kinds of labor they are performing (emotional labor, care labor, styling, etc.). “How much is it if I only fixed his cut?” asked Claudia to Sara after she was done with a client who had been given a bad haircut at another place and had come in looking to get it fixed. “Well did you give him a haircut?” replied Sara, “Yes” said Claudia looking away from the client shyly, “then its 15 dollars as usual” Sara retorted. After the client paid and left, Sara told Claudia “If you had given 70 him a bad haircut and then fixed it then it would be different, you would have to do it for no charge, but if he comes in to get his hair fixed from someone else’s mistake then it’s a regular haircut.” In this anecdote, we can see an example of the logic of intimate labor as they relate to taking money. Because hairstyling as a profession, and particularly so in working-class beauty parlors, is considered a trade (Gimlin 1996: 513) and hairstyling as caring and attention (like a mother cutting or braiding their children’s hair) is akin to a “labor of love” and thus a reproductive, non-remunerated chore (Boris and Parreñas

2010), stylists, particularly young ones, often have a hard time toeing the line between those two narratives when the time comes to ask for compensation. Like Miriam, gifting some of her services to make it clear to her clients that she is not after their money, stylists often feel pressured to increase their burden in “unseen” (or rather underappreciated) aspects of their work such as their emotional labor, their care labor and the reproductive tasks they perform in order to justify what they are actually charging for the technical aspects of their work which are often, and wrongly as I have tried to convey, described as low-skill.

III. MEDIATING NOTIONS OF MODERNITY, BEAUTY AND RACE

“Now we spray the perfume. With the heat [of the styling tools] we’ll eliminate the low and mid notes, but the high notes will remain, the smell will change but it gives a nice touch” explained Doña Consuelo to Claudia as she observed how she did a client’s hair following an innovation of her own that includes perfuming the hair before styling it for a special occasion, such as a wedding or graduation, that her clients seem to request a lot. Beyond hairdressing, stylists like Doña Consuelo often position themselves as

71 “experts in style, contemporary fads, and attractiveness more generally” (Gimlin 1996: 513). During my fieldwork at the salon, a couple of the women I interviewed indicated that this was their first time getting their hair colored or otherwise processed with highlights, conditioning treatments, and so on. An even larger amount of them revealed that they only started either coloring/processing their hair or going to the beauty parlor after they arrived in the United States. Rather than an indication of a lack of styling services in their countries of origin, this points to the diversity of immigrants’ experiences before migration. I will explore this diversity further in the next chapter, however, some of the reasons they offered for this where that salon-going wasn’t usual in their hometown, they could not afford it, were not interested in it, or they migrated at a very young age. Gabriela, a young woman in her early twenties from the state of Hidalgo, Mexico who came to the United States after his father gained legal status in the 1987 amnesty, jokingly shares that “in Mexico I only went [to the beauty parlor] to get my hair cut and I used tinte de cajita, color out of a box at home, but once I arrived here I said,

‘well I’m working hard, why not treat myself?’ And then I began styling it [at the salon], [or rather] ‘frying it’ as my mom says.” This dynamic, particular to Pretty & Groomed as an ethnic hair salon that caters mostly to Latin American immigrant and immigrant-born clientele, furthers stylist’s claims to their field of expertise. Because clients are at times unfamiliar with styling and grooming practices that, however pervasive worldwide, are suddenly made more affordable or readily accessible after migration, they rely on stylists, whom they perceive to be more attuned and who present themselves as such, to guide them as they find their footing around styling options. By participating in the larger culture of styling, beauty and fashion of their receiving country, patrons, as Faria suggests, can “project upward 72 mobility” and cosmopolitanism (2013: 320), especially those for whom the experience of the beauty parlor had previously seemed foreign or unattainable. Rosa, a woman in her mid-forties from Estado de México, was one of the clients who shared with me that she didn’t use to go to the salon back home. I met her on a Saturday when Sara had gone in early to color her hair for the upcoming bautizo of the kid of friend from her church. When I arrived Rosa and Sara were discussing the final hair color that Rosa would be left with. Rosa wanted something slightly blonde, as did her partner who was present during the conversation and made his preference known, but

Sara kept steering her towards a dark brown look with highlights. She said this was a better choice because they are both “morenas” and if they wore blonde hair tones they would “have to wear make up every day.” In her roll of stylist Sara felt compelled to convince Rosa not to try a hair color that, in her opinion, would not look “natural” on her because of her brown skin. By identifying herself as morena as well, Sara let’s her client know that she shares her experience and speaks from a place of knowing what it means to aspire to hegemonic beauty standards i.e. having blonde hair. At the same time, she positions herself as experienced in what looks and doesn’t look good for different skin tones, and by her own experience, for brown skin tones in particular. When I later asked Sara to elaborate on the idea that blonde did not suit brown complexions she told me that she tries to offer her clients options “to look as good as they can with what they have” (my emphasis) which, as I’ve suggested, is a responsibility that all the stylists at Pretty & Groomed take to heart. Underlying this idea is racial reading that privileges whiteness as more beautiful than (any position of) otherness, but the logic is not as straightforward as it seems. On one hand, I read Sara’s answer as a suggestion that when brownskinned clients want to 73 wear their hair significantly lighter than their natural hair color, they are attempting to imitate something that they are not, to access a beauty standard that eludes them, thus Sara’s indication that they would need to “wear make up every day,” to assist in the beautification process. On the other hand, insisting that clients “work with what they have” is a complicated notion, because as Sara’s reasoning also suggests, it can be empowering to clients to realize that they don’t have to change who they are to be beautiful and look good. In other words, as Candelario has shown “the beauty shop, then, can be analyzed as a site where hegemonic […] tropes simultaneously are produced and problematized” (2000: 129, my emphasis), and Sara’s logic could simultaneously be interpreted as a way to center brownness, and particularly the brown bodies of the majority of her immigrant clientele, as beautiful in the context of hegemonic beauty discourses that suggest otherwise. The work of stylists has often been described as a means through which clients can better express and embody their identity (Gimlin1996; Soulliere 1997; Candelario 2000). But at the same time, and maybe more so in the context of ethnic beauty parlors, stylists can use their position to police what a particular identity should look like according to their own preconceptions. Both the stylists and the clientele at Pretty & Groomed associated being Latina or Latino, and Mexican in particular, with having dark skin, brown hair and eyes and facial features associated with Latin American indigenous populations.3 This was immediately apparent to me as clients whom I spoke with often mistook my lighter skin, light brown hair and blue eyes to mean that I wasn’t Mexican (I address this further in the introduction). It was also apparent in stylists’ opinions about clients’ choices. For example, one time in particular, a regular client, an immigrant woman in her mid-twenties who refused my request to be interviewed, came into the shop to get her 74 hair dyed slate gray. After she left, a discussion between the stylists ensued and they broke into two bands: Doña Consuelo and Claudia disliked the final result, Doña Consuelo because she “doesn’t know why people nowadays are into crazy hair colors” and Claudia because she thought that “fantasy hair color doesn’t bode well with skin tones that are morenos” and they both coincided that “it made [the young woman] look más morena,” thus echoing notions that darker skin tones are not desirable. Sara, her brother Fernando, and Miriam, however, thought the young woman looked very modern and celebrated that she was doing something bold, which they suggested they don’t see as much among the Mexican immigrant community. The implication here was that she was doing something bold and modern in contrast to what Doña Consuelo and Claudia’s position indicates as a more traditional and “skin-tone-appropriate” approach that might be prevalent within the woman’s (and the stylists’) immigrant community. A few days later, Sara noticed that her client had posted a picture of her new hairstyle on Facebook and while there had been many positive comments, some people had expressed a similar view to Consuelo’s and Claudia’s. When I asked to see the picture, I noticed a comment in particular that said that she looked like a viejita, an old woman. Sara’s assessment of the negative comments was that the people who commented were simply not caught up with trends. As I will address further in the next chapter, Latin American beauty standards have been heavily influenced by hegemonic western notions of beauty, thus light skin and blue eyes are a source of privilege and “the idealized expression of femininity,” (González-López 2008: 149) sharply contrasted with indigenous and black phenotypes racialized as less attractive and animal-like (Candelario 2000; Calafell 2001). This notions or racial privilege are further reinforced in the United States after migration.

75 However, they are also contested by vindications of indigeneity and being Morena (dark- skinned) as a source of ethnic beauty and pride. In the previous vignette, we can see how these tropes of race, modernity and identity come into play. Sara in particular did not share Claudia’s opinion that the color did not suit her client’s skin tone because she considered “fantasy colors” to be on the realm of modern trends that are not intended to look natural. As opposed to Rosa’s intention to have blonde hair, which would not register as an ironic gesture, this other client, despite potentially looking like an older woman, was young by every indication including her “bold” choice of hair color. In other words, in the context of negotiating performances of ethnicity and identity, stylists’ position as bearers of modernity (Fluri 2009) and fashion trends will often come in tension with normative depictions of race and tradition (Faria 2013). Navigating these tensions –between traditional and modern, between whitened beauty and brownness as beautiful, between homeland practices and practices in migration– and guiding clients through them as well, is part of stylists’ quotidian tasks. It marks their work at once as a site of personal, professional and cultural investment, and it highlights their contributions to both the reproduction and critical approaches to their community and its ways of existing in their migratory context.

CONCLUSIONS

The complexities underlying the work and everyday experiences of Sara, Doña Consuelo, Miriam, Claudia, and Fernando, the stylists at Pretty & Groomed, reveal the impact of their labor across scales. From the realms of the intimate and the personal to those where widely circulated notions of modernity, fashion, and the expression of

76 immigrant identities come in tension with pervasive narratives around race, ethnicity and hegemonic beauty, stylists help clients navigate their position across these spaces when it comes to their personal appearance. Framing styling as an intimate labor helps situate it as an embodied process that produces embodied experiences of attentiveness, care and affect. It also signals stylist’s abilities to provide intimate and nurturing attention in the context of work processes that intersect with care labor, emotional labor, body work, beauty work, and ultimately represent a form of reproductive labor: they enable client’s continued insertion in the community through the upkeep of an image that allows them to find work, meet common standards of care of the self, and facilitate the alignment of their appearance and their self-ascribed identity. Developing relationships of trust, marked by a nurturing care and attention, and a gentle, yet professional, bodily closeness with their clients is at the center of stylist’s work. They are a required feature in order for them to familiarize themselves with clients’ taste and make them feel properly tended to and looked after. It is through these relationships that stylists can build a steady clientele and secure a livelihood. Going the extra mile to make clients feel appreciated and pampered, often offering extra services for free, is a way for stylists to show the extent of their investment in clients’ comfort and well-being beyond monetary gains. While this practice may disavow the value of the reproductive and caring aspects of the labor of styling, it is also a means to solidify relationships with clients in their early stages. However, most of the time stylists’ investment in clients greatly surpasses their economic gains, instead, stylists are genuinely concerned with their clients’ satisfaction and comfort. It becomes readily apparent that the services provided by stylist are more taxing that they would seem. Beyond having to stand on their feet for long periods of time – recall in chapter one Claudia’s need for a cupping session on account of back pains–, 77 stylists have to work with their emotions on a regular basis. Listening to clients’ troubles and complaints, or dealing with client’s anger or disdain, and working under stressful or distracting situations –loud music, children running around, etc.– can all be emotionally and physically exhausting for stylists. However, part of their own understanding of professionalism implies controlling their emotions for the benefit of their clients. Empathy, regardless, is an emotion in particular that stylists cultivate and project onto their clientele in order to help them go through uncomfortable procedures (e.g. depilation) or when they volunteer a painful story in the course of their visit to the beauty parlor. Stylists mastery of the two-pronged work process of performing emotional labor (or other relational work) and technical procedures simultaneously unveils the complexity of this work. The attentiveness characteristic of stylists and their work can be qualified through their expressions of assertiveness and their abilities to negotiate. Without taking away from their caring and attention, stylists position themselves as professionals and experts in the particular context of the salon, and in opposition to their clients, through setting boundaries to the reach of their work, guiding clients towards what they think works best for them, displaying their expertise through showcasing their knowledge of fashion, trends, techniques and technical terms, and ultimately, charging for their services. Taking money in exchange for services of caring and attention delineates styling as labor, but it also engages aspects of reproductive work and gendered labor often considered non-remunerated “labors of love.” However, these very services are so essential to their work that they can mean the difference between turning a client into a regular or having a one-time walk-in (Toerien and Kitzinger 2007: 655). And while stylists are very aware of this and make an explicit effort to perform according to these expectations, they have a hard time locating it as part of what clients pay for. Instead, 78 they position attentiveness as complementary to their styling services. That is, although they consider it part of their job, they view their fee to represent their technical skills, and all the rest of the attentions they offer their clients are described as an “extra” service, a gift. Interestingly, among the many attentions they provide to their clients, stylists at Pretty & Groomed take seriously their roles as beauty pundits in helping them navigate their way around modern trends. In these exchanges, racialized notions of hegemonic beauty and western aesthetic often come through and are simultaneously contested and transformed through client’s individual tastes, particular homeland traditions and practices, and immigrant-specific expressions of culture, style, and tradition. These engagements further reveal the complexity of the everyday work that stylists perform. By centering their experiences and their understanding of what they provide to their community, we can begin to appreciate the value of their work beyond descriptions of skill and economic gains, and center instead their contributions to the well-being of their clientele, and their larger immigrant community, in ways that are often overlooked. As sociologist Paula Black emphasizes, “the well-groomed woman is produced […] through the work of another woman who too is required to sell her bodily performance as part of the experience being consumed” (2002: 11). Thus, centering women’s labor and its role in social reproduction is critical for feminist analyses of the beauty parlor. In the next chapter, I turn my attention precisely to that “well-groomed woman” Black alludes to. I focus on the female clients at Pretty & Groomed, their expectations when attending the Spanish-speaking beauty parlor, and the negotiations they engage in in terms of style, beauty, service and gendered performance.

79

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Notes

1. Through the text, the voice of Fernando is never present because my interview parameters as

presented to and approved by the IRB included exclusively female interlocutors. Thus, every

mention of Fernando comes from my observations, field notes, and conversations that took place

outside of the context of formal interviews.

2. We can see an example of what Sara is referring to in the anecdote I relate above in which Miriam

gives up on cutting a child’s hair and Fernando steps in to do it instead.

3. I use Latino and Latina only when my informants self-identified as such. None of them identified

as gender-nonconforming nor referred to their community as Latinx.

80 Chapter 3. “I get the look I want”: immigrant women as clients in the Spanish-speaking beauty parlor

“I like it. I like to look good, to feel good” says Elena of why she likes “getting my hair done at the salon when I have the chance… and the money” she remarks. Elena arrived in the United States illegally almost thirty years ago. She was then 15 years old and was brought to work as a domestic worker at the household of an immigrant family from her hometown in Guanajuato who had established in Houston. After two years working there she met her husband, a Mexican man whom she was introduced to at a party and whose family offered to take her in when her male employer tried to sexually abuse her, an aspect of her story that Elena declined to narrate further during our interview. Together they had four children and relocated to Austin before she decided to leave him on account of his repeated infidelity. It was through her husband, who is friends with Fernando, Sara’s brother, that she learned about Sara’s beauty parlor. In fact, Elena had been Sara’s client since before she opened Pretty & Groomed. Like Elena, the majority of Pretty & Groomed female clients are working class immigrants mostly from Mexico, but also from other Latin American countries, who have found their way to the salon through their spouses and word of mouth recommendations. Some of them are undocumented migrants, while others have managed to secure their residency —or are in the process of doing so. Some have been born here to immigrant parents and consider themselves a part of the immigrant community. Some of them have known Sara for many years, and others, like Jacinta, the young woman from Jalisco that I referenced in the previous chapter, had just discovered the salon through a close friend and were looking to give it a try.

81 I asked Elena about how often she comes in and she explains that mostly for special occasions, “right now it had been a while since I came to the salon, but I usually always color my hair [at home].” Anticipating her daughter’s quinceañera later in the summer, she came to the salon to get her hair professionally colored from her usual red to a light blond. She turned to Doña Consuelo because she trusts her to do a fine job “there’s a new beauty parlor that opened near my house, but I said ‘No. Más vale viejo conocido que nuevo por conocer, better to stick to my tried and true.’ What if they mess me up before my daughter’s party and God help me, Dios me libre –me les voy a morir ahí, I would drop dead right then and there.” Elena’s story interweaves the two main motivations reported by women for their visits to Pretty & Groomed in order have beauty procedures done. The first one is a discourse articulated in terms of pleasure and pampering (Sharma and Black 2001; Black 2002), “I like to look good, to feel good.” The second one is articulated in terms of necessity, up-keep, and the burden placed on women to cultivate their femininity through body-disciplining practices (Wolf 1992; Candelario 2000; Faria 2013); of grooming practices that are necessary for the performance of everyday life, such as looking put together for work-related purposes, that become exacerbated on the verge of special occasions, such as upcoming parties, special celebrations that have a particular ethnic and cultural meaning and symbolism, and even romantic difficulties. But how do women negotiate their appearance in this context? What role do the expectations and demands of their spouses, families and society at large play in their decision making while at the beauty parlor? What are women trying to project through their looks and choices at the hair salon? And how are these choices related to their racial, gendered, and ethnic experiences of migration? These are some of the questions that I will address in this chapter. 82 The experiences of the women who come to Pretty & Groomed offer an insight into Mexican immigrant’s women’s lives, as part of a larger mosaic of Latin American immigrants living in South Austin. In this chapter I will explore these experiences as they coalesce in the context of the ethnic beauty parlor, complicating them through the lenses of gender, race and consumption. I begin with an analysis of women’s motivations for attending the beauty parlor. I approach this by centering their desires and expectations, but also by troubling the ways in which those desires and expectations are shaped by structural aspects, such as needing to look a particular way for work purposes or to follow culturally-specific notions of gendered presentation. Next, I look at how ideals of emphasized femininity, social expectations, racialized notions of beauty and identity, and consumption and social mobility mediate women’s visit to the ethnic beauty parlor. Finally, I explore the power dynamics that emerge between women and their stylists as they negotiate their loyalty and lobby for a good service.

I. NEGOTIATING PLEASURE, HARD WORK AND SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS THROUGH SALON- GOING PRACTICES

“Why not treat myself?”: Hard work, pleasure and reward

“Just for fun, for a change. I want to see how I look” was Lupita’s reason to get highlights on the day I met her at Pretty & Groomed. Lupita migrated from Guanajuato over 10 years ago, just shy of finishing high-school; this was her first time ever getting her hair colored professionally either here or back in Mexico and she was visibly excited about it. Like Elena, who takes pleasure in looking good, Lupita is curious to play with her looks for fun, for her own enjoyment. This narrative is akin to what U.K.-based sociologist Paula Black has described in her research among beauty parlor clients as

83 “pampering”, an experience that “is not about necessity but about desire” and “about escape” (Black 2002: 4). Through pampering, women can luxuriate in experiences that bring them pleasure, allow them –though temporarily– to get away from everything and help distract them from their worries. Black posits that pampering operates as a mechanism through which salon-goers “negotiate the multiple demands that they experience” in their everyday lives (2002: 3). While it is a useful concept, the notion of pampering needs to be qualified for the context of this particular beauty parlor, where, as I have addressed in the first chapter, women often get long beauty procedures done in the company of other –or all– their family members, including specially their children, who constantly look to them for attention while they are in the midst of their treatments. However, despite them not being able to ‘unplug’ in the traditional ways described by Black, some of the women I interviewed still frame their experience at the salon around discourses of enjoyment and desire, of negotiating the demands of their daily lives through a rewarding experience, if not exactly around ‘escape’ and self-care. For Mexican immigrants like the women who go to Pretty & Groomed, enjoyment and desire as expressed by the notion of pampering, is experienced in a culturally specific manner that is tied to playfulness, change, refreshing their image, and as I argue below, reward, rather than relaxation and detachment. That is, within their immigrant communities these women actively construct and signify salon going as part of everyday life in their own terms and according to their own needs and aspirations. Black adequately notes that while “stress” is often mobilized as a justification for pampering, it is a term that “allows for certain level of glossing over differences between social groups” (2002: 6) thus belying its emergence as a particularly classed concept, and bourgeois at that. By focusing on working-class immigrant women’s motivations for 84 going to the salon, we can trace their appropriation and deployment of notions such as ‘pampering’ or as they call it “darme un gusto,” treating myself, in a way that aligns with their own experiences. Working as housekeepers, cashiers, cooks, waitresses and gas station operators on a salary of 10 to 18 dollars an hour, means that treating themselves to a 100-dollar hair coloring service or other similar procedure, is a significant investment relative to almost a day’s work for some of them. Hence, the notion of darse un gusto, or treating one’s self emphasizes the rewarding, rather than the relaxing aspects of salon going practices.

In fact, none of the clients I interviewed at Pretty & Groomed cited either stress or relaxation as the logic underlying their visit to the salon. This may well be explained by the fact that, while they are there, women aren’t commonly relieved from their mothering and other familial duties. However, that may not be the only reason. Rather, it is likely that the notion of stress has not been entirely internalized by immigrant women, who will most often relate to feeling nervous or worried, rather than stressed.

Five years into our marriage my husband had a motorcycle accident. He was in the hospital for two months and is now in a wheelchair… they gave him a 5 percent chance of ever walking again. After the accident, Lupita, who shared this story with me, became the sole provider for her household. While the story of her life seemed incredibly stressful, Lupita did not refer to it as such; when I asked her about what her worries she answered optimistically that she had none, “because I think that there’s a solution for everything… except death,” she noted. When I asked what she did for fun, however, Lupita responded that she enjoyed going to the gym and exercising, because it helps her deal with the tensions from life and work.

85 Like Lupita, other clients I interviewed do not share in the experience of pampering or treating themselves at the hair salon in terms of stress-relief or calming their nerves, despite the many tensions they may deal with in their everyday life. When I asked informants how they deal with their worries and concerns, none of their responses include going to the beauty parlor but rather a lazy day at home, a short vacation, exercising, or like Pilar notes, cooking for pleasure. “I’m a fan of cooking” Pilar shares, and notes that now that she works from home selling baked goods, her work is actually what relaxes her the most. Lupita, for instance, took on going to the gym after her husband’s accident because he had to join a gym as part of his rehabilitation. The habit of doing something to release the tension, or having a hobby, is mostly a practice that the women I interviewed reported picking up after migrating. While Lupita has enjoyed playing sports her whole life, and Pilar has enjoyed cooking ever since she was a young woman, back home in Mexico this took the form of quotidian life rather than a dedicated leisurely activity. For Lupita, it was walking long distances in their hometown from her house to her school, or to run errands, and playing on her school’s soccer team. For Pilar, it was using her family member’s birthdays and every holiday as an excuse to bake delicious treats and traditional desserts. In fact, going to the gym as a wellness practice among Latina immigrants has often been described as a result of acculturation, arguing that Latina women consider leisurely activities a luxury that is not accessible to them, and caring for themselves is not in accordance to their self-sacrificing marianista –religious– values (D’Alonzo 2012: 125). I argue, however, that the women I interviewed are happy to treat themselves when framed as a reward for their hard work, a feature that combines both their personal values –whether informed by religion or not– and validates their struggle as self-made women. I have mentioned before that Pretty & Groomed caters primarily to a working- 86 class clientele, and, not by coincidence that the women whom I interviewed work almost exclusively in the service industry. Whether it be as a cook at the kitchen grill, or a cashier at the register of fast food restaurants and gas stations, as waiters at Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants, or as housekeepers at private homes and hotels, their work history shows them moving from initially restrictive, poorly remunerated jobs upon arrival, to better-paying ones, either working for themselves, or at better positions, in a matter of years; often going from one job to another in the course of a couple of months. “When I arrived from Guanajuato I started working with my aunt, cleaning houses” shares Lupita, a woman in her early thirties that came into Pretty & Groomed to get highlights “for a change.”

I did that for about three years. Then I found this other job at a resort that paid better. I started as a housekeeper for the rooms, now I’m supervisor. It’s a similar job but I have to make sure that the rooms are properly cleaned, and I supervise other housekeepers. Lupita went from earning 70 dollars a day working with her aunt, to earning 150 dollars a day supervising housekeepers at a resort, a job that she considers is less demanding because she no longer has to clean the rooms herself, but only occasionally lend a hand to housekeepers who are running behind on their schedules. Lupita found this job through a neighbor who worked at that same place. She has been a supervisor for 5 years now and she’s already reached the highest paying position at that company but has no intention of leaving her job any time soon because she has a good rapport with her employer and with her co-workers. Rosa’s story offers a more detailed view of how she managed to get settled after arriving in Austin.

When we arrived, we lived with my brother. […] I started working at a tortillería, cleaning, from 3:00 AM to 12:00 PM. I lasted three months, but then my sister asked me if I wanted to help her clean houses and so I left to clean houses with 87 her and that is what I do now, but on my own. […] [My husband] started working the day after we arrived with my brother, they do repairs, lay floors, yardas (gardens), they do everything. So… he started working, I started working, the kids started going to school, and like a month later my sister asked me if I wanted to grab an apartment by myself with my family. A cousin of mine helped me grab it, with his papers, and so I moved into an apartment with my children and [my husband]. All of the women I interviewed at Pretty & Groomed had been able to establish themselves in the United States aided by their families locally and by pervasive Spanish- speaking immigrant networks that they are able to mobilize upon migrating. Following Pessar, immigrant networks are fundamental “for many people in developing countries who lack educational and financial resources” as they “provide a valuable form of social capital” (1999: 57). Indeed, Massey’s theory of social capital in migration describes this as the mechanism by which immigration becomes self-perpetuating “because [it] creates the social structure necessary to sustain [itself]” (2015: 284). It is through these networks, that newcomers initially learn to navigate life in the United States, and they achieve social mobility by relying on these pre-existing structures to eventually find new sources of employment and achieve better living conditions. Economic migrants have constituted the bulk of Latin American migration to the United States, including from Mexico, ever since the turn of the twentieth century (Massey 2015). Texas, in particular, has a population of over 38 percent Hispanics of any race (U.S. Census 2010) and, in the city of Austin, self-identified Hispanics make up over 35 percent of the population. The state’s historic ties to Mexico and its location, sharing a border with four Mexican states, have long made it the most popular destination for Mexican immigrants coming to the United States (White et al. 2015). A series of structural conditions, namely a growing demand for so-called “low-skill,” low-wage, and heavily gendered labor necessary to support the burgeoning service industry in industrialized and developed economies, have also facilitated women’s increased 88 migration for insertion in blue-collar, operating jobs, and domestic work in these locations (Sassen-Koob 1986; Chang 2000). Salon-goers at Pretty & Groomed fall tightly under this description; they are hard- working immigrants who take pride on their accomplishments. Because it constitutes a major motivation for migration, being able to provide for their family through their hard work is a central part of the identity of all of the woman I talked to. Aside from contributing to support their families in Austin, most of the women I interviewed send money back home to their families in Mexico at least once a year in the form of remittances, which, as reported in Forbes by political analyst Dolia Estevez (2016), have recently displaced oil revenue as Mexico’s main source of income, reaching 24.8 billion dollars by the end of the 2016. It’s no surprise then, that rather than framing their enjoyment and pleasure in terms of stress relief or even self-care, they consider these occasional visits to the salon “for fun” a well-deserved treat that follows their hard work and hard-earned money: a reward. Like Gabriela, who upon arriving to the United States started going to the beauty parlor noting that “well, if I’m working, por qué no darme el gusto?,” meaning “why not treat myself?” and Elena, who frames spending money on her appearance in terms of autonomy and self-determination:

I do facials, I go to clinics… if I want to get thin, I get thin, if I want to get fat I get fat… however I want to look… how I want to see myself, that’s what I do and that’s what I get done because I always say that is why I work. We could thus venture that with economic self-sufficiency and the pride of being able to provide for their families, both in the United States and back home, women experience a transformation of self-confidence and self-determination. Feminist sociologist Gloria González-López (2005) reflected on this process regarding sexual autonomy among immigrant women who, upon gaining paid employment and earning

89 their own money, become confident enough to deny their husbands sex, whereas back in Mexico they felt they didn’t have this choice. Similarly, through paid employment, women like Elena and Gabriela feel entitled to spend money on themselves more often than they did before migrating, albeit as a reward, a fun treat or, as we will see next, anticipating a special occasion.

“Una manita de gato”: Looking good for every occasion

“I’m not doing so good with my partner and I said, well, I’m going to go to the salon to change myself a little bit” reflected Anita, a young woman from Veracruz in her early twenties. She wanted to get her hair colored and a new haircut hoping it would help her smooth out an argument she had had with her partner and rekindle his interest on her, as she implied having doubts about his faithfulness. As a mother of three daughters, Anita also worries that her children’s well-being is not a priority for her current partner, who is not their father and often puts his own son’s needs first. Anita’s visible worry about the state of her relationship and her saddened expression stand in sharp contrast to that of other salon-goers who had more festive reasons to be there. Gabriela, for instance, came into the salon for “una manita de gato,” a colloquial saying similar to ‘getting spruced up’ for her son’s bautizo, which would take place the following day. While overwhelmed by all the details of party planning as a first-time mother, Gabriela who is barely in her twenties, was decidedly excited about the celebration. Yet other clients, like Jacinta, come in on a rush pleading with Sara to “please do whatever it takes but get this color off of my hair. I cannot stand it anymore!” Working as the hostess for a restaurant in Kyle, Jacinta needs to look sharp for work and was enticed to try Pretty & Groomed upon a friend’s recommendation. Jacinta cites her

90 despair with her current looks, noting that she is a single mother whose income depends largely on tips, suggesting that her appearance plays a big role in her work. Indeed, being conventionally attractive to men, in heteronormative terms, is an unstated but essential component of many job descriptions, including waitressing and, incidentally, hairdressing (Guiffre and Williams 1994; Gimlin, 1996). Whether it be a long-term practice, like maintaining a look for work purposes, or a one-time thing, like getting a hair-do for a party or a particular look that cannot be achieved at home, these women’s motivations to go to Pretty & Groomed are a far removed from Lupita’s adventurous desire to change her looks just “for fun.” Instead, these rationales are framed less in terms of enjoyment and more in terms of attending a pressing need or fulfilling a requirement to look good according to hegemonic beauty notions for reasons related to work or social engagements. In fact, echoing Caroline Faria’s findings among salon-goers in South Sudan (2013), aside from a necessity, the women I interviewed commonly framed getting these procedures as a personal responsibility.

When I asked Elena about what the main worry in her mind was at the moment, she immediately referred to her daughter’s birthday party and particularly the way everything, including herself, had to turn out perfectly. She said,

My daughter’s party, that’s the only thing that has me going crazy right now [laughs]. Yes [laughs again], si por eso estoy aquí – that’s why I’m here! I have to look the most excellent for her. She’s my last girl. I want to give her sus quince años [party], like they say “tirar la casa por la ventana,” to spare no expense. The dance, the ceremony, the dress, all the typical things, you know, the surprise dance and the service “la misa”, the chambelanes1, everything has to be perfect. There is much to be said about quince años parties in the migratory context as a coming of age ritual that is anchored on the reproduction of gendered roles in a patriarchal culture (Davalos 1996); or about the role they have played in strengthening 91 support systems among transnational immigrant communities (Rodríguez 2013); even about how their symbolism as a transnational Latin American tradition has been deployed by young women as a sign to protest anti-immigration laws right here in Austin (Prado 2018). But sadly, this discussion greatly exceeds the purposes of this research. All those issues aside, Elena’s visit to the salon a month in advance in order to start preparing for the big event speaks of her anxieties about what Black describes as “a sense of appropriateness,” that is to align her looks to her aspirations regarding class, gender, age (particularly projected age), and so forth in order to appropriately convey “feminin[ity] and respect[ability]” through the use of specifically gendered grooming practices (2002: 8-9). Her insistence on having to “mirarme lo más excelente,” that is to look as best as possible for her daughter’s party, and to make sure “all the typical things” of a quinceañera celebration turn out perfect, are an expression of the burden placed on women to perform motherhood, femininity, tradition, ethnicity, class and even age in socially sanctioned ways (Wolf 1992). In that sense, the success of the party and Elena’s role in it, are taken to be a reflection of her own success: as a dutiful mother who organized the perfect party, an attractive woman who looks her best, a Mexican immigrant who honors her ethnic and cultural traditions, and a hard-working woman who is able to spare no expense to celebrate her daughter’s coming of age (Barros 2013). These expectations are further shaped by traditional values around gender stereotypes of her homeland, specifically those that equate womanhood with motherhood and motherhood with self-sacrifice (Lagarde 2014). Furthermore, as Mexican anthropologist Magdalena Barros points out, for immigrant women who, like Elena, come from a poor background and did not have a chance to experience their own coming of age party, being able to procure a party for their daughters in the United States that, even away from their homeland, faithfully 92 preserves the main aspects of the tradition, is of the utmost importance. Importantly, this is tied to the significance that motherhood has among these women as “an opportunity to resolve some of their unfinished issues as women” (González-López, 2003). But it is also tied to women’s burden in migration to keep alive certain cultural and religious traditions associated with womanhood and motherhood, such as quince años celebrations and bautizos (Goldring 2001). This feeling of being pressured to perform motherhood in an exemplary way by successfully organizing a celebration that, in the context of the United States, replicates the Mexican tradition and its cultural significance, was echoed by other women I spoke to. Gabriela, a young mother who migrated from the state of Hidalgo, Mexico upon finishing high-school, had been scrambling all morning on the day of our interview with preparations leading to her son’s baptism. Gabriela had brought her two-year-old son to the hair salon to get a haircut early in the morning and, after taking him home for his nap, had come back to the salon to get her hair done bringing along abuelita, her partner’s grandmother who had come from Hidalgo for the party. Up until she became a mother,

Gabriela recalls, “I knew exactly nothing concerning home-making,” and thus, with the baptism upon her she enlisted the help of abuelita to prepare the banquet for the event. However, under the pressure to live up to the expectations placed by their social circle around their children’s landmark celebrations, the family is not the only resource women turn to, as sometimes the family is their main source of pressure. Instead, we see that the beauty parlor plays a central role in guiding women like Elena and Gabriela, as they navigate their anxieties to look the part for their social engagements. This is one of the reasons why I’ve made a case throughout this thesis of understanding hairdressing as a form of reproductive labor. Stylists offer their clients recommendations on how to approach changing their hair color, for instance, not on a single session and not right 93 before the big event, but gradually, like Elena was doing. They can also recommend looks or up-dos that are current and fitting to the event in question, taking into account what the client wants but also “what they have to work with,” as Sara often reminds them, namely their age, hair type, skin color, hair color, and so on, as I addressed in the previous chapter. Anxieties about appropriateness are not exclusive to women who are visiting the salon anticipating a big celebration. They are expressed as well by women dealing with aspects of their everyday life. Like Anita, trying to win back her male partner’s attention through a makeover, and Jacinta, whose income depends largely on her sexualized image as a woman and her ability to mobilize it for her own ends, women turn to the salon because their femininity and adequacy are constantly on display and the salon is a resource to help develop them. In that sense, the salon becomes a means through which female clients learn their way around heteronormative performances and appropriate expressions of their femininity (Candelario 2000; Wolf 1992) in a way that allows them to navigate the anxieties that emerge for them regarding their roles as mothers, spouses, workers, and so forth. Aside from providing comfort for women looking for guidance regarding how best to express their looks and identities for their own needs, the hair salon, as I suggested in the previous chapter, is also a site where stylists police women’s expressions of femininity and womanhood. Importantly, as we will see below, it is also a place where women learn to self-surveil their bodies (Black 2002) and discipline their practices and aspirations based on racial and gendered notions of beauty, attractiveness and modernity in the context of consumption-driven global capitalism.

94 II. COMPLICATING THE NEED TO LOOK GOOD: GENDER, RACE AND CONSUMPTION

“My ex-husband gave me money to get my hair colored” revealed Elena at one point during our interview when Sara had walked into the room. “He’s very changed.” She said, gesturing towards Sara, who is familiar with her ex-husband, “I told him that I wanted to get my hair colored and he said ‘well then, now I’m going to give you [money] so that you color it, but get blonde’ because he doesn’t like seeing me in red [hair]. And I said to him ‘pues, si usted me da, yo me pongo, well then, if you give me [the money], I get it [blonde]’” she added. This revelation suggests the need to complicate women’s narratives of salon-going as either for pleasure or for necessity. Rather than a clear-cut binary between ‘wanting a change for fun’ and ‘needing to look a certain way for work/a party’ we see that both these logics operate simultaneously, often negotiated along-side economic means and aspirations, hegemonic beauty notions, and other people’s expectations regarding women’s appearance –namely those of their spouses, stylists, family members, immigrant community and society at large. Reflecting on the assemblages between gender, beauty and consumption and the burden they place on women’s bodies, Black notes that “where value is placed on appearance, it is necessary for women to invest in this commodity” (2002: 11). In this context, the beauty parlor emerges as an ambivalent site in that it becomes a means to both reify oppressive gender and beauty standards and develop practices and contest them (Candelario 2000). As I will address throughout this section, for women of Mexican origin in the United States, beauty and gender assemblages are further complicated through competing notions of beauty that at once privilege light-skinned Latina representation and reify sexualized images of Latina women in media and pop culture tropes (Molina-Guzmán 2010). Spanish-speaking media outlets in the United States, Mexican telenovelas, and Latina icons such as Jennifer López, Salma Hayek and Selena Quintanilla among others, 95 display conflicting messages about beauty and gender that can at once stir up cultural and ethnic pride and pressure Spanish-speaking immigrant women to look a certain way.

Disciplining the gendered body

I’ve mentioned above that the notion of “treating myself” at the hair salon is articulated by immigrant women like Gabriela and Elena with a particular sense of pride that extends from their hard work. Underlying this logic, however, is also an unquestioned assumption about women’s reproductive labor and gender roles as prescribed by Mexican patriarchal society where women bear the brunt of home-making and child-rearing (Lagarde 2012; Calafell 2001). When they refer to ‘their work,’ Gabriela and Elena mean exclusively their remunerated labor; so much so that the reward for their hard (remunerated) work is established in terms of spending money on themselves, rather than, for instance, redistributing the house chores with their spouses and other family members so that they can take an afternoon to go to the salon without their children in toll. Similarly, framed in terms of necessity, as a requirement for work, romance or social occasions, the logic of going to the salon activates a series of discourses about disciplining the body to conform to “culturally acceptable sings of beauty” (Candelario 2000: 135) through the procedures offered there. In that sense, even though the hair salon offers clients a resource to transform their appearance into a symbolic capital, like Jacinta in her hostess job and Elena for her daughter’s quinceañera, it simultaneously becomes a means to institutionalize hegemonic beauty standards and discipline women into (hetero)normative performances of femininity (Black 2002; Augis 2014). As Candelario points out, “at the salon, girls and women learn to transform their bodies –through hair

96 care, waxing, manicuring, pedicuring, facials and so forth– into socially valued, culturally specific and race-determining displays of femininity” (2000: 135).

Negotiating personal and social expectations

Like Elena’s ex-husband who gave her the money to color her hair under his request that she would “get blonde,” Rosa’s partner also interjected when Sara suggested that she should stick to a darker hue that would work better with her morena skin-tone, instead of the blonde look she had originally requested. “I also want her to go blond” said her husband, when Rosa reiterated that, despite Sara’s advice, she was hoping to try lighter hue. On a conversation with a different client, Sara was answering Leonor’s questions about hair extensions, explaining how long the procedure would last and what the varieties of hair extensions were (natural, synthetic, etc.), when her husband interjected: “how much would that cost?” and later “do they last a long time?” and once again “do they look natural?” And on yet another day, when a carne asada was underway at the salon on account of Mexico’s football match, Sara’s apprentice Miriam’s mother came into the shop for an appointment with Doña Consuelo and declared: “I told my señor, ponte listo, get ready because I’m going to get everything done at once, hair-cut and color… In any case my birthday is coming up next month.” A couple of hours later, Miriam’s father arrived at the salon and diligently paid the bill and tipped Doña Consuelo per Miriam’s instructions. “Did you tip?” and “how much?” asked Miriam in a low-key before she handed her father a cold beer. Whether it is a question of deciding if the expense of a beauty procedure is worth undertaking, or of aligning their wives’ look with their personal preference, or even on the basis of providing the money to pay for the visit, clients husbands often feel entitled

97 to intervene in the decision-making about their spouses looks. To be fair, I also often noticed men asking for their wives’ opinions before deciding on a look, and couples consulting with each-other what hairstyle their children should get. As Lillian Rubin’s extensive sociological research on intimacy suggests, making everyday decisions as a couple is part of what informs intimacy in a relationship setting (1984). The conversations I described above, where these decisions are tied to the family income and everyday lives, show that even though styling choices are usually framed around individual preferences, they are experienced by the couple, and the family, as a whole. Will this beauty procedure be costly for the family to maintain after the initial investment? Will this haircut make it easier for a school-age child to comb his own hair in the morning? Will this look prevent a family member from getting employment? Or worse – in terms of performing respectability, as I will address later – will it put the family at risk of, for instance, being targeted and profiled as undocumented? Rather than suggesting that women don’t have autonomy about their appearance, what I mean to point out here are the many ways in which women have to negotiate their choices with more than just the stylist, but also their families, their spouses and their (socially and culturally determined) expectations.

Race, beauty and colorism in immigrant communities

The tug between Rosa (and her husband) and Sara about whether or not a blonde look would suit her morena skin brings into view how discourses around race circulate among stylists and clients at Pretty & Groomed. As González-López notes, because of its colonial past, notions of beauty and attractiveness in Latin American have been ideologically shaped by white supremacy and they travel along with immigrants,

98 internalized, as they move across borders (2008). In Latin America’s racial imaginaries, light skin and blue eyes are a source of privilege and “the idealized expression of femininity,” (González-López 2008: 149) sharply contrasted with indigenous and black phenotypes racialized as less attractive and animal-like (Candelario 2000; Calafell 2001). However, upon arriving into the United States, local ideologies of race are compounded with immigrants internalized “racial baggage” (González-López 2008: 149). Thus, as Candelario points out, the ethnic hair salon is a place “operating in the context of both Latin American and United States’ notions of race” (2000: 13)

Sara’s approach to beauty, insisting that clients “work with what they have” meaning that they chose a hair tone that looks natural against their skin tone, resembles the aspiration put forth by Chicana feminists to “be able to exist in a world that values and accepts their ‘mestizaje–Indian, Spanish and Africano’ heritage” (Calafell 2001: 30); a revalorization of ‘brownness’ that gained traction in the United States in the 1980s. However, the revalorization of morena phenotypes has also been co-opted, especially by the media industry, around figures like Jennifer López, Salma Hayek, and Tex-Mex music icon Selena Quintanilla (Beltrán 2000; Molina-Guzmán 2010). Tropes like the “luscious Latina” (Calafell 2001: 17) which portray Latina bodies as voluptuous, brown and exotic, position “Latina bodies in the media as culturally desirable and socially contested, as consumable and dangerous” (Molina-Guzmán 2010: 2). These notions, as suggested by Gloria González-López, have the potential to be both a source of “cultural pride and discomfort [for Latina] women,” who may feel simultaneously appreciated and sexualized as morenas (2008: 150). Importantly, such tropes also serve to pressure Latina women to conform to unattainable beauty standards (ídem), and this pressure may be felt often at a site like Pretty & Groomed, where stylists may portray Latina beauty standards

as aspirational for their clients. 99 The consistent suggestions that stylists at Pretty & Groomed make to clients along this line, seem to imply that they understand their clients desire to try lighter hair colors as a manifestation of aspirational whiteness, rather than a rejection of the very beauty standards that suggest they would not suit them. Hence, as Calafell (2000: 37) posits, the discourse around brownness can nowadays narrow ideas of Latin American belonging, by portraying people of Latin American descent as exclusively brown-skinned, and by flattening their identity, curtailing their expression of self to fit essentialized and stereotypical depictions Latinas and Latinos.

On the other hand, it remains true that both in Mexico and the United States, whiteness represents racial privilege. The impact this has on U.S.-Latina and Latino culture is evidenced by Spanish-speaking pop culture that circulates in the United States by way of media outlets such as Univision Telemundo whose target audience consists of U.S. Spanish-speaking populations. Internationally famous Mexican telenovelas, a staple of Univision programming, are soap-operas where the protagonists are consistently played by light-skinned actors, thus confirming Molina-Guzmán’s assertion that, despite prevalent miscegenation practices in the Spanish ex-colonies, “whiteness and white notions of beauty (blanqueamiento) still reign supreme” (2010: 5). A hierarchy of skin color, or colorism, anchored in antiblackness logics positions indigenous phenotypes as closer to whiteness and in direct in opposition to black phenotypes; a discourse that in the United States often gets articulated through the ethnic notion of “Hispanic” in sharp contrast to that of African American (Candelario 2000). Following Candelario, in addition to whitening through mestizaje and miscegenation, racial categories in Latin America are not fixed but pliable, making whiteness a category that can be achieved, or approximated, through class-based practices, including, importantly, manipulating bodily expressions of race (2000: 131,138). In this context, the 100 ethnic hair salon plays a central role in immigrant women’s attempts to appeal to whiteness, either as an aesthetic endeavor, or as an attempt to access privileges denied to them based on this fictitious, but nonetheless impactful, categorization. For the immigrant women I interviewed, racial politics are further complicated through cultural messages of non-belonging that are communicated through racial profiling and anti-immigration politics. For them, Colorism, as I will address next, is further articulated by way of legal status, citizenship, and “passing” as someone who is in the country legally.

Consumption, social mobility and respectability

“It may be because I lacked so many things and now I don’t want my children to go through the same, I like given everything to my children, I like having” Elena reflected upon my request to elaborate on why she worked “10, 12, 14-hour shifts.” Currently the manager at a gas station, Elena worked at fast food restaurants for more than 15 years, slowly making her way up from the kitchen grill to the register and then to manager. She credits her trajectory to a friend –her manager when she first worked the grill at Whataburger– who advised her early on to learn English. “I give thanks to God, and also [to] her, because I did learn English. I learned to work at the register […] and from there little by little I started to do better, me fui superando.” Part of Elena’s pride in her hard work is associated with what she has now compared to what she lacked before: “I like having everything… everything that I didn’t have, I figure, I now want to have. And if I can do it, then I’m going to do it” she remarks. Silvey’s research on Indonesian migrant women in Saudi Arabia found that women’s “consumer desires and aspirations” are a central motivation for women’s migration (2006: 32). As for Elena, part of the appeal of “having things” for immigrant

101 women is the symbolic power of commodities to communicate success and having disposable income in terms that are readily legible to their diasporic community. But also, and importantly, it positions them as successful immigrants among their families and extended communities back home, whom they keep in touch with through social media –in the course of my interviews at Pretty & Groomed at least four women paused to show me pictures on their social media accounts that corresponded to the stories they were sharing with me.

I once went to Mexico… but ay!, la señora… [excited] I remember, the time I went to Mexico the woman that I used to work for [as a domestic worker before migrating], when she saw me [se went] “Oh!”. Y que miró mi troca, she looked at my truck and she said “Oh! You have a truck that’s better than mine.” And I said

to her, “well, of course, I wasn’t going to stay the way you knew me forever.” Immigrants women’s narratives of superación, are often anchored in their ability to provide for their families and themselves beyond the basic needs, and also participate in liberal meritocracy narratives –such as The American Dream– that position hard work as the key to success. In this context, accessing costly grooming and beauty procedures are one such means of consuming, or as Elena puts it, “having things” as an expression of immigrant women’s hard work and economic gains. Furthermore, as Faria notes, beauty practices are also classed, and when their effects are apparent and “associated with… salon technologies required to maintain them,” they play a key role in communicating upward mobility (2013: 323). For the women I interviewed, playing into meritocracy tropes is a way to both display their superación to their communities back home, and also, to legitimate their claim to belonging in the United States as accomplished, hardworking women, who are pursuing their dreams to participate of the liberal narratives of self-making (Guzmán-Molina 2010).

102 Finally, beyond desires and aspirations of consumption, it is important to situate the role of expensive grooming practices and commodities in immigrants’ ability to circulate safely, and inconspicuously, through the U.S.-landscape; particularly, but not exclusively, those who are undocumented. In an autobiographical article on this topic, Cornejo Villavicencio (2018) argues that by imitating to the best of their abilities white middle-class patterns of consumption that “suggest I have disposable income and pay my taxes” immigrants “wear a costume” to stand a better chance of moving unnoticed across the territory. She explains:

When I go on reporting trips and have to fly, I plan my airport outfits the night before. I always wear an oversized Forever 21 black blazer which goes halfway down my thighs and whose sleeves I have to roll up about ten times to reveal my wrists. I’ve been eating emotionally in recent months but my wrists are still child- sized. My all-black look shows me to be an artist, which distinguishes me when I am set aside for extra screening. It lends my relaxed arm-cross some authority. I carry my partner’s Fjallraven Kanken backpack to suggest I have disposable income and pay my taxes, which I have and I do. I write down my lawyer’s phone number in fine-point Sharpie on my hand. I make sure my nails are filed short and round with three coats of Essie "Ballet Slippers" in case I am fingerprinted.” (Cornejo Villavicencio 2018) Based on her own experience, Cornejo Villavicencio shows that racial profiling bears into consideration not only racial markers but also signs of economic privilege and class presentation. Thus, embodying certain consumption practices –expressed through make-up, hairstyle, clothing and accessories– associated with having economic means, are part of immigrant women’s efforts to elude legal-status profiling when moving across the territory. Similar to engaging with narratives of self-fashioning through hard work for the sake of respectability, engaging in respectability politics through personal image upkeep is a strategy deployed by immigrant men and women to “distance themselves from negative images that are part of anti-immigrant rhetoric” (González-López, 2018 personal communication). 103 This perspective helps us move beyond a binary understanding of immigrant women’s desires as necessarily separated or opposite from their needs. Rather than framing their salon-going practices in terms of needs and wants, we can see how they are deeply entwined and shaped by migration, as the desires expressed by the women I interviewed to look good and have things are also influenced by the acute need to present themselves in a certain way, living without documentation in the United States, in order to increase their chances of survival.

III. FOLLOWING A STYLIST “POR CIELO, MAR Y TIERRA”: LOYALTY IN EXCHANGE FOR QUALITY

“I used to go to a salon in Kyle where my sister worked before she moved back to Jalisco” recalled Jacinta while Claudia was giving her a hair-cut. Clients often refer to their previous hair-styling experiences during casual conversation with the stylists, particularly bad or unsatisfactory experiences. Jacinta added that she had stopped going to that hair salon after an incident where a stylist “me trasquiló,” a colloquial expression used to refer to getting a bad hair-cut that literally translates as “the stylist ‘fleeced me.’” Jacinta explained that she had asked the stylist to cut her fried ends, but the stylist kept cutting and cutting, arguing that there was a lot of damage, until finally she cut most of her hair out and left her looking terrible. Jacinta was irate, she described to us how she talked down to the stylist. Taking on a condescending tone she narrated how she had complained to the salon’s owner: “This one here next to you is the one who fleeced me like this!” As she recounted the story, all the while Jacinta kept giving nods of confidence to Claudia and me, calling us friends.

“No, amiga, I’m telling you that you can’t possibly imagine how they left me that time. I used to have the most perfect hair in the world and she ruined it, me

104 trasquiló. Ever since then I had been reluctant to cut my hair, but, the thing is, when you find someone whose work makes you happy, you follow them anywhere they go. Through this anecdote, Jacinta was letting Claudia know that if she did a good job she would be happy to become a regular client. Being a first timer provides the perfect opportunity for clients to wield their potential loyalty in their favor. “Now, if you do a good job, I will come to you all the time [laughs],” remarked Daniela a woman from Guerrero in her late thirties who came to the salon to get her brows waxed for “una salida,” a special outing she had to go on the next day. This was her first time at Pretty & Groomed, which is right across her workplace. Daniela works six hour-shifts in the afternoon at a fried chicken restaurant preparing mashed potatoes and gravy. In the mornings she takes her four children to school and does housework while her husband is at work, so this little bit before her shift began was the only chance she had to get her brows taken care of. Although following Daniela’s remark Miriam, the stylist working on her brows, and her both erupted into laughter, Daniela quickly reaffirmed her stance by adding “yes, because I’m always going from one [stylist] to another and then another” and then went on to describe how, despite her requests to get angular, straight and long brows, stylists often shaped her brows in a curve, thus admonishing Miriam on what not to do to if she wanted to gain her loyalty. Loyalty can be a bargaining chip for clients to negotiate a good service and, in the long run, a better price or free “add-ons” to their treatment that, as I’ve mentioned in previous chapters, the stylists at Pretty & Groomed are prone to offer. Even those clients who are new to the salon, like Jacinta and Daniela, know how important it is for stylists to have a regular clientele, both in terms of income and in order to gain status at the hair salon and among other stylists (Sharma and Black 2001). Through these sometimes subtle, sometimes overt negotiations, clients position themselves as savvy customers who 105 know what they are looking for in a stylist, which can often be summed up under the concept of buena mano —a “good hand.” References to stylist’s hands are a common theme among clients at the Mexican hair salon. As I’ve shown in the previous chapter, a soft hand means that the stylist’s touch is comforting and soothing. Similarly, buena mano means that the stylists are competent at what they do, but this idea goes beyond technique, rather it implies they are somehow gifted. Clients refer to stylist’s good hand when, for example, their hair grows faster after a hair-cut, or their curls spring back to health; a good hand is also a remedy for any ailments caused by stylists with a bad had. “My youngest daughter once got a hair-cut with a stylist that had such a bad hand, tan mala mano, that her hair took three years to grow back out! It wasn’t until my suegra cut her hair that it started growing again.” This anecdote was shared with me by a client who declined to be interviewed but was willing to have an informal conversation. She recalled this incident in light of how impressed she was with Doña Consuelo’s buena mano which she stressed she hadn’t experienced ever since she migrated: “It’s been so long I had my hair cut like this!” she said, referring to Doña Consuelo’s impressive technique. A good hand is a trait for stylists to cultivate a steady client base because, as Jacinta notes, clients are willing to follow stylists across hair salons if they are happy with their work. “There was this woman who I went to, she colored my hair and everything, but [despite the chemicals] my hair grew so pretty… when she left I looked for her everywhere —por cielo, mar y tierra. As opposed to high-end hair salons where Gimlin describes stylists as having an “inferior status [to clients…] as a consequence of their educational and socioeconomic background as well as cultural images attached to their occupation” (1996: 512), status differences between the clientele and the stylists at Pretty & Groomed are not as marked. 106 Both stylists and clients there are working-class women who often share more than just their class, but their experiences of migration. As we’ve seen in the previous chapter, stylists turn to their expertise and professional styling parlance to affirm their authoritative position inside of the hair salon. To this, clients respond in kind by “invok[ing] their own hair-related knowledge and experience” (Jacobs-Huey 2003: 278) as gained in the course of previous visits to the beauty parlor. Through their anecdotes, clients convey that they are not to be taken advantage of and that their satisfaction cannot be taken for granted.

CONCLUSIONS

As this chapter reveals, in their visits to the beauty parlor women activate multiple registers: gender roles, body disciplining practices, aspirations for consumption, social and familial expectations, are all part of their baggage as clients. However, in these situations, clients like Jacinta, Rosa, Lupita, Anita, Gabriela, Elena and Daniela, are not devoid of power, but instead very much engaged in a negotiation. Paying close attention to the embodied experiences and interpretations offered by immigrant women is essential to understand how they navigate gender, race and class on a regular basis beyond the binary of socially motivated vs. pleasure related beautification and grooming practices. The ethnic beauty parlor plays an important role in helping Spanish-speaking immigrant women navigate their anxieties about performance and belonging within their immigrant communities and with the local population as both a matter of accessing privilege and of survival. Stylist’s recommendations and their familiarity with both their culture of origin and their receiving culture can help women feel confident about looking the part for a traditional celebration with family and friends, to keep a polished and

107 attractive look for work and for romantic purposes, and to circulate unnoticed in their places of residence. At the same time, these procedures help normalize heightened expectations about women’s appearance and responsibilities to look a certain way and commit to specific beauty regimes and practices that communicate their femininity and social position (actual or aspirational). Importantly, the hair salon can also represent for women a space of empowerment. Through engaging in consuming practices that communicate their success and social mobility women see their hard work put on display in terms that are clearly readable for their family, their local communities and their communities of origin. In their visits to the salon they position themselves as savvy consumers who are purchasing a service through their hard-earned money and in a process that simultaneously articulates reward and pleasure with the need to conform to social parameters of heteronormative femininity and beauty. ______

Notes 1. Chambelanes are the male escorts for the dance at quinceañera or quince años parties.

108 Conclusion. Styling binds: Spanish-speaking immigrant women creating community at the beauty salon

Throughout this thesis I have analyzed the ways in which an ethnic beauty parlor in South Austin can function as a transnational Latin American space, as well as the multiple roles that it comes to play in the lives of the Spanish-speaking immigrant women who operate it and patronize it. Noting, after Black, the multiple sociological debates that converge at the hair salon (2002: 3), I began this research with two empirical questions in mind: What are the elements that define the Spanish-speaking ethnic beauty parlor as a political site? And how are they expressed through quotidian and mundane gestures of the everyday lives of immigrant women from Latin America? Thinking about the beauty parlor in political terms, and in particular this Spanish- speaking immigrant-owned-and-operated shop, was almost immediate once I came into contact with the multiple ways in which the physical space of the shop at Pretty & Groomed was appropriated by the people who populated it. Thus, in the first chapter I approach my main research question by situating it on the physical space of the hair salon. I ask, why is it that the hair salon is used by Latina immigrants, for so many different purposes, apart from hairstyling and beauty work? How do these multiple purposes define the social relevance of this space in the lives of Spanish-speaking immigrants who frequently visit it? Clients, as well as stylists and the owner of the salon herself, use the hair salon as a place to establish and reproduce social networks with other people from the Spanish- speaking community. They share leads on potential work projects as, for instance, domestic workers or construction workers, and offer their catering services for homemade Mexican desserts and traditional herbal healing. They get together to follow

109 their national sports teams. They come by to sell products from their homeland or leave things for sale in site that might appeal to the Spanish-speaking clientele. In the course of their beauty treatments they share recommendations, know-how about life in the diaspora, general advice on life after migration, and they discuss their worries about the local anti-immigration climate of the country, to name but a few of the interactions I witnessed. This suggests that through these everyday interactions, the beauty parlor as a space is constituted through lived and embodied practices of transnational place-making that transcend styling matters. These immigrants join the many U.S. Spanish-speaking immigrant women who through social networks and community creation and engagement reinvent their personal and family lives, as documented by the literature on Mexican migration and gender studies emerging in recent decades (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; González-López 2005). Without a doubt, the above processes are facilitated by Sara, the shop owner, and her attitude toward her business as a welcoming hub for her Spanish-speaking immigrant community, which she describes as feeling “muy faltos de atención” —neglected— or exposed to an increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric. While the role of ethnic business as a sign that immigrant settlement has been well established (Verdaguer 2009), in this thesis I argue that paying special attention to Sara’s approach to entrepreneurship allows us to single out some of the ways in which immigrant women’s reproductive work extends through their businesses. Sara, a Mexican immigrant who built her business from the ground up through creative adaptations of the space and repurposing furniture from a previous business, is extremely mindful about making her clients and the stylists who work at her salon feel cared for and heard. In that sense, Pretty & Groomed can be thought of as an example of transnational place-making through immigrant women’s entrepreneurship, which facilitates the emergence of a homeland-like space for the clients 110 and stylists who make use of and appropriate it for their own needs, thus effectively transforming it into a transnational Latin American space (Boyce Davies 2013; Delgado 1997). In the second chapter I bring into focus a different political dimension of the beauty parlor: labor, and specifically women’s embodied labor. I do so by looking at the particularities of the work of female stylists. Looking at the interactions and experiences that take place as part of everyday life between stylists and their clients, I asked: What are the different roles that stylists actually play in the context of the beauty parlor? And how do they personally relate to these different professional demands? These questions are further complicated by the ways in which styling has been consistently described as a feminized labor, that is, low-skill, gendered and poorly compensated. However, in line with previous feminist explorations of the beauty parlor, my research shows that the work of stylists is in fact complex. It demands mastering what Toerien and Kitzinger (2007) have deemed “multiple engagements” for the simultaneous performing of beauty work, and very technical styling procedures, alongside relational work, care work and emotional labor. By looking at the specifically embodied aspects of the work of stylists, I position styling as a form of intimate labor: the affective bonds and trusting relationships they build with clients, the nourishing attention they offer them, and the professional, yet gentle touch and bodily manipulation that their work requires are a form of commodified intimacy (Boris and Parreñas 2010). Indeed, stylists get remunerated on the basis of how effective they are at performing intimacy in professional terms. But setting boundaries is also fundamental for stylists to do their work to the best of their abilities. This is complicated by a parallel process of men’s perceived entitlement to women’s sexuality and women’s burden to police their own sexuality lest they be blamed for unwanted advances. Sexual harassment 111 is pervasive in stylists’ line of work, and in Latin American cultures, female stylists often get described as women of loose morals (Candelario 2000); this process further devalues stylists’ labor. Hence, other negotiations are at play in the context of taking money for bodily services for the purpose of social reproduction such as styling. The devaluation of styling as feminized and sexualized low-skill labor is an example of the patriarchal logic under which women’s emotional labor continues to be made invisible (Hochschild 2012). At Pretty & Groomed, stylists often feel pressured to increase their burden in the relational and reproductive aspects of their work, such as attentiveness and care, in order to justify the cost of their services. This is due, in large part, to their work being so often framed as low-skill. These engagements further reveal the complexity of the everyday work that stylists perform. By centering their experiences and their understanding of what they provide to their community, we can begin to appreciate the value of their work beyond descriptions of skill and economic gains, and center instead their contributions to the well-being of their Spanish-speaking clientele and their larger immigrant community in ways that are often overlooked. In this case, the ethnic beauty parlor represents a space where, through intimate work processes, Latina immigrant women engage in care labor, emotional labor and otherwise reproductive labor for the benefit of their Spanish speaking families and communities. Their work enables clients’ continued insertion in the community through the upkeep of an image that allows them to find work, meet common standards of care of the self, and facilitate the alignment of their appearance and their self-ascribed identity. And, as I suggest in the third chapter, it also contributes to clients social and physical mobility. Finally, in the third chapter I turn to clients and how we might understand their quotidian reliance on the services provided at the beauty parlor in ways that mark the 112 space as political. I focus particularly on clients’ expectations when they come to the Spanish-speaking hair salon. I ask: How do clients negotiate their desires and aspirations for going to the beauty parlor in the face of the cultural and hegemonic beauty standards set by their spouses, families, and cultures at large? What are clients trying to communicate through their salon going practices? How are these aspirations shaped by gender, race and class? My findings echo Candelario’s suggestion that the beauty parlor is a “site where hegemonic gender, class, sexuality, and race tropes are simultaneously produced and problematized” (2000: 129). The ethnic beauty parlor plays an important role in helping Spanish-speaking immigrant women navigate their anxieties about performance and belonging within their immigrant communities and U.S.-culture at large. At Pretty & Groomed, clients get advice regarding current fashion trends, looks that “suit their complexion,” and appropriate hair and make-up styles for culturally-relevant celebrations such as bautizos, quinceañeras, graduations, etc. But Spanish-speaking women also rely on the ethnic beauty parlor to guide their insertion among the local population as both a matter of accessing racial and class privilege through personal grooming and consumption practices. Importantly, these practices can be interpreted as a matter of survival as Spanish- speaking immigrant women are navigating a discriminatory environment in which displays of disposable income and class mobility can alleviate the dangers of, for example, legal status profiling. Engaging in respectability politics through personal image upkeep is a strategy deployed by immigrant men and women to eschew anti-immigrant rhetoric. Stylist’s recommendations and their familiarity with both their culture of origin and their receiving culture can help women feel confident about looking the part for a 113 traditional celebration with family and friends, to keep a polished and attractive look for work and for romantic purposes, and to circulate unnoticed in their places of residence. At the same, time these procedures normalize heightened expectations about women’s appearance and responsibilities to look a certain way and commit to specific beauty regimes and practices that communicate their femininity and social position (actual or aspirational). Importantly, the hair salon can also represent for women a space of empowerment. Through engaging in consuming practices that communicate their success and social mobility women see their hard work put on display in terms that are clearly readable for their family, their local immigrant communities and their sending communities or places of origin. Coming back to my overarching research questions, what ultimately defines Pretty & Groomed as a political and politicized site, are the multiple registers that are articulated in it on an everyday basis: issues of work, social reproduction, commercial exchange, aesthetics and beauty practices, but also matters of survival, adaptation and resistance to discrimination all come into play at once. Looking at the beauty parlor from these different angles, we can see it as a physical space that takes on a transnational home-like quality for its clients, as a workplace for stylists to sustain the community through their labor, and as a service-oriented business for its immigrant clientele to rely on as they settle into their receiving country. Through quotidian grooming and commercial practices at the hair salon, that are very much articulated through racial, gender and class narratives, the Spanish-speaking immigrant community creates a space of its own, from which to negotiate their insertion in their receiving nation through the mobilization of savvy immigrant networks, trendy Spanish-speaking stylists, and the care and service-oriented entrepreneurship of hardworking and inventive immigrant women.

114 Sara’s beauty salon is not the salón de belleza where Doña Consuelo worked years ago in Mexico, and it is far from being the exclusive beauty salon spa in North Austin where the wife of a high-tech engineer would pay $80 for a basic haircut. In the end, Pretty & Groomed is a cultural hybrid social space of survival but also resistance, a place that reminds us of Anzaldúa’s theorizing on U.S. born people of Mexican origin who have historically experienced both, a sense of belonging while also being and feeling marginalized and excluded in Texas (2012).

SURPRISES, CHALLENGES AND NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH

Going to the beauty parlor as a family outing

As I alluded in the introduction, one of the main challenges I encountered during this research had to with recruitment and designing a research project that would keep my informants anonymous. While recruiting women at the hair salon allowed me to successfully safeguard their anonymity, it posed yet another challenge: how would I be able to talk to them alone? To my surprise, I soon found out that going to the beauty parlor the among this working-class, Spanish-speaking immigrant community in South Austin is an activity that engages the whole family. This meant I had to be highly selective when asking women to participate in my research because I needed them to be able to speak freely about their personal lives. But it also meant that I had stumbled across one of my main empirical questions, a version of which I delve into in the first chapter of this thesis: why do salon-goers bring their whole families along if only one of them will be getting something done? Excitingly, exploring this question ended up becoming central to my main argument that the hair salon is useful for clients in ways that exceed grooming purposes.

115 In order to recruit women for interviewing, I took on Sara’s offer to use the back room of the salon to speak privately with clients. I tried to approach mostly women who had come in alone or with children, because I noticed that when children came along they were usually distracted playing around or using their mobile devices, and that meant that they weren’t paying attention to our conversations. Additionally, the women I talked to indicated feeling comfortable with being interviewed despite the occasional coming by of their children. Talking to my informants in the back room of the salon did allow for more privacy, but it was less than ideal. Because this was a common area that included a make- up station, a towel closet, the refrigerator and the waxing-station it also meant that if someone requested a depilatory process, if more than one woman was getting a lengthy hair-procedure or make-up done, or if the stylists needed something from the back room, other women would be present at times or stylists would walk in unannounced. In those cases, I’d have to pause and then resume the interview, which often meant having less time to talk overall, cutting interviews short, and losing the thread of the conversation. Also, because I conducted the interviews while women were getting things done on themselves, the stylists would come in often to check on how the procedure was going, and in more than one occasion they felt compelled to chime in and comment on something that their client was saying for my interview. This gave the interview more depth and richness because a conversation would develop amongst them, and because stylists have a way of making clients feel safe to speak their minds. But it also meant that I had to struggle to regain control for steering the conversation, and often pause and wait until the stylist was done checking, so we could continue our interview one-on-one. Time was also a significant challenge because I had to do the fieldwork in the course of three months, from August to October 2017, and for most of that time I had to attend classes full-time and work as a teaching assistant part-time. So, having to wait for 116 women to come in unaccompanied, and work my interviews around their styling procedures, slowed the process more than I would have liked. This also meant that the number of women I ended up interviewing was smaller than I had intended. In the future, I plan to continue to work on this research looking to expand the number of interviews. Additionally, I would consider developing a system with the stylists to keep interruptions to a minimum, as regaining the impulse of the conversation often proved hard and time- consuming.

Deconstructing Mexican-hegemony in Latina and Latino studies

Latin America includes Mexico, but Mexico is not the whole of Latin America. One of the main challenges for my research was how to conduct research with mostly Mexican informants while resisting Mexican-hegemony among studies concerning Latina and Latino and Spanish-speaking communities in the United States. For this project, I interviewed mostly Mexican immigrant women and women from Mexican descent. Except for one of my informants and a couple conversations with women from Central America, all of my informants were of Mexican origin. This is due, in part, to the characteristics of the patrons of Pretty & Groomed, who are primarily immigrants from Mexico, and in part to the fact that I limited my research to this single hair salon that is owned by a Mexican woman and thus has a salient position among immigrants of Mexican origin. Aside from this, it is worth noting that Texas is one of the states with the largest concentration of Mexican immigrants in the whole of the United States (U.S. Census 2010), and a state with an important Mexican American population that has not forgotten the complex and painful historical relationship between both nations.

117 I am aware of the use of ‘Latinx’ as an identity that has become popular in some academic and professional circles. The people I interviewed and met at the salon came across as cisgender women and men, and also as heterosexual, and I never heard anyone use ‘Latinx’ to identify themselves. Thus, my use of Latina and Latino honors how people identified themselves in this study. Additionally, I fully understand that conflating Mexico and Latin America is a misleading equivalence, and I have been mindful of not using the terms interchangeably. When I talk about Latin American place-making I do so recognizing the commonalities shared by Latin American countries, such as a history of Iberian conquest and a colonial past through which shared cultural traits related to gender, race and class have emerged in the region that persist in the Latin American diaspora. However, my research would have greatly benefited from a larger number of interviews and conversations with women from Central American and South American descent to more accurately reflect what a Latin American transnational space could look like. The wide array of racial and phenotypical characteristics of the women I interviewed are indicative of the diversity of Mexico’s population following mestizaje. However, I must note that most of my informants would describe themselves –and most importantly, be described by the stylists– as morenas, and rarely as indigenous, güeras or black. Being morena indicates having brown skin at large, regardless of the many different skin tonalities that result from racial mixing. Only Doña Consuelo, the eldest of the stylist described herself as “blanca”, having white skin, once during a conversation we had about the effects of the harsh Texas sun and the importance of sun-block. “You and me,” she warned me “have to wear sun-block every day because we are ‘muy blancas,’ it’s harmful, it’s how you get skin cancer.” Aside from Doña Consuelo, only Jacinta positioned herself away from the “morena” description, by noting that her hair 118 used to be a lighter and prettier color before she “ruined it” by coloring it so often, as I mentioned in the introduction. In fact, Jacinta did have lighter skin that most of the women I interviewed, a trait that she clearly valued. None of the women I interviewed indicated being of indigenous descent or identified as indigenous, but rather some of them referred to themselves as being “de rancho,” signaling that they belong to rural Mexican communities. Importantly, the voices of people of African descent in Latin America are especially absent in my thesis, as none of the women I interviewed, nor anyone I ever encountered at Pretty & Groomed identified as Afro-Latina or indicated having African ancestry. If given the chance to continue this research in the future, these are the main shortcomings that I would be interested in remedying by extending my fieldwork to other Latin American, but ethnically diverse, beauty parlors in Austin.

Social media and migration

I was surprised to notice that, in the course of my interviews at Pretty & Groomed at least four women paused to show me pictures on their social media accounts, such as Facebook and Instagram, that corresponded to the stories they were sharing with me. Except for one instance, when Sara showed me the picture of her deceased son, the pictures the women showed me communicated enjoyment, beauty, conviviality and special achievements. This prompted me to think about the ways in which immigrants have kept (or rekindled) their ties to their communities of origin after they’ve migrated thanks to the emergence of social media platforms. I noticed that, through the pictures they showed me, the women I interviewed were creating a narrative, and to an extent, putting on a performance about their lives in the United States. This became particularly apparent as

119 they showed me pictures of their daughter’s quinceañeras, the beautiful traditional desserts they cook for selling, their football team’s victory with the whole team and a trophy held high, and their new look after a visit to the beauty parlor or “that time when I lost a lot of weight and I looked real good,” as one of the clients recalled. How do immigrant women perform social mobility and success back in their communities of origin through their social media? What effect does this have on their aspirations and consumption practices? And how are these narratives of success read (and to what effect) by their communities of origin? Does this change at all the gendered expectations around women’s migration? These are but a few of the questions that I was left with after looking at the social media profiles of my interlocutors. I wish to keep exploring this topic further, as I believe it represents an untapped source of study that could potentially feed into the conversation about transnationalism and gender from a fresh perspective.

The hair salon as a space for advocacy and outreach

The CUT IT OUTÒ initiative was seminal for this research, in that it pointed towards the potential of the beauty parlor to become a political space to implement advocacy and outreach practices. While I have mentioned before that the program has not yet been reached Austin hair salons, I believe that further research on ethnic beauty parlors could evaluate the viability of implementing it on some of these locations. It was not the objective of my research to determine whether this salon would be a candidate for an advocacy program such as this one, focusing particularly on the topic of violence against women. However, I do believe I gathered enough information to make an educated prognostic about the potential of Pretty & Groomed for carrying out

120 advocacy and outreach. While I will concede that the space was prone to political and social commentary, and women (as well as men) clients often open up to stylists about personal matters, the truth is that unless the stylists underwent extensive training and sensitization to address matters of gendered violence, the fact that whole families attend the salon at a time makes having these delicate conversations very challenging. It is hard to catch women alone, as they often bring their spouses or children along with them even when getting long beauty procedures done. And while men could also benefit from this kind of outreach, if it is not done properly, it could put women at a higher risk. On the other hand, Pretty & Groomed would be an ideal space to share up to date information about migratory policy and sharing protective actions or strategies regarding the implementation of anti-immigration measures. Additionally, advocacy regarding rights in general and particularly labor and women’s rights would likely be successful in this space given the characteristics of the clientele. Thus, site-specific evaluations and in-depth research on this and other ethnic beauty parlors could focus on determining whether and why a hair salon could implement advocacy and outreach programs and of what kind.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STUDY

The title of this thesis, which is partially the title to this concluding chapter, references my main findings. Styling binds can be read in multiple ways, and this too is important to note as we turn to the contributions of this study. On one hand, my research shows the multiple ways in which this beauty parlor creates and sustains ties between its Spanish-speaking immigrant patrons; it shows how the work of styling binds the community together, and it offers an understanding of the ethnic hair salon as a

121 transnational space that fosters the reproduction of immigrant communities, cultural ties and homeland-oriented practices. Against readings of the work of stylists as low-skill, through an intimate labor lens I position styling as complex work that engages, aside from delicate technical skills, processes of care labor, beauty work and emotion work for the purposes of reproducing the local Spanish-speaking community. Through the intimate labor of the stylists and the welcoming attitude and community-oriented practices of the owner of the shop, clients feel supported as they navigate their lives in the United States. On the other hand, my research also points to the binds of styling; the racial, gendered, and class tensions that come along with a practice such as styling, that is central to the process of identity formation for women in the Latin American diaspora. Styling gets in a bind when tradition comes in tension with modernity; when hegemonic and white supremacist beauty standards clash with vindications of brownness and indigeneity; when women’s desires and aspirations are confronted with the expectations that their spouses, families, and larger immigrant community have about their image and their grooming practices, and so forth. And while the parameters of styling can feel binding, offering restrictive, racialized and gendered choices that follow these hegemonic trends, salon-going practices are also a means through which immigrant women reclaim their personalities in fun and creative ways. In this thesis, I explore how clients negotiate the homogenizing aesthetics of brownness, as reclaimed by the Chicano movement, in the face of white supremacist notions of hegemonic beauty. Clients’ practices of consumption relay social mobility and disposable income that allow them to escape legal status profiling and negotiate access to privileges that are associated to whiteness, from moving inconspicuously through the U.S.-landscape, to the transnational display of superación –self-improvement and growth– through social media for their extended families back home. 122 Through these readings, I aim to contend with the simultaneity of all the possible meanings that the notion of styling binds evokes in the context of Pretty & Groomed as a space. Particular salon going practices and the intimate labor performed by the stylists there, at once open up avenues for community building, introduce racial and gendered tensions, and offer guidance for navigating and resolving these tensions among the Spanish-speaking community that emerges in the shop and from the shop. While this beauty parlor is indeed a quotidian, everyday space, it is exceptional in that it is no less a political and transnational space for the Latin American community to find refuge and feel cared for, albeit temporarily, despite the harshness of the world outside, thanks in no small part to the work that immigrant women have invested into this purpose.

123 Appendices

APPENDIX A. STUDY PARTICIPANTS Time since Age Marital Status Children Education Place of origin migration(s)1 Most recent employment

Gema early 30s Cohabiting 2 Secundaria Tela, Honduras <1 year None Rosa mid 40s Cohabiting2 4 Secundaria Edomex, Mexico 10 years Domestic worker

Lupita early 30s Cohabiting 0 Preparatoria* Guanajuato, Mexico 12 years4 Housekeeper at hotel

Pilar late 50s Married 2 Preparatoria* Morelos, Mexico 14 years3 Self employed Anita mid 20s Cohabiting 3 Eight grade Veracruz, Mexico 14 years; 3 years Domestic worker Sara early 40s Single 2 Secundaria técnica Monterrey, Mexico 15 years Stylist

Leonor mid 40s Married 2 Preparatoria San Luis Potosí, Mexico 20 years4 Housekeeper at school Elena late 40s Separated 4 Primaria* Guanajuato, Mexico 27 years; 8 years Operator at gas station

Gaby early 20s Cohabiting 1 Preparatoria Hidalgo, Mexico 3 years4 Housekeeper at hotel

Consuelo mid 60s Single 1 Secundaria; Cultura de belleza Mexico City, Mexico 5 years3 Stylist

Claudia early 20s Single 0 Secundaria*; Beauty school Zacatecas, Mexico 6 years4 Stylist Jacinta early 20s Single 1 High-school Jalisco, Mexico 8 years Waiter Miriam late 20s Cohabiting 1 High-school San Antonio, Texas Not applicable Stylist * Indicates dropping out the grade was obtained (1) Indicates having come to the United States, then returned to Mexico for a period, and then coming back to the United States a second time. (2) Cohabiting following a previous marriage and divorce (3) Indicates intermittent coming and going for a period of time under a tourist visa while residing permanently in the United States undocumented (4) Have obtained residency and can cross the border freely, which they do frequently

124 Education equivalences* Primaria Elementary school; grades 1 – 6 Secundaria Middle school; grades 7 – 9 Secundaria técnica Middle school with focus on a particular trade (i.e. secretary, beauty culturalist, seamstress, etc.) Preparatoria Highschool Cultura de belleza Beauty School

* Adapted from González-López 2005

125 APPENDIX B. INTERVIEW SCRIPT

Now we will begin the interview. This interview will be audio recorded, and as you know, I will do this with your consent. If there is any question that you don’t wish to answer, you don’t have to answer it. You may also answer any question off the record. We can stop the interview at any time if you feel uncomfortable going forward. The recordings will be strictly for the use of this research. Your employers will not be made aware of your participation in this study. I will not share the recordings with your employers nor with any of the other women who will be participating in this study. I kindly remind you: Your participation in this interview is completely voluntary. I have prepared some questions for this interview. What I would like to ask of you is that you try to go back in time as far as you can and that you elaborate in detail about everything I ask you. This conversation will last approximately two hours, and if it were necessary I would ask you to meet again at another time.

Question guide:

1.Tell me about how it was that you came to the United States. How did you decide to come? How long ago did you come? Where you came from and so on.

2. After you arrived, how did you adjust to your new life? How did you find a place to live and to work? Who helped you along? Pointers (as needed): Who are the people closes to you here? Who do you trust? Who is supportive of you? 126

3. Tell me what a normal work-day is like for you, from the time you wake up from the time you go to sleep. Pointers (as needed): How is your relationship with your employers? Is there anything that you like or dislike about working for them? If you could complain about something in your work, what would it be?

4. Now tell me how a day off work looks like. Pointers (as needed): Who do you live with? What are your responsibilities at home? What do you do when you want to take a break or clear your mind?

5. What would you say worries you on a regular basis any given day, either at work or personally or both? Do you talk to someone about the things that worry you?

Pointers (as needed): Is there anything that you’re afraid of (it can be work related or personal)? Have you had any unpleasant or uncomfortable experiences while working at your current job? Or previously? And outside of work? Do you talk to someone about it?

127 APPENDIX C. ORAL CONSENT SCRIPTS

Script to request oral consent for participation in research (English)

The title of this study is: Latina Worker’s Oral Histories.

Introduction

The purpose of this conversation is to provide you with information that may affect your decision as to whether or not to participate in this research study. I am the person performing the research, and I will gladly answer any of your questions. While I read the information below, please feel free to ask any questions you might have before deciding whether or not to take part. If you decide to be involved in this study, by the end of this conversation you will be asked to give oral consent.

Purpose of the Study

You have been asked to participate in a research study about the lives of immigrant Latina domestic workers in central Texas. The purpose of this study is to identify different forms of everyday violence faced by Latina workers both in their work and home spaces, and learn how they navigate these situations.

What will you be asked to do?

If you agree to participate in this study, you will participate in an interview in which you will be asked to talk in depth about your personal history, including your personal life, your experience migrating to the U.S., your experiences working in different settings and other details of your everyday life after arriving in the country. This interview will take two hours to complete The study will include a maximum of 15 study participants.

Your participation can be audio recorded if you agree to it. Audio recording is not mandatory for this research. However, if you decline to be audio recorded, detailed notes of the interview will be taken on a computer. During the interview you may chose to skip questions or answer them off the record. You may also withdraw from the study at any time, in which case, the recording or notes of your interview will be destroyed within 24 hours of your notice.

What are the risks involved in this study?

Risks in this study involve potential emotional or psychological distress.

After the interview you will be provided with a list of free/low-cost resources for emotional and psychological support in case you find them useful. 128

What are the possible benefits of this study?

You will receive no direct benefit from participating in this study; however, a study like this one can be useful to call attention to the needs of Latina workers in the U.S. and in the long term contribute to improve their working and living conditions.

Do you have to participate?

No, your participation is completely voluntary. You may decide not to participate at all or, if you start the study, you may withdraw at any time. If at any moment you decide to withdraw from the study, all the information collected, including the audio recordings or notes, will be destroyed within a 24-hour period. Withdrawal or refusing to participate will not affect your relationship with The University of Texas at Austin in anyway.

If you would like to participate you will need to give oral consent.

Will there be any compensation?

You will not receive any type of payment participating in this study.

How will your privacy and confidentiality be protected if you participate in this research study?

Your privacy and the confidentiality of your data will be fully protected in this study. The research is design to keep participants anonymous. No identifiers of any kind such as your name, your phone number, your home or work address, or aliases, will be collected at any point during the study. Some excerpts from the transcribed interview may be reproduced for the purposes of the study but it will be done in text, not audio, under a fictitious name and omitting any information that could potentially link you to the material.

Your employees will not be made aware of your participation in this study.

If it becomes necessary for the Institutional Review Board to review the study records, information that can be linked to you will be protected to the extent permitted by law. The data resulting from your participation will not be made available to other researchers in the future for research purposes not detailed within this consent form.

If you choose to participate in this study, you may agree to be audio recorded. All audio recordings will be stored securely and only the research team will have access to the recordings. Recordings will be kept only for the duration of this study (approximately one and a half years) and then destroyed.

Whom to contact with questions about the study?

129 Prior, during or after your participation you can contact the researcher Vivian Rodríguez at 737- 781-1169 or send an email to [email protected] for any questions or if you feel that you have been harmed.

This study has been reviewed and approved by The University Institutional Review Board and the study number is 2016-11-0061.

Whom to contact with questions concerning your rights as a research participant?

For questions about your rights or any dissatisfaction with any part of this study, you can contact, anonymously if you wish, the Institutional Review Board by phone at (512) 471-8871 or email at [email protected].

Participation

If you agree to participate you will need to provide oral consent.

Oral consent

You have been informed about this study’s purpose, procedures, possible benefits and risks. You have been given the opportunity to ask questions before you orally agree, and you have been told that you can ask other questions at any time. You voluntarily agree to participate in this study. By consenting to participate, you are not waiving any of your legal rights.

Please answer orally:

Do you agree to participate in this study?

Do you agree to be audio recorded?

Thank you for your kind attention.

130 Guion para solicitar consentimiento oral para participar en investigación (Spanish)

El título de esta investigación es: Historias orales de trabajadoras latinas (Latina Domestic Oral Histories).

Introducción

El objetivo de esta conversación es ofrecerle información que debe tomar en cuenta para decidir si desea participar o no en este estudio. Yo soy la persona encargada de realizar la investigación, y con gusto responderé cualquier duda que usted tenga al respecto. Mientas leo esta información, tenga confianza de hacer cualquier pregunta que desee antes de decidir si quiere o no participar. Si usted decide que sí quiere participar, le pediré que exprese su consentimiento verbalmente.

Objetivo del estudio

Usted ha sido convocada para participar en un estudio sobre las vidas de trabajadoras migrantes de origen latino en la zona centro de Texas. El objetivo del mismo es identificar las formas cotidianas de violencia a las que se enfrentan las trabajadoras latinas, que pueden presentarse tanto en su trabajo como en su vida privada, y conocer un poco más sobre sus reacciones ante estas situaciones.

¿Qué se le pedirá que haga?

Si usted acepta participar en el estudio se le hará una entrevista en la que se le pedirá que hable de su historia personal, incluyendo detalles de vida familiar, su experiencia de migración a los Estados Unidos, sus experiencias trabajando en diversos contextos y detalles de su vida cotidiana después de su llegada a los Estados Unidos. La entrevista tomará como máximo dos horas. En este estudio participarán un total de 15 personas como máximo.

Con su consentimiento, su participación puede ser grabada en audio. La grabación en audio no es obligatoria para esta investigación. Sin embargo, si usted prefiere que su entrevista no sea grabada, esta será registrada mediante notas escritas tomadas en una computadora a lo largo de la entrevista. Durante la entrevista usted puede decidir no contestar alguna pregunta o contestarla fuera de audio. También puede cancelar su participación en cualquier momento, en cuyo caso, la grabación será destruida en un lapso no mayor a 24 horas posteriores al aviso de cancelación.

¿Cuáles son los riesgos asociados con este estudio?

Los riesgos asociados con este estudio incluyen la potencial afectación emocional y psicológica.

Al concluir la entrevista se le proporcionará una lista de recursos gratuitos o de bajo costo para apoyo emocional y psicológico, en caso de que los considere útiles. 131

¿Cuáles son los posibles beneficios asociados con este estudio?

Participar en este estudio no tendrá un beneficio directo para usted. Sin embargo, un estudio de este tipo puede resultar útil para llamar la atención sobre las necesidades de las trabajadoras latinas en los Estados Unidos y a la larga contribuir a mejorar sus condiciones de vida y de trabajo.

¿Es necesario que participe?

No, su participación es completamente voluntaria. Usted puede decidir no participar, o si decide que desea participar, puede cambiar de opinión en cualquier momento. Si en algún momento decide dar por terminada su participación, toda la información recabada, incluidas las grabaciones o notas, serán destruidas en un lapso de 24 horas. Si usted no quiere participar o decide cancelar su participación después de haber accedido, ello no afectará su relación con la Universidad de Texas en Austin en ningún sentido.

Si usted desea participar será necesario que exprese su consentimiento oralmente.

¿Hay alguna compensación?

Usted no recibirá ningún tipo de pago por su participación en este estudio.

¿Cómo se protegerá su confidencialidad si usted participa en este estudio?

Su privacidad y confidencialidad serán protegidas a lo largo de este estudio. Su nombre y datos personales no serán parte de la entrevista grabada. En ningún momento a lo largo del estudio se mencionará su nombre o cualquier otro detalle que haga posible su identificación personal. Algunos fragmentos de la entrevista pueden ser reproducidos como parte del estudio, pero esto se hará bajo un nombre ficticio y sin incluir detalles puntuales que permitan identificarla.

Sus empleadores no serán informados de su participación en este estudio.

En caso de que fuera necesario que el Institutional Review Board [Consejo de Revisión Institucional] revisara los registros del estudio, cualquier información que pueda vincularla con el mismo será protegida hasta donde lo permita la ley. La información que resulte de su participación en este estudio no será compartida con otros investigadores en el futuro para propósitos que no hayan sido descritos en este formato de consentimiento.

Si decide participar en este estudio usted podrá ser grabada en formato de audio. Todas las grabaciones permanecerán guardadas en un lugar seguro y sólo el equipo de investigación tendrá acceso a ellas. Las grabaciones se conservarán unicamente durante el tiempo que dure esta investigación y posteriormente serán destruidas.

132 ¿A quién contactar si tiene preguntas sobre este estudio?

Antes o después de su participación usted puede contactar a la investigadora Vivian Rodríguez vía telefónica en el número 737 781 1169 o por correo electrónico a [email protected] para cualquier duda o en caso de que se sienta afectada.

Este estudio ha sido revisado y aprobado por el Institutional Review Board de la Universidad de Texas en Austin. El número de identificación es 2016-11-0061.

¿A quién contactar si tiene alguna pregunta acerca de sus derechos como participante?

Si tiene preguntas acerca de sus derechos o cualquier insatisfacción con alguna parte de este estudio puede contactar, de manera anónima si prefiere, al Institutional Review Board vía telefónica al número (512) 471-8871 o por correo electrónico a [email protected].

Participación

Si usted acepta participar en este estudio será necesario que exprese su consentimiento de manera verbal.

Consentimiento Oral

Usted ha sido informada acerca de los objetivos, procedimientos, posibles beneficios y riesgos asociados con este estudio. Se le ha dado la oportunidad hacer preguntas antes de aceptar oralmente, y se le ha dicho que sus dudas pueden ser respondidas en cualquier momento. Usted ha aceptado participar en este estudio de manera voluntaria. Al dar su consentimiento usted no está renunciado a ningún derecho otorgado por la ley.

Por favor responda oralmente:

¿Acepta usted participar en este estudio?

¿Acepto que su participación sea grabada en audi

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