This study applies the concept of intersectionality to Black women's entrepreneurial activity. Specifically, the author addresses the ways in which race, gender, and class intersect to inform working-class Black women's decisions and experiences as hair salon owners. By placing Black women at the center of analysis, the author explores business ownership from the perspective of a group that has frequently been overlooked in sociology of entrepreneurship research. The findings indicate that race, gender, and class inequalities shape working-class Black women's entrepreneurship (...) in two areas: the process of becoming entrepreneurs and relationships with stylists. (shrink)

This article details the making of community and bodies in online environments, specifically the online pro-anorexia community. Building community among members of these groups is particularly fraught because tensions over claims to authenticity permeate these groups. Because these are embodied practices and online spaces are presumably disembodied, participants constantly grapple with authenticity, largely through the threat of the ‘wannarexic’. Participants manage these tensions through engaging in group rituals and deploying individual tools that attempt to make the body evident online. This (...) article documents the way in which tensions around authenticity and embodied practices are managed through treatment of the wannarexic. (shrink)

Current research on construction of the female body focuses on non-Hispanic women in the United States. The idealized Latina body, however, is rapidly becoming commodified and objectified in global popular culture. Using standardized and open-ended surveys and group and individual interviews, the author examines the negotiation of sociocultural ideals and body image by adolescents at the intersection of gender, race, and beauty. These young women hold racist beauty ideals but are flexible when judging the appearance of real-life women. They perceive (...) two competing or complementary prototypes of beauty, one white and one Latina. This study fills a gap in the literature on beauty and the body by examining a non-U.S. sample that does not fit into the usual Black-white dichotomy of race. (shrink)

This article questions the societal and cultural image of Black women as strong and suggests that this seemingly affirming portrayal is derived from a discourse of enslaved women’s deviance. In highlighting connections between perceived strength and physical size among Black women, the analysis extends current feminist theory by considering the ways in which the weight many strong African American women carry is reflective of the deviant and devalued womanhood that they are expected to embody both within and outside their culture.

Research on bodies and sexualities has long debated ideas about choice, agency, and power, particularly as women conform to, or rebel against, traditional social scripts about femininity and heterosexuality. In this study, I have used responses from 34 college women who completed an extra credit assignment in a women’s studies class that asked them to reject social norms and grow out their leg and underarm hair for a period of 10 weeks. Responses reveal that women confronted direct and anticipated homophobia (...) and heterosexism from others as well as hostility for rejecting traditional norms of femininity. Heterosexual women regularly encountered demands that they acquire permission to grow body hair from their male partners, while queer and bisexual women expressed reluctance about further “outing” themselves via their body hair. I consider implications for linking sexual identity discrimination and body hair practices, and for imagining bodies as sites of resistance inside and outside of pedagogical settings. (shrink)

Almost half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended, despite the availability of highly effective forms of birth control. Women often cite side effects as a reason for stopping hormonal birth control, and most research on the topic comes from a medical perspective. In this study, I analyze hormonal contraceptive side effects from a social perspective that highlights the link between cultural messages about gender and women’s contraceptive behavior. Drawing on data from interviews with 88 women, I argue that (...) the gendered emphasis on women’s appearance and emotionality shapes women’s perceptions about the seriousness of hormonal contraceptive side effects, like weight gain and emotional volatility, and their propensity to stop use as a result. Contrary to understandings of side effects as a purely medical aspect of use, the gender analysis elucidates the ways that particular side effects are imbued with social meaning that can undermine women’s goals to prevent pregnancy. (shrink)