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

In this fascinating work in the field of African American women's history, Tiffany M. Gill reclaims the role of African American women within the canon of civil rights and labor histories. Deviating from previous scholarship on the black beauty culture industry, which has largely focused on consumer aspects of the industry, Gill instead explores the political and social activist activities of African American beauty culturists of the twentieth century. Using archival research and oral histories, Gill's work moves beyond previous debates interrogating the economic independence of black beauticians to examine the political and social impacts these women's labor efforts allowed as well.

Spanning the twentieth century, the book is organized chronologically with each chapter focusing on a theme indicative of the period. Most subheadings begin with a meticulously researched and noteworthy case study of an exemplary woman in the industry. Followed into the chapter's broader argument, this woman's life then becomes a study situating her work within a broader trend of beauty culturists working for political or social change.

The first chapter examines the early entrepreneurs of the beauty industry in a study of how women working in the black beauty culture industry were able to create opportunities outside of traditional domestic work to obtain economic stability through their beauty work. Gill's analysis differs from previous scholars in her argument that these women not only pioneered an industry but also legitimized the industry and their work by developing the connections between business and identity.

The second chapter, subtitled "Black Beauty Culture, Racial Politics, and the Complexities of Modern Black Womanhood," expands her analysis to include other, less well-known beauty pioneers and nationally organized beauty culture clubs to focus on their efforts to merge race work and beauty culture. These beauty culturists used their economic leverage and social status within their communities to encourage others to make philanthropic, political, and social reform efforts to aid the African American community.

Chapter 3 examines tactics used among black beauty culturists to keep their industry afloat during the Great Depression. By shifting to a focus on beauty education, they were able to go beyond survival to achieve expansion during an economic downturn, as well as concentrate on efforts to be included in the measures being taken to regulate the industry at the time.

The fourth chapter interrogates the role of travel, particularly international travel, in creating a professional, middle-class identity for beauty culturists in the mid-twentieth century. In an intriguing subargument, Gill questions the varying racial dynamics in the United States and abroad encountered by traveling beauticians and the opportunities available to them within a range of political constraints.

In her fifth and what I view as her strongest chapter, Gill explores the idea of beauty salons, particularly ones in the Jim Crow South, as "asylums" for black women to escape the effects of segregation and "incubators" for emerging leaders working for social and political change (p. 99). Confidence in their economic autonomy, distinct institutional space and access to local black women gave beauty workers an element of power within their community.

Gill's final chapter, subtitled "Beauticians, Health Activism, and the Politics of Dignity in the Post-Civil Rights Era," explores the still vibrant but shifting approach to activism mounted by beauticians in the most recent decades of the twentieth century. Following the end of de jure segregation and the rise of corporate interest in the black hair care industry, the focus of black beauticians' activism moved to that of health education, particularly regarding awareness of HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, and heart disease in women.

Gill's book is concise, well organized, and engaging throughout. Gill builds on the work of Susannah Walker, Style and Status, 2007, and Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 1998, to create a...