Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry (review)

In Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry, Tiffany M. Gill provides a compelling analysis of how black beauticians found agency during and after the Jim Crow era of the early to mid-twentieth century—a time when black women faced immense racial, gender, and class opposition. Women generally conformed to the "cult of true womanhood," where they were expected to be pious, submissive, thrifty, and domestic. Yet, black beauticians negotiated their identities as black businesswomen and expanded traditional notions of womanhood by including their entrepreneurial activities as part and parcel of black women's respectability and duty to the race. Gill essentially argues that the black beauty industry was a unique site for the cultivation of black women's activism toward racial uplift. Moreover, the convergence of beauty, business, and politics informed the identities and activities of black women in distinct ways throughout the twentieth century.

Gill suggests that the black beauty industry was one of the most lucrative and respectable fields for black women to enter, at a time when the highest profession most black women could expect to attain was either teaching or nursing. She traces the activities of black beauty professionals primarily during the early 1900s (the "Gilded Age of Black Business"), the Great Depression years, both world wars, and the cold war era. Gill makes three critical observations: (1) beauty salons provided one of the few spaces available for black women to engage in political activism; (2) black beauty culturists displayed their activism on personal, community, and international levels; and (3) black beauty professionals provided meaningful educational and economic opportunities for black women. While black beauty businesswomen negotiated a complicated space as beauty professionals and activists, they represent a venerable collective among the larger number of blacks who agitated for economic and political rights.

Black beauticians, or "beauty culturists" as they called themselves and were called by their constituents, were "businesswomen in the purest sense who owned and operated salons, others were workers in salons, while still others engaged in hair work independently in their own homes or apartments." Furthermore, "they all shared a common professional identity and considered themselves businesswomen," or beauty professionals (4). They began organizing as early as 1900 as more women joined the ranks, and they created women's business clubs comprised of nurses, seamstresses, and beauticians, among other professions. Black beauty culturists gave speeches at black business conferences on issues confronting black businesswomen and encouraged more women to try their hand at business ventures (14). In 1916, Madam C. J. Walker initiated the development of what became the Walker Hair Culturists' Union, which sought to "demonstrate the financial and political clout of Walker agents" (45). In 1920, a group of beauty clubs merged to form the National Beauty Culturists' League (NBCL) and convened their first conference that same year (47). Madam C. J. Walker also established the National Negro Cosmetic Manufacturer's Association to mobilize black manufacturers against competition from white companies whose sole interest in black beauty culture was economic exploitation (48). Black beauty culturists continued to create organizations throughout the 1950s and 1960s that challenged segregation in the beauty industry as well as federal and state laws that affected their businesses.

Gill also demonstrates how black beauty salons served as meaningful institutions in the black community, which served as unique spaces for black women to develop agency and assert their leadership. Beauty salons provided black women an alternative to menial labor (for example, as domestics, washerwomen, factory workers, etc.) and presented the opportunity for economic independence. Although relying heavily on secondary sources, Gill convincingly argues that salons owned by black beauty professionals constituted one of the few solvent black institutions that lasted throughout the turbulent decades of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War era. Black beauty culturists maintained a certain level of autonomy and independence over their businesses, a luxury not afforded to many other black entrepreneurs and business...