Aesthetic labouring and the female entrepreneur: ‘Entrepreneurship that wouldn’t chip your nails’

Abstract

Recognising significant interrelations between neoliberal and postfeminist discourses, we advance understandings of constructions of female entrepreneurs by unpacking their visual representation and exploring the role of aesthetic labour. Given the impact of contemporary media, we focus on key images integral to the marketing of Mattel's Entrepreneur Barbie as a postfeminist 'cultural motif' (Duffy et al., 2017: 262) and investigate how these representations of female entrepreneurship are consumed. First, we highlight the practical demands and emotional risks of the aesthetic labour required to achieve such postfeminist glamour. Second, links between conventional femininity and entrepreneurial success are both celebrated and challenged, highlighting perceived limits to achievement. Finally, we unpack understandings of the relations between entrepreneurialism and aesthetic labour to move beyond assumptions of the instrumental power of the makeover. Our findings thus, enrich understandings of the consumption of postfeminist images of entrepreneurs.

Gender and entrepreneurship: past achievements and future possibilities

“…Postfeminism, however, is a repudiation of feminism in that it rejects the need for a collective politically informed debate but instead, suggests that within the contemporary era of emancipation, women can apply entrepreneurialism of the self to achieve their ambitions (Deloitte, 2016). Postfeminism has been developed as a cultural trope drawing upon shifts in the presentation of young, savvy, liberated women, largely in developed economies, using "girl power" and related forms of femininity to advance personal ambition (McRobbie, 2009;Pritchard et al, 2019). This discourse is articulated through broad sensibilities including the Past achievements and future possibilities application of agency as a pathway to achievement, a denial of structural barriers as the source of inequality and a makeover paradigm to create a subjectivity congruent with desirable feminised norms represented by popular role model exemplars.…”

Heroines of enterprise: Post-recession media representations of women and entrepreneurship in a UK newspaper 2008–2016

“…This reflects the growing centrality of work and rising importance of economic identities in constituting the self, as well as the extension of economic rationales and business logic to typically non-work areas of life and the self. Success is both individualised and internalised, with a focus on the psychic life of the individual, the role of positive affect, and the importance of aesthetic labour (Rottenberg 2014;Scharff 2016;Gill, et al, 2017;Swann 2017;Pritchard et al 2019). These are key to entrepreneurial success, achieving a successful balance between work and family life, each of which are, and indeed should be, satisfying.…”

Climbing to freedom on an impossible staircase: Exploring the emancipatory potential of becoming an entrepreneur-employer

“…This was in keeping with IPA's commitment to retaining individual details of the particular, whilst illuminating characteristics of a lifeworld that are common to us all. Studies employing the use of visual methods offer rich empirical work providing insight into how and why such conceptions of entrepreneurial success or intent are constructed (Nadin et al, 2020;Pritchard et al, 2019;Duffy and Hund, 2015;Swail et al, 2014;Smith, 2009Smith, , 2010.…”

“…IPA studies on other topics using photo-elicitation (Silver and Farrants, 2016), visual voice (Williamson, 2018) and found images (Bacon et al, 2017) demonstrate the utility of this approach. Within entrepreneurship, gender studies make effective use of visual methods (Pritchard et al, 2019;Duffy and Hund, 2015;Smith, 2014;Swail et al, 2014;Swan, 2017). There are also promising methodological developments utilising visual and creative methods to understand entrepreneurial identities (Clarke and Holt, 2019).…”

“…With artificial constraints removed, the extent to which individuals realise this natural autonomy is limited only by the amount of time, effort or capital they are prepared to invest in achieving it. This shift of responsibility makes us all become seekers of something: self-determination, maximisation of our health (Cederström and Spicer, 2015), our bodies (Pritchard et al, 2019;Moore and Robinson, 2016), our work (Musílek et al, 2020) and our lifestyles through consumption. The 'unemployed become job seekers; refugees become asylum seekers' (Rose, 2017: 4); tourists become thrill seekers; entrepreneurs become fortune seekers -it is from this perspective, never-ending.…”