Walking Mannequins  


Walking Mannequins
Univ of California Press | March 27, 2023 | 303 pages
ISBN: 9780520384651

"Walking Mannequins explores clothing retail workers' experiences in stores oriented toward teens and twenty-somethings using interviews. We aim to understand how employers regulate beauty- and brand-oriented 'aesthetic labor,' how workers must look and act to evoke the brand they represent. We find that workers deal with ever-changing schedules and constant surveillance. Racial hierarchies are visible both in the body rules that workers must follow and their relationships with managers, coworkers, and customers.