Aesthetic labor in hospitality
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the essay should answer the following with a focus placed on the hospitality industry:
What is meant by the term aesthetic labour? Identify an interactive service occupation and discuss why
the industry recruits feminized labour oftentimes with intersecting identities (e.g. age, class,racialised
background)? Do these workers experience discrimination (e.g.double-standards sexual harassment) in
their occupation? Explain why this
happens.
references to be used in the essay
Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and hospitality by: Chris Warhurst & Dennis Nickson
the �Right� Person for the Job: Exploring the Aesthetics of about within the Events Industry by:
Katherine L Dashper
Emotional intelligence and emotional labour acting strategies among frontline hotel employees.
International journal of Contemporary Hospitality, 1029 � 1046
�Gender, Global Labor Markets, Commodity Chains, and Mobilities: Globalizing Production and
Reproduction� by: Heidi Gottfried
Aesthetic labor in hospitality
The concept of aesthetic labour
According to Warhurst and Nickson (2007), aesthetic labor refers to the aspect of
recruiting, selecting, developing, and deploying physical and presentable features with the aim of
bringing out a good and sound image. In addition, studies have established a certain level of
classification within interactive service work, and distinctions have further been developed with
regard to requisite aesthetics which echo a company’s market dimensions, brand strategies and
its appeal to different groupings of consumers. Thus, employees in such hospitality industries as
restaurants, bars, style cafes and designer retailers need to have aesthetic skills as well as
technical and social skills. The skills that most recruiters look for in aesthetic labor include:
voice and accents, personal grooming, dress sense and style, and body language. According to
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Warhurst and Nickson (2007), the current trend in the hospitality industry has drawn so much
attention on aesthetic skills as the vital requisites, and policy makers tend to favor this trend.
Aesthetic labor is required in service industries that are style-conscious as opposed to
manufacturing industries due to various reasons. First, the production and consumption of
services is simultaneous as opposed to manufacturing which does not happen simultaneously.
Second, in service industries, there is a direct interaction between employees and customers.
Service employees are considered as part of the product and their relationship with the customers
and be described as intangible, spontaneous, continent and variable. These attributes imply that
an effective service transaction will highly depend on the extent to which customers perceive the
moods, personality, demeanor, and appearance of a firm’s employees. Whereas some companies
have made attempts of replacing this uncertainty with technological advances such as automated
systems and scripted call-centre encounters, other companies have invested a lot in employee
training with the aim of delivering the employer brand image. The training process requires the
employers to strictly manage and monitor the behavior and responses or emotional labour of
employees. Other employees have resorted to recruiting and selecting ‘oven-ready’ employees
with the right skills and attitudes for the jobs, by using competency-based selection procedures.
Thus, the traditional understanding of ‘soft skills’ has been overtaken by the trending notion that
sounding right and looking good are skills which are not easy to be trained into people.
Nevertheless, recruiting employees in light of this assumption may potentially lead to
discrimination (Warhurst and Nickson, 2009).
Aesthetic labour in the food industry
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The food industry is greatly connected to the rapid growth in consumer culture. This field
is unique in the sense that accessing employment basically depends on the personal traits and the
ability to appeal to consumers. The job of an events manager or planner is to effectively reflect a
future self to the customer.
According to Dashper, the service interactive industry can be described as a ‘customer-
oriented bureaucracy’. Employees often encounter very challenging demands due to the dual
and sometimes contradictory concepts of customer bureaucratization and orientation. The events
industry is one of the interactive services where the concept of labor aesthetics has been
successfully used in recruitment processes.
Research shows that although both customer-oriented and bureaucratized elements tend
to be gender-neutral, they usually have deep gender inclinations. With regard to service quality,
it is usually presumed that customers tend to have gender preferences. Most male consumers
prefer the service of female employees. In the events industry, employers put greater emphasis
on such personal attributes as honesty, friendliness, self-presentation, and sociability than
technical skills and experience.
Employers in the food industry require employees to have the right personality. Most
advertisements call for employees who are physically appealing, bright, confident, enthusiastic,
dynamic, and proactive. There is a tendency of ‘lookism’, that is, discriminating employees on
grounds of their appearance. Employees in the food sector are expected to look very appealing
and thus, physical appearance really matters. Thus, younger females would be much preferred
than older ones. In addition, women will be expected to dress in a certain manner that attracts
customers. Employers tend to control the body posture, language, length of clothes, makeup,
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shoes, and the color and length of hair of the employees. For instance, women who serve as
waitresses in restaurants or clubs are expected to dress seductively in mini-clothes, which is not
consistent with Muslim dressing.
The manager is expected t be outgoing and confident (Dashper, 2013). This description
matches the skills necessary for the role of people management, customer service, and client
relationship building. Although these requirements seem to be ordinary for persons with
knowledge and willingness to accommodate the demands of the role, there is usually a presumed
reasoning that female employees would not be willing and able to travel for work and that men
would not have such constraints.
Thus, work-related travels operate as a barrier for women into employment and a
steppingstone to men’s employment. Female employees would also have the willingness and
ability to take up work-related travels but gendered perceptions deny women such opportunities.
The long, unsociable hours are also indicative of female discrimination, as women are assumed
to take up child-bearing roles. In spite of the increasing societal changes with regard to gender
equality, women are still majorly responsible for child care responsibilities. The employers in the
events industry also expect employees to show willingness to work during unsociable hours and
to travel. Thus, most management positions are left to men because of the gendered perceptions
that men are more committed and willing to work in all forms of circumstances. Women, on the
other hand, are perceived to be more suitable for the waiteress jobs because of the notion that
they have higher potential to act in a friendly and deferent manner to customers than men
(Gottfried, 2012).
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Employees are expected to meet the expectations of employers by engaging in some form
of emotional labor. For instance, McDonald’s employees are usually required to greet customers
with a smile and friendly attitude irrespective of the employees’ own temperaments and mood at
the time. Research indicates that this rigid observance of the rules potentially damages the
identity and sense of self of the employees. Women tend to be overrepresented in these jobs
because of the deference requirement, which is demanded of all people in disadvantaged
structural positions (Warhurst and Nickson, 2009).
Aesthetic labor also has effects on women in the sense that it perpetuates the gender wage
gap and occupational segregation. Job segregation refers to the methodical tendency for female
and male employees to work in different occupations (Gottfried, 2012). Women often have less
pay than their male counterparts working in the same job position. Aesthetic labor is one of the
factors leading to occupational segregation. In particular, women are stereotyped as fit for jobs
that require emotions in terms of care and empathy. The problem arises from the fact that women
are never compensated for these emotional attributes as they are perceived as a sign of weakness.
Women only get a small pay in comparison to men due to the notion that women’s work is not
very demanding and that it does not involve a lot of struggle since emotional attributes are
inherent in the female gene. The emotional demands of labor are not awarded as high as the
cognitive requirements of the job.
Female workers also face double-standards discrimination due to the fact that some men
misinterpret their display of smiling and show of friendliness as sexual invite. Women who work
as waitresses in casinos are encouraged to exaggerate their affection and to act seductively in
terms of their dressing, appearance and speech, and this increases their vulnerability to sexual
harassment.
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There is a tendency of aesthetic labor exhausting employees, and causing burnout over
time. In addition, aesthetic labour may lead to reduced job satisfaction due to the pretences that
come with it. The increased degree of employee regulation of their emotions at work is linked to
increased levels of emotional exhaustion and lowered levels of employee job satisfaction (Kim et
al, 2012).
In conclusion, aesthetic labor has both positive and negative consequences. On a positive
side, aesthetic labor promotes positive interactions between the employees and customers. It
leads to such positive outcomes as the customer’s willingness to return, recommend the company
to others, and the tendency to appreciate the perception of overall service quality. Negatively,
aesthetic labor leads to emotional exhaustion and burnout as well as reduced job satisfaction. It
also promotes discrimination against female employees in terms of less pay and sexual
harassment.
References
Gottfried, Heidi. Gender, work, and economy: unpacking the global economy. John Wiley &
Sons, 2013.
Gottfried, Heidi. Serving People: Gender Services in the New Economy. John Wiley & Sons,
2012.
Kim, Taegoo, Joanne Jung-Eun Yoo, Gyehee Lee, and Joungman Kim. “Emotional intelligence
and emotional labor acting strategies among frontline hotel employees.” International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management 24, no. 7 (2012): 1029-1046.
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Dashper, Katherine l. “The “right” person for the job: exploring the aesthetics of labor within the
events industry.” Event Management 17, no. 2 (2013): 135-144.
Warhurst, Chris, and Dennis Nickson. “Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and
hospitality.” Work, Employment & Society 21, no. 1 (2007): 103-120.
Warhurst, Chris, and Dennis Nickson. “‘Who’s Got the Look?’Emotional, Aesthetic and
Sexualized Labour in Interactive Services.” Gender, Work & Organization 16, no. 3 (2009): 385-
404.
