The Managed Hand: The Commercialization of Bodies and Emotions in Korean ImmigrantOwned Nail Salons
Author(s): Miliann Kang
Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 17, No. 6 (Dec., 2003), pp. 820-839
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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Articles
THE MANAGED HAND
The Commercialization of Bodies and Emo
in Korean Immigrant-Owned Nail Sal
MILIANN KANG
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
This ethnographic study of service interactions in Korean immigrant women-owned nail salons in N
York City introduces the concept "body labor" to designate a type of gendered work that involves t
management of emotions in body-related service provision. The author explores variation in the perf
mance of body labor caused by the intersection of the genderedprocesses of beauty service work with th
racialized and class-specific service expectations of diverse customers. The study examines three di
tinct patterns of service provision that are shaped by racial and class inequalities between women:
high-service body labor; (2) expressive body labor, and (3) routinized body labor These patterns demo
strate that a caring, attentive style of emotional display is dominant in workplaces governed by whi
middle-class "feeling rules" but that different racial and class locations call forth other forms
gendered emotional management that focus on displaying respect, reciprocity, fairness, competenc
and efficiency.
Keywords: body labor; emotional labor; gendered work; intersections of race, gende
and class; immigrant women's work; Korean women
The title of Hochschild's (1983) groundbreaking study of emotional labor, The
Managed Heart, provides a rich metaphor for the control and commercialization
human feeling in service interactions. The title of this article, "The Managed
Hand," plays on Hochschild's to capture the commercialization of both human fe
ings and bodies and to introduce the concept of body labor, the provision of bod
related services and the management of feelings that accompanies it. By focusi
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to thank Catherine Berheide, C. N. Le, Jennifer Lee, Sara Lee, Su
Walzer and Chris Bose, Minjeong Kim, and the Gender & Society anonymous reviewers for valua
comments and suggestions. My dissertation committee at New York University, Craig Calhoun, Je
Goodwin, and Ruth Horowitz, and readers, Troy Duster and Kathleen Gerson, guided the theory an
research design. Thanks to Liann Kang, Wi Jo Kang, Nora Choi-Lee, Jung-hwa Hwang, Eunja L
Eunju Lee, and especially Jiwon Lee for research assistance. Research was supported in part by New
York University, the Social Science Research Council's Committee on International Migrati
Skidmore College, and Grinnell College. By recognizing this study with the CherylAllyn Miller awar
GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 17 No. 6, December 2003 820-839
DOI: 10.1177/0891243203257632
? 2003 Sociologists for Women in Society
820
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 821
on the case study of Korean immigrant manicurists and their relations with racially
and socioeconomically diverse female customers in New York City nail salons, I
broaden the study of emotional labor to illuminate its neglected embodied dimensions and to examine the intersections of gender, race, and class in its performance.
The past decade has witnessed a turn toward "Bringing Bodies Back In" (Frank
1990) to theory and research in sociology and feminist scholarship. What can be
gained by "bringing the body back in" to the study of emotional labor and, more
broadly, of gendered work? What are the dimensions of body labor, and what factors explain the variation in the quality and quantity of its performance? An embod-
ied perspective on gendered work highlights the feminization of the body-related
service sector and the proliferation of intricate practices of enhancing the appear-
ance of the female body. A race, gender, and class perspective highlights the
increasing role of working-class immigrant women in filling body-related service
jobs and the racialized meanings that shape the processes of emotional management among service workers.
This study compares nail salons in three racially and socioeconomically diverse
settings, employing participant observation and in-depth interviews (N = 62) in the
tradition of feminist ethnography and the extended case method. After providing a
brief overview of the case study of Korean-owned nail salons in New York City, the
data presentation maps out the physical and emotional dimensions of body labor in
three different nail salons and explains patterns of variation according to the race
and class of the clientele and neighborhood.
In addition to contributing original empirical research on Korean immigrant
women's work in the new and expanding niches of body service work, this article
broadens the scholarship on emotional labor by addressing its performance by
racial-ethnic and immigrant women in the global service economy. It demonstrates
how the gendered processes of physical and emotional labor in nail salon work are
seeped with race and class meanings that reinforce broader structures of inequality
and ideologies of difference between women.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Emotional Labor in Body Service Work:
Race, Gender, and Class Intersections
Work on the body requires not only physical labor but extensive em
agement, or what Hochschild's (1983) seminal work describes as em
Sociologistsfor Women in Society provided encouragement and intellectual community
Myra Marx Ferree, Mitchell Duneier, and members of the Feminist Seminar andRace a
inarfor inviting me to present andfor responding to an earlier version of this article at
Wisconsin-Madison, 2001.
REPRINT REQUESTS: Miliann Kang, Women's Studies Program, 208 Bartlett Hall
Massachusetts, Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003; e-mail: mkang @wost.umass.edu.
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822 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
The concept of body labor makes two important contributions to the stud
tional labor: (1) It explores the embodied dimensions of emotional labor
investigates the intersections of race, gender, and class in shaping its pe
By bringing together an embodied analysis of emotional labor with an
race, gender, and class perspective, I show how this case study of nail s
retheorizes emotional labor to have greater applicability to gendered oc
dominated by racialized immigrant women.
Building on Hochschild's (1983) work, studies of emotional labor hav
nated the increasing prevalence of emotional management in specific o
and industries, the gendered composition of the emotional labor force,
crimination, burnout, and other occupational health issues (Hall 1993;
1999; Lively 2000; Wharton 1999). Steinberg and Figart (1999) provide
hensive overview of the field that examines both qualitative case studies of
tours of emotional labor in specific work sites and quantitative investiga
prevalence and its impact on job satisfaction and compensation. Despite
dimensions of emotional labor that have been addressed by feminist sc
body-related contours of emotional labor as it is manifested in low-w
work dominated by racial-ethnic women, particularly in the beauty indu
yet to be examined in depth.
While the study of beauty and the beauty industry presents a rich oppo
explore the emotional work involved in servicing female bodies, this lit
focused attention almost exclusively on the experiences of middle-cla
women consumers and their physical and psychological exploitation by
dominated beauty industry (Banner 1983; Bordo 1993; Chapkis 1986; W
neglecting the substandard working conditions, unequal power relations
plex emotional lives of the women who provide these services. Severa
ethnographies of beauty salons (Gimlan 1996; Kerner Furman 1997) hav
the dimensions of class and age in beauty shop culture, but they have no
the experiences of women of color as either customers or body service
Studies of the bodies of women of color, while illuminating cultural repre
of racialized bodies as inferior and exotic (hooks 1990) and studying the
body alteration, particularly regarding hair (Banks 2000; Rooks 1996),
neglected the actual interactions between consumers and providers of b
services and the hierarchies that govern these exchanges.
In addition to neglecting emotional work in body service jobs, the lit
emotional labor has framed the processes of interactive service work
through a gender lens and paid less attention to the crosscutting influence
der, race, and class. Russsell Hochschild's original case study of flight a
and subsequent applications to other female-dominated occupations ha
sized the gendered employment experiences of native-born white
paralegals (Pierce 1995), nannies and au pairs (Macdonald 1996), fas
insurance sales workers (Leidner 1993), and police officers (Schmitt an
Martin 1999). My research expands this work not only in its empirica
immigrant women of color doing gendered, emotional labor but thro
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 823
theoretical framework of race, gender, and class as "interactive systems" and
"interlocking categories of experience" (Anderson and Hill Collins 2001, xii). This
framework critiques additive models that append race and class to the experiences
of white middle-class women and instead highlights the simultaneity and reciprocity of race, gender, and class in patterns of social relations and in the lives of
individuals (Baca Zinn 1989; Hill Collins 1991; hooks 1981; Hurtado 1989;
Nakano Glenn 1992; Ngan-Ling Chow 1994). Thus, I demonstrate that different
expectations or "feeling rules" (Hochschild 1983, x) shape the performance of
emotional labor by women according to the racial and class context.
Drawing from Hochschild's (1983) definition of emotional labor, I incorporate
this intersectional analysis to define important parallels and distinctions between
the concepts of body labor and emotional labor. First, Hochschild's definition of
emotional labor focuses on a particular form that "requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper
state of mind in others-in this case, the sense of being cared for in a convivial and
safe place" (1983, 7). While Hochschild develops this definition in reference to the
specific case of flight attendants and the feeling rules that govern their work, this
kind of caring, attentive service has become a widely generalized definition, rather
than being regarded as one particular form of emotional labor performed by mostly
white, middle-class women largely for the benefit of white, middle- and upperclass men. Korean-owned nail salons thus serve as a contrasting site to explore
other forms of emotional labor that emerge in work sites that are differently
gendered, differently racialized, and differently classed. The patterns of emotional
labor described in this study can illuminate similar sites in which emotional labor
involves women serving women (as opposed to mainly women serving men), and is
not necessarily governed by the social feeling rules of white, middle-class
America.
Furthermore, while Hochschild and other scholars of emotional labor have
examined certain embodied aspects of emotional labor concerned with gendered
bodily display, ranging from control of weight to smiles, this study highlights emo-
tional management regarding bodily contact in service interactions. The dynamics
of extended physical contact between women of different racial and class positions
complicate and intensify the gendered performance of emotional labor. Body labor
not only demands that the service worker present and comport her body in an
appropriate fashion but also that she induces customers' positive feelings about
their own bodies. This is a highly complicated enterprise in a culture that sets unat-
tainable standards for female beauty and pathologizes intimate, nurturing physical
contact between women, while it normalizes unequal relations in the exchange of
body services.
By investigating the understudied area of body-related service occupations
through an intersectional race, gender, and class analysis, this study of body labor
reformulates the concept of emotional labor to dramatize how the feeling rules gov-
erning its exchange are shaped by interlocking oppressions that operate at the
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824 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
macro level (Hill Collins 1991) and then emerge as different styles of
service at the micro level.
BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY
In this section, I provide context for my study by describing nail salo
for Korean immigrant women's work and discussing the dynamics of
nicity in its development. As one of the few arenas in which immigrant
born women encounter each other in regular, sustained, physical con
immigrant women-owned nail salons in New York City illuminate t
performance and production of race, gender, and class as they are co
feminized work sites in the global service economy. Since the early 1
women in New York City have pioneered this new ethnic niche wit
2,000 Korean-owned nail salons throughout the metropolitan area, o
mately 70 percent of the total, as estimated by the Korean American
tion of New York. Each salon employs an average of five workers, su
occupational niche of roughly 10,000 women. While the New York St
bureau does not keep track of nail salon licenses by ethnic group, t
reveal an overall 41-percent growth in the nail industry (from 7,562
technicians in 1996 to 10,684 in 2000) in New York City, Westchester
Nassau County. These numbers undercount a sizable number of women
possess licenses or legal working status.
While concentrating on Korean immigrant women, this study ex
race and ethnicity as salient categories of analysis. I designate the salo
workers according to ethnicity, but I recognize shared racial positions th
only Korean but also other Asian immigrant women into this niche. For
New York, there is a significant presence of Chinese- and Vietnames
Korean-owned nail salons, and on the West Coast, the niche is almost
nated by Vietnamese women (www.nailsmag.com). Common factors
ited English-language ability, unrecognized professional credentials
countries of origin, undocumented immigration status, and coethnic
the form of labor, start-up capital, and social networks explain why
grant women of various ethnic groups cluster in the nail salon industry
across Asian ethnic groups include not only the human capital of the w
selves but also the conditions of the labor market and the U.S. racial h
they encounter. Through their shared race, gender, and class locati
women have been coveted as productive and docile workers, whose
gers" (Ong 1987) make them desirable and exploitable in an in
feminized, impoverished, and unprotected labor force (Cheng and Bo
Hu-DeHart 1999). Racialized perceptions of Asian women as skilled i
handiwork and massage further contribute to customers' preference for
curing services, as evidenced by the fact that many customers racially
salons as owned by Asians or "Orientals," as opposed to by specific eth
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 825
In sum, because it would be methodologically unsound to generalize findings
based on a limited sample of Korean women to include all Asian immigrant women
in the nail industry, this study maintains ethnicity as the significant category for
describing the workers and owners but frames differences between the customers
and variation in service interactions according to race. Thus, I discuss the different
dimensions of Korean-immigrant women's performance of body labor through the
integrative lens of race, gender, and class rather than a more specific focus on
Korean ethnicity.1
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHOD
This study situates itself within feminist methodology and epis
beginning from the standpoint of women to investigate the "relation
contemporary capitalist society (Smith 1987). At the same time, it d
lege gender as the only or the most important framework for definin
gating differences and aims instead for an understanding of race, ge
as crosscutting forces. By examining contrasting patterns of body
women of different racial and class backgrounds, this study reconstru
emotional labor by addressing its embodied dimensions and the sim
influence of gender, race, and class on its performance. In doing so,
extended case method of making critical interventions in existing
explaining anomalies between similar phenomena, rather than seeki
tions toward the discovery of new theory, as in the contrasting a
grounded theory. According to Burawoy (1991, 281), the primary ar
extended case method, "The importance of the single case lies in wh
about society as a whole rather than about the population of similar
my study examines cases of specific nail salons, not to formulate g
about all similar nail salons but instead to explain how social forces in
tion in the service interactions at these sites.
The data collection for this project involved 14 months of fieldwork in New
York City nail salons. The research design included in-depth interviews (N = 62)
and participant observation at three sites: (1) "Uptown Nails," located in a predominantly white, middle- and upper-class commercial area; (2) "Downtown Nails,"
located in a predominantly Black (African American and Caribbean) working- and
lower-middle-class commercial neighborhood; and (3) "Crosstown Nails," located
in a racially mixed lower-middle and middle-class residential and commercial area.
I spent at least 50 hours at each salon over the course of several months. In the case
of Crosstown Nails, which was located near my home, visits were shorter (2 to 3
hours) and more frequent (several times a week). The other two salons required
long commutes, so I usually visited once a week for 6 to 7 hours.
In addition to hundreds of unstructured conversational interviews conducted as
a participant-observer, the research included in-depth structured interviews with 10
Korean nail salon owners, 10 Korean nail salon workers, 15 Black customers, and
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826 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
15 white customers. The customers interviewed at each salon are as follows.
Uptown Nails included a lawyer, professor, pharmacist, flight attendant, secretar
personal trainer, accessories importer, homemaker (formerly a computer progra
mer), fashion designer, and real estate broker. Customers interviewed at Downto
Nails included a package clerk, student/waitress, student/mother, grocery cashi
ambulatory service driver, county government administrative assistant, laborato
technician, nanny, therapist, and elementary school principal. At Crosstown Nai
I interviewed 10 customers (five white, five Black). The white customers include
bartender, high school teacher, hairdresser, homemaker, and retired insuran
bookkeeper. The Black customers included a clinical researcher, theater techn
cian/musician, management consultant, homemaker, and student.
In-depth interviews averaged 45 minutes for customers and two hours for ow
ers and workers. Customers were interviewed in English at the salon while the
were having their manicures, and when necessary, a follow-up meeting or te
phone interview was arranged. Owners and workers were interviewed in both
Korean and English, depending on their preference and level of fluency. Biling
research assistants helped with translation, transcription, and follow-up interviews
I tape-recorded interviews in which consent was given, but in cases in which
respondents refused, I took extensive handwritten notes that I typed immediate
afterward. Both customers and service providers are referred to by pseudonym
that approximate the names they use in the salons. This convention captures the na
uralistic setting where even coworkers commonly refer to each other by the "Ame
ican name" that they employ at work. I have added a surname to citations an
descriptions of owners and workers to differentiate customers from service
providers.
Finally, I conducted key respondent interviews with two officials of the Korean
Nail Salon Association of New York, two Korean ethnic press journalists, one New
York State licensing official, and a representative of a Korean-operated nail school.
I interviewed two Vietnamese nail salon owners and one Chinese and one Russian
manicurist to provide preliminary comparisons to other ethnically owned nail
salons. To provide comparisons to other Korean-owned small businesses, I
engaged in limited participant observation in a Korean-owned grocery store and
interviewed the owner and manager.
FINDINGS
The Contours of Body Labor
Body labor involves the exchange of body-related services for a wage
performance of physical and emotional labor in this exchange. My study's
illustrate three dimensions of body labor: (1) the physical labor of attendi
bodily appearance and pleasure of customers, (2) the emotional labor of m
feelings to display certain feeling states and to create and respond to cu
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 827
feelings regarding the servicing of their bodies, and (3) variation in the performance of body labor as explained through the intersection of gender with race and
class. These dimensions vary across the different research sites and emerge as three
distinct patterns of body labor provision: (1) high-service body labor involving
physical pampering and emotional attentiveness serving mostly middle- and upper-
class white female customers, (2) expressive body labor involving artistry in technical skills and communication of respect and fairness when serving mostly working- and lower-middle-class African American and Caribbean female customers,
and (3) routinized body labor involving efficient, competent physical labor and
courteous but minimal emotional labor when serving mostly lower-middle and
middle-class racially mixed female customers. The data presentation admittedly
flattens some of the variation within each site to clarify distinctions between them,
but this typology highlights the dominant physical and emotional style of service at
each salon.
Uptown Nails: High-Service Body Labor
A seasoned Korean manicurist who has worked at Uptown Nails for nearly 10
years, Esther Lee is in high demand for her relaxing and invigorating hand massages. She energetically kneads, strokes, and pushes pressure points, finishing off
the massage by holding each of the customer's hands between her own and alternately rubbing, slapping, and gently pounding them with the flare that has wooed
many a customer into a regular nail salon habit. Margie, a white single woman in
her mid-30s who works for an accounting firm, smiles appreciatively and squeezes
Esther's hand: "I swear, I couldn't stay in my job without this!" Esther reciprocates
a warm, somewhat shy smile.
Uptown Nails boasts leafy green plants, glossy framed pictures of white fashion
models showing off well-manicured hands, recent fashion magazine subscriptions
stacked neatly on a coffee table, and classical CDs on the stereo system. The salon
has been in operation for 13 years, and three of the six employees have worked there
for more than 10 years. The customers sit quietly sipping their cappuccinos, updating their appointment books, or at times politely conversing with each other about
the weather or the color of the nail polish they are wearing. Located in a prosperous
business district of Manhattan, an Uptown Nails manicuring experience involves
not only the filing and polishing of nails but attention to the customer's physical and
emotional comfort. From the gentle removal of undernail dirt, to the careful trimming of cuticles and buffing of calluses, to the massaging of hands and feet, Korean
manicurists literally rub up against their customers, who are mostly white middle-
and upper-class women. The owner, one of the earliest pioneers in the nail salon
industry, currently operates six very profitable salons in prime Manhattan locations and visits this salon only once a week to take care of paperwork. The owner,
manager, and employees are all middle-aged Korean women with fluent Englishlanguage ability, reflecting the greater expectations for communications with cus-
tomers. The physical dimensions of body labor in Uptown Nails, including hot
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828 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
cotton towels, bowls of warm soaking solution, sanitized utensils, an
background music, all indicate considerable attention to creating a pleas
sory experience for the customer. Particular attention is given to avoiding
cuts and sterilizing and apologizing profusely when they occur.
In addition to this extensive physical pampering, Uptown Nails prior
emotional needs of customers regarding the servicing of their bodies.
white middle-class customers at this salon place great importance on
attentiveness as a crucial component of the service interaction. Kathy,
trainer, elaborated,
Having them done is a pleasure, a luxury. Doing them myself is tedious, havi
done is a treat. It's the whole idea of going and having something nice done for
If I do them myself, it's just routine upkeep of my body-like washing your
keeping your clothes clean. . . . Of course it makes it more enjoyable if t
friendly and can talk to you. If they can't remember my name that's okay, but
they should recognize me.
The proper performance of body labor thus transforms a hygienic pro
wise equated with washing hair or clothes, into a richly rewarding p
emotional experience. The satisfaction Kathy experiences from the m
derives not only from the appearance of the nails but the feeling of b
that accompanies attentive body servicing. To generate this feeling,
expect the manicurist to display a caring demeanor and engage in pleas
one conversation with them.
Service providers recognize customers' high expectations with regard to both
the physical and emotional dimensions of body labor, and they respond accordingly. Judy Cha, a 34-year-old who immigrated in 1993, describes the emotional
and physical stressors that accompany high-service body labor, particularly giving
massages to earn tips and engaging in conversation.
Three years ago we didn't give a lot of massages but now customers ask more and
more. It makes me weak and really tired. ... I guess because I don't have the right
training to do it in a way that doesn't tire my body. Some manicurists give massage all
the time to get tips, but sometimes I don't even ask them if I'm tired. Owners keep asking you to ask them, but on days I'm not feeling well, I don't ask.... One of my biggest
fears working in the salon is, what if I don't understand what the customer is saying?
They don't really talk in detail, just say, "how is the weather." But in order to have a
deeper relationship, I need to get past that and to improve my English. It makes it very
stressful.
Thus, manicurists work hard to conform to the high service expectations of middle-
class white women, but while the performance of caring, attentive emotional labor
is noticeably higher than that afforded in the other research sites, it often does not
meet customers' expectations. In particular, many Uptown Nails customers disapprove of the use of Korean language by the manicurists as a violation of proper
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 829
attentiveness in beauty service transactions and suspect that they are being talked
about (Kang 1997).
Cathy Hong, a 32-year-old manicurist who immigrated in 1999, sums up the
assumptions many of the Uptown Nails customers have regarding access to a regular manicure delivered with high-service body labor: "These women get their nails
done regularly because it has become a habit to them, they take if for granted. Just as
we wash our face daily, American women get their nails done."
Downtown Nails: Expressive Body Labor
Entering another borough, the scene inside Downtown Nails differs as radically
as the neighborhoods in which these two salons are located. Squeezed between a
Caribbean bakery and a discount clothing store, a worn-out signboard displays the
single word "NAILS" and a painting of a graceful, well-manicured hand holding a
long-stemmed rose and pointing to a staircase leading to the second-story entrance.
Upon being buzzed in through the locked door, the customer is greeted with a display of hundreds of brightly colored airbrushed nail tips lining an entire wall. The
noise level in the salon is high, as various electronic nail-sculpting tools create a
constant buzz to match the flow of the lively conversations among the mostly Black
customers. On a weekend afternoon, Downtown Nails is filled to capacity, and the
wait for a preferred "nail artist" can be more than an hour. Mostly Caribbean and
African American women, the customers engage in animated conversations while
sharing coco buns and currant rolls from the downstairs bakery. The banter ranges
from vivid accounts of a recent mugging near the salon to news about the pay freeze
in the nearby hospital where many of the women work as nurses or technicians.
A far cry from the spa-like pampering experience of Uptown Nails, a nail job at
Downtown Nails is closer to a stint on a factory assembly line: highly mechanized
and potentially toxic. Absent are the elaborate sanitizing machines and solutions,
let alone the soft pampering touches. Despite these appearances, body labor at
Downtown Nails involves a complex mix of physical and emotional labor that
accommodates customers' desires to express a unique sense of self through their
nail designs and their expectations that service providers demonstrate both individ-
ual respect and appreciation to the community.
The manicurists, or nail artists, provide less of the traditional, attentive style of
emotional labor but focus their emotional management on communicating a sense
of respect and fairness. These women tend to be more recent immigrants from more
working-class backgrounds with less English-language fluency and are more likely
to be working without legal immigration status or licenses. The owners, Mr. and
Mrs. Lee, are a married couple, both formerly school teachers, who immigrated in
1981 to pursue better educational opportunities for their children. Two years after
their arrival, they opened a salon in this location because the rent was affordable,
the customer base was strong, and they reside in a nearby neighborhood. The customers at Downtown Nails span a broad range in socioeconomic status but most are
working to lower-middle class.
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830 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
The importance of the physical appearance of the nails themselves as
the pampering experience of receiving these services is dramatized by
concern with the design of the nails versus the massage and other service
tomers at Uptown Nails regard as integral and Downtown Nails custom
extraneous. Jamilla, a 26-year-old African American part-time studen
ress, proudly displays her inch-and-a-half-long nails, each one adorned
skyline of New York City in bold black, framed by an orange and yello
regular patron of Downtown Nails for six years, she explains why she
spend "$50-$60 every two weeks" for elaborate hand-painted designs
Because I don't like looking like anyone else. My nails say "me." They're
thing people notice about me. I have big hands for a female. I never had th
thin ladylike fingers. My father used to say my hands were bigger than his. I w
nails because they make my hands look more feminine.
Indicating a preference for nails that reflect very different norms of fem
the demure, pastel tones prevalent at Uptown Nails, Jamilla elaborates
her nail aesthetics. "It all depends on my mood. Like this design makes
I'm on top of the city, like it can't bring me down [laughing]. ... No
mess with you when you got nails like these." Jamilla's pride in havin
designed nails that no one else can reproduce suggests the importance o
as an expression of her individuality that also communicate a sense of s
and protection, as indicated in her comments that no one would "me
woman with nails like hers. To meet the expectations of customers such
body labor at Downtown Nails calls for development of expertise in sc
painting original nail designs rather than in the soothing, pamperin
offered at Uptown Nails. Thus, the physical demands of body labor are
simply of a different type.
Similarly, the emotional dimensions of body labor at Downtown Nai
different in degree so much as kind. The customer's race and class locatio
to produce much lower expectations among working-class Black cust
emotional attentiveness than the white middle-class women at Uptow
While it is clearly less attentive, Serena, an African American grocery st
assesses the emotional labor at Downtown Nails positively.
It's very good, I'm satisfied with it. They really just do the nails, no massag
fine with me. I just go in with my Walkman and listen to some good music and
just have a little basic conversation.
Customers at Downtown Nails rarely are on a first-name basis with the s
viders, and their preference for a particular manicurist is based much
technical skills than her emotional attentiveness. Serena elaborated,
There are a few people I like and I go to whoever's open, but I'll stay away from
people. I know they're not good cause I hear other people complain-I see
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 831
come back and say that their nail cracked the next day, or I see someone get nicked
with a filer. ... No, it's not because they're rude or anything, it's because I know they
don't do a good job.... Just like some people just can't do hair, some people just can't
do nails.
[Regarding relations with her current manicurist] I feel comfortable with her, but
it's more that she does an excellent job. If a wrap cracks or looks funny or I lose a nail,
I'm not going back to her no matter how nice she is.
While many working-class Black customers like Serena give little importance to a
caring, attentive emotional display, they demand another style of emotional labor.
Emotional labor at Downtown Nails calls less for sensitivity to pampering of
individual customers and more for demonstration of values of respect and fairness
that recognize the complex dynamics of Korean businesses operating in Black
neighborhoods. This includes efforts such as sponsoring a Christmas party to thank
customers for their patronage, participating in community events, displaying Afro-
centric designs, and playing R&B and rap music. Mrs. Lee, the co-owner of the
salon, allows regulars to run an informal tab when they are short of money and
keeps a change jar that customers dip into for bus fare, telephone calls, or other incidentals. It is not uncommon for customers to drop by even when they are not getting
their nails done to use the bathroom or leave shopping bags behind the front desk
while they complete errands. These efforts at "giving back to the community"
entail a distinct form of emotional labor that conforms not to white middle-class
women's feeling rules of privilege and pampering but to Black working-class
women's concerns about being treated with respect and fairness.
Jamilla described the importance of a sense of fairness and respect to Black customers and how this demands a particular form of emotional labor from Korean
manicurists.
It's kind of a Catch-22. Some customers feel like they're getting disrespected if you
don't refer back to them or if you're having a side conversation. Then the Koreans get
upset and think African Americans have an attitude, which then makes them talk more
about us. You see, in the African American community, you can't outright say anything you want to say because we always have our guard up. We get it all the time,
from the cops or whoever. I've seen it in the Hispanic community too-this thing
about honor and respect. "Don't disrespect me just because I'm Black or Hispanic.
What I say does count."
Thus, while the caring, pampering style of service is virtually absent at Downtown
Nails, another form of emotional labor is necessary to negotiate and avoid conflicts
with customers that can quickly become racialized into heated confrontations (Lee
2002). Serena described a scene at another salon that illustrates how the failure to
perform appropriately respectful emotional labor can quickly erupt into shouting
matches that take on racialized and anti-immigrant overtones: "I've seen some cus-
tomers really go off on them, 'You're not in your country, speak English.'" Her
comments underscore how the race and class of the neighborhood complicate the
processes of emotional management inside the salons.
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832 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
Although disagreements between Downtown Nails' customers and w
arise, at times resulting in heated exchanges, the relations in the salon ar
overall, as the expressive style of emotional labor enables customers
providers to voice and, for the most part, "work out" their differenc
explained that she prefers serving Black customers for this reason a
moved back to working in a low-income Black neighborhood after wor
period in Long Island.
Working in the white neighborhood didn't match my personality. I don't d
with picky customers. ... In the Black neighborhood, it's more relaxed. Th
leave tips but they don't expect so much service either. ... [In Long Island] th
you to go slow and spend time with them. Here I just concentrate on doing a
and working quickly.
Service providers invest less energy in displaying and creating convi
states, which in some cases allows for a genuine affinity with Black cu
less of a sense of burnout from the effort involved in the manufacture of
vivial feelings.
Expressive body labor thus prioritizes both the meanings of the nails as
self-expression to working-class Black customers and the expression of
but tangible efforts to respond to the feeling rules of respect and fairnes
Korean immigrant service providers in predominantly Black wo
neighborhoods.
Crosstown Nails: Routinized Body Labor
Located on the second floor above a fashionable boutique, Crosstow
clean but sparse and utilitarian. In many ways, this salon is representa
most prevalent style of service offered in Korean-owned nail salons: f
basic manicures and pedicures with no frills. The McDonald's of the n
industry, Crosstown Nails offers a manicure that is standardized and pr
both its physical and emotional aspects.
This salon often has customers waiting, but even when it is busy, the l
quickly as each customer is whisked in and out of the manicuring seat
efficiency. The customer chooses her nail color, presents it to the man
asks her to specify the desired shape of the nail, and then soaks her nails
softening solution. Depending on her preference, her nails are either
pushed back. The manicurist offers to give a massage, but it is perfuncto
usually not more than a minute. After carefully layering on two coats of
quick-drying topcoat, the customer moves to a heated hand dryer whe
verses with other customers or more often "zones out."
Many customers come from the neighboring hospital during lunch hour or after
work. Situated on the edge of a fashionable, high-rent, racially diverse residential
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 833
district and a lower-income but also racially mixed neighborhood, Crosstown Nails
captures the broad range of customer interactions that many Korean service provid-
ers negotiate in a given day. In large, high-immigrant-receiving cities such as New
York, service interactions often involve multiracial rather than binary interactions
between Korean and Blacks or Koreans and whites.
Susan Lee, age 39, founded Crosstown Nails in 1989 and is the sole owner.
Divorced with one son, age 10, she emigrated in 1982 from Seoul with her husband,
a graduate student. She graduated college with a degree in tourism and worked as a
travel agent in Korea. In New York City, she first worked in a retail store in
Manhattan, then began to work in a nail salon in Brooklyn to support her husband
while he studied. After their marriage ended, she brought her mother from Korea in
1988 and with her help opened a convenience store, which failed shortly thereafter.
She then opened Crosstown Nails a year later, and the business has thrived.
The secret of Crosstown Nail's success is its ability to appeal to customers who
lack excess disposable income and normally would not indulge in a professional
manicure but are attracted by the convenience and price. Julia, a white bartender,
commented,
I'm kind of a ragamuffin, so it kind of surprises me that I get them done as often as I do,
which is still much less than most people in the city. It's just so easy to do here, and
cheap.
Julia's description of herself as a "ragamuffin" suggests that she does not adhere to
strict codes of femininity in her dress or other beauty routines, as indicated by her
casual peasant skirt and no makeup. Nonetheless, easy and cheap access draws her
into purchasing regular manicures.
Many customers at Crosstown Nails seek manicures not as a pampering experience or as creative expression but as a utilitarian measure to enhance their selfpresentation at work. Merna, an Afro-Caribbean clinical researcher, explained,
I only get them done about every two months. I don't want to get attached to it. For
some women it's such a ritual, it becomes a job-maintaining the tips and stuff. I'm
presenting my hands all day long so it's worth it to me to spend some time and money
to make sure they look good.
Merna regards manicured nails as a professional asset more than a core aspect of a
gendered self. Thus, the style of her nails and the meaning she gives to them is more
similar to the white middle-class customers at Crosstown Nails than to the Black
working-class customers at Downtown Nails.
In general, middle-class Black customers like Merna mostly exhibited similar
nail aesthetics to those of middle-class white women, suggesting the greater importance of class over race in influencing nail styles and expectations of body labor,
particularly in routinized settings such as Crosstown Nails.
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834 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
DISCUSSION
The concept of emotional labor addresses how service providers pr
manipulate their feelings to communicate a sense of caring and attentiven
tomers, or in Hochschild's (1983, 6) words, where "the emotional style
service is part of the service itself." This study of interactions in Korean
salons enriches the literature on emotional labor by expanding it to inc
ied dimensions, or body labor. The embodied aspects of emotional labo
heighten the intensity of commercialized feeling exchanges but they al
variation in these exchanges beyond the white middle-class settings
most researchers. Nail salon services, and body labor more generally, ar
work processes, but they are enacted in different forms according to the
of race and class.
In what ways is nail salon work gendered? In what ways are these gendered
work processes remolded by race and class? Understanding the influence of race
and class on the gendered performance of body labor in Korean-owned nail salons
illuminates how gendered work processes reflect and reproduce racial and class
inequalities at the level of social structures. Nail salon work is gendered in four
major dimensions: (1) It involves mostly female actors, as both service providers
and customers; (2) it focuses on the construction of beauty according to feminine
norms; (3) it is situated in feminized, semiprivate spaces; and (4) it involves the
gendered performance of emotional labor.
In describing each of these dimensions, I do not emphasize how socialized gender roles are acted out in these establishments, but rather how gender operates as a
social institution that lays the groundwork for the very existence of these businesses
and frames the interactions that occur within them. Thus, I conceptualize these
small businesses according to the model of gendered institutions (Marx Ferree and
Hall 1996) and examine how they are constructed from the ground up through
gendered ideologies, relations, and practices that sustain systematic gender
inequality at the micro level of sex differences, at the meso level of group conflict,
and the macro levels of power, social control, and the division of labor. At the same
time, I argue that as gendered institutions, they cannot be separated from forces of
racial and class inequality.
If, as Paul Gilroy (1993, 85) asserted, "gender is the modality in which race is
lived," then race, and I argue class as well, are lived in these nail salons and other
body-service sites as differences in gendered styles of body labor. Interactions in
Korean female immigrant-owned nail salons illustrate how the gendered practices
of body labor become the locus of expressing and negotiating race and class hierarchies between white, Black, and Asian women. High-service body labor, as performed at Uptown Nails, is similar to the style of caring, attentive emotional labor
practiced by Hochschild's flight attendants and conforms to the feeling rules of
white middle-class women. Expressive body labor focuses on the physical appearance and artistry of the nails and the communication of respect and fairness in serv-
ing mostly working- and lower-middle-class African American and Caribbean
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 835
women customers at Downtown Nails. Routinized body labor stresses efficiency,
predictability, affordability, and competency in physical labor and a courteous but
no-frills style of emotional labor geared toward mostly lower-middle- and middle-
class racially mixed female customers at Crosstown Nails.
These patterns of body labor conform to the racial and class positions of the cus-
tomers and the associated feeling rules that define their service expectations. At
Uptown Nails, race, gender, and class intersect to produce an emotionally and
physically pampering form of body labor that conforms to the expectations of
white, professional women for caring and attentive service. These women have
high expectations regarding massages, cleanliness, sensitive touch, and friendly
conversation while Black, working-class women at Downtown Nails expect minimal pampering and focus on the appearance, originality, and durability of the nails
themselves. At Crosstown Nails, class prevails over race as both Black and white
women of middling socioeconomic status view the nails instrumentally as a nononsense professional asset rather than conforming to traditional notions of pampered femininity. Thus, they trade off the physical pleasure and emotional attentiveness of high-service treatment for the convenience and price of routinized body
labor.
Black middle-class women at Crosstown Nails share this instrumental view of
nails and a preference for a routinized, hassle-free manicure. The style of nails and
the meaning given to them by Black middle-class women radically differ from the
working-class Black women at Downtown Nails, who value nail art as a form of
self-expression and demand emotional labor that communicates respect and fairness. This contrast between the Black middle-class and working-class women customers at Crosstown and Downtown Nails again suggests the greater salience of
class over race in determining the type of body labor.
What structural factors explain the differences in the provision of body labor in
these three sites? These body labor types, while enacted at the micro level, reflect
the social conditions of the neighborhoods in which the salons are located and the
clientele they serve. Because of the reliance on tips in white middle-class neighborhoods, service providers have greater incentive to cater to the emotional needs of
customers such as those at Uptown Nails to increase their earnings. In the Black
working-class neighborhoods where tipping is not a widespread practice, nail salon
workers guarantee their economic livelihood by establishing a base of regular customers who seek them out for their technical and artistic abilities more than their
emotional or physical attentiveness. In routinized body labor settings serving
lower-middle-class women of mixed races, service providers maximize their earnings by generating a high turnover of customers who receive satisfactory but not
special emotional and physical treatment.
These patterns of body labor service reflect and reproduce racial and class
inequalities between women. Korean service providers learn to respond to white
middle- and upper-class customers' emotional pampering and physical pleasure,
thereby reinforcing the invisible sense of privilege claimed by these customers. The
expressive practices of creating artful nails and troubleshooting potential problems
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836 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2003
with Black working-class customers, while helping to smooth relations
serve to emphasize racial meanings in these interactions and enforce a sen
ference. The routinized style of body labor reflects the generic social po
women whose bodies are neither privileged nor pathologized but simpl
with routine efficiency.
CONCLUSIONS
Exchanges of manicuring services set up complex emotional and e
teractions between diverse women. In introducing and exploring the
body labor, this article challenges the scholarship on emotional labor
seriously the growth in body-related service jobs and to address the
these service interactions not simply in terms of gendered processes bu
lens of race, gender, and class intersections. Thus, not only does t
body labor add embodied dimensions to emotional labor, but it also
applicable to low-wage service work performed by immigrant wom
This study situates the practice of body labor in Korean-owned
within the restructuring of the global economy and the transplantatio
tices of enhancing bodily appearance from private households into n
public urban space. A manicure is no longer something a woman give
daughter, or a girlfriend in the quiet of her own bathroom, but it is s
she increasingly purchases in a nail salon. In purchasing these service
expands the boundaries of the service economy to include formerly
mens of personal hygiene, but she also encounters the "other," often
woman of different racial and class background through physical co
generate highly charged feelings on both sides. These feelings ma
worked out differently in distinct styles of body labor that emerge thr
section of gendered work processes with customers' racial and class
their associated service expectations.
Although so far I have drawn parallels between this process of exc
services for a wage with the commercialization of feelings in emo
another parallel can be drawn to the encroachment of the capitalist sys
area of social reproduction. Nakano Glenn (1992) and others have illu
the performance of household work such as cleaning, cooking, and ca
dren and the elderly has become increasingly part of the capitalist mar
low-paying, unprotected jobs (nanny, elderly caregiver, nurses, aide) ar
filled by immigrant women of color. This study has illustrated how sim
dynamics of commodifying reproductive labor and farming it out a
less privileged women, body services and the emotional labor acco
(what I have conceptualized as body labor) have become increasingly
ized and designated as racialized immigrant women's work.
Additional dimensions of body labor that I will explore in further st
(1) the impact of this work on the women who perform it and the ways
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Kang / THE MANAGED HAND 837
to or resist its pressures, (2) the role of managers in supervising body labor, (3) the
variation between body labor in nonessential beauty services such as nail salon
work versus the work of social reproduction, and, as previously mentioned, (4) the
ethnic-specific dimensions of Korean-Black and Korean-white relations. While
this article has concentrated on my case study of nail salons, the concept of body
labor can be applied to many other occupations, especially female-dominated service professions in which service providers and customers are of different race and
class origins, including hairdressers, masseuses, nannies, nurses, doctors, personal
trainers, and prostitutes.
Finally, in mapping out the racial, gendered, and classed complexity of body
labor, this article highlights a kernel of social change that lies in negotiating service
interactions between women of different classes, racial and ethnic backgrounds,
and immigrant statuses. While these interactions often mimic structures of power
and privilege, they also create opportunities to contest these structures. The Korean
salon owner of Downtown Nails learns to respect and show appreciation for Black
working-class patrons. Korean manicurists at Uptown Nails assert their knowledge
and expertise over their white middle-class customers. Routinized service at Cross-
town Nails equalizes treatment of women across race and class.
From the customer's side, a weekly trip to the local nail salon can become a lesson in relating to a woman of a radically different social position, whom she would
rarely encounter in her own milieu. As these emotional and embodied interactions
reflect larger systems of status and power, by rewriting the unspoken feeling rules
of these interactions, women can take small but important steps in the creation of
more equal relations with other women. Nakano Glenn (2002, 16-17) wrote that
"contesting race and gender hierarchies may involve challenging everyday
assumptions and practices, take forms that do not involve direct confrontation, and
occur in locations not considered political." Exchanges involving body labor in
Korean-owned nail salons are one such location where these everyday assumptions
and practices can be recognized and possibly renegotiated.
NOTE
1. I will examine the ethnic-specific dimensions of customer interactions in the historical con
Korean-Black relations more fully in a separate article.
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Miliann Kang is an assistantprofessor in the Women's Studies Program and is affiliated with the
Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests
include immigrant women's work, Asian American communities, race, gender and class
intersectionality, emotional labor, and the social construction of the body.
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