Abstract
In Walking Mannequins: How Race and Gender Shape Retail Clothing Work, Joya Misra and Kyla Walters center the voices of retail workers and illustrate how retail workplaces reinforce existing race and gender inequalities. The authors interviewed 55 current and former employees at youth-oriented retail clothing stores and observed six different stores such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, and Urban Outfitters for a total of 35 visits. The authors carefully considered how identity shapes workplace experiences, specifically interactions between store managers, retail workers, and customers. Misra and Walters provide insight into workplace power dynamics, giving particular attention to the myriad ways that race, gender, and workplace surveillance technologies shape workers’ experiences.
Walking Mannequins is organized into three sections. The first part outlines the daily challenges retail workers face, including erratic scheduling, low wages, limited training, and aesthetic expectations. Despite earning minimum wage, workers are expected to purchase their store’s newest clothes and wear them while working. While retailers provide employee discounts, which they pitch as a perk, workers find dress codes to be a financial burden. In addition, many stores restrict workers to using their employee discount for clothes that match their perceived gender, which reinforces gender norms.
In the second section, the authors draw on workplace scholarship to explore the dynamics between corporate and store managers, workers, and customers. Misra and Walters here expand upon Robin Leidner’s triangular conception of service work, used to explain the relations between these three groups, by adding a component shaping contemporary service work: surveillance technologies. In doing this, the authors develop the concept of a “service quadrangle,” where retail corporations rely on big data, like shopper surveys and store cameras, to surveil store managers, workers, and customers. Misra and Walters use Foucault’s concept of the panopticon to explain how retailers’ reliance on big data has created an environment where workers feel constantly watched, creating what they aptly coin the “service panopticon.” While intended to maximize profits, surveillance technologies make workers feel dehumanized, leading to higher staff turnover and poor customer service.
The book’s final section is dedicated to the “aesthetic labor” expected of retail workers, who are essentially viewed as “walking mannequins,” as one worker described. Along with dress code requirements, workers must follow corporate’s style guidelines, dictating employee’s hairstyles, jewelry, makeup, and more. Some retailers, like Abercrombie & Fitch, refer to employees as “models,” rather than store clerks, a title that gives corporations further leeway to control their employees’ looks, and especially their weight. Retailers also have rules regarding “Black associated hairstyles”; at Abercrombie small braids were recently permitted, but dreadlocks remain prohibited. The authors argue that these rules allow brands to decide “which types of Blackness” is acceptable, based on their preexisting racial stereotypes (p. 160). To enforce these rules, managers critique workers’ appearances and even terminate shifts early if staff members don’t embody the brand, which workers describe as a “middle-classy,” White aesthetic.
The authors give close attention to the ways race and gender shape workers’ sense of belonging. Retailers create what Misra and Walters call a “tri-racial beauty hierarchy,” with White workers at the top, favored by managers, followed by racially ambiguous light-skinned workers of color and darker-skinned Black workers at the bottom. Due to this hierarchy, White workers find it easier to establish relationships with their coworkers and managers, who are predominantly White, resulting in increased shifts and higher earning potential as store managers often have sole discretion over scheduling. While White workers describe their co-workers as “very friendly” and “like family,” non-White workers feel unwelcome at work, especially Black workers who are often accused of shoplifting and placed under heightened supervision by their managers. Nonetheless, retailers view Black workers as both a threat and an asset. Black workers attract more Black customers, which helps brands appear more hip and increases profits. Yet, retailers continue to perpetuate racist institutional practices and expect additional labor from Black workers. Managers openly discriminate against Black customers and make Black workers police Black shoppers—the very customers that retailers hope to attract when hiring Black workers. Black workers feel uncomfortable doing this, knowing first-hand what it feels like to be racially profiled, but due to the disposable nature of retail work, they find it difficult to resist their companies’ racist practices. In addition, when stores have disruptive customers, of any race, managers ask Black workers, who are predominantly women, to respond. When handling difficult customers, Black women feel unsafe and isolated as they often receive no support from their coworkers, including men. The authors argue that the racism Black workers experience illustrates how the “service panopticon extends the broader racial order,” harming both workers and shoppers (p. 109).
As a Black woman and former retail worker, I deeply resonate with these worker’s stories. Their experiences are sadly common; in his song “Spaceship,” the rapper Kanye West even raps about working in retail: They take me to the back and pat me Askin’ me about some khakis But let some Black people walk in I bet they show off their token Blacky Oh now they love Kanye, let’s put him all in the front of the store
I include this song to emphasize that the experiences of Black workers illustrated throughout Walking Mannequins are not unique or unknown. However, Misra and Walter’s analysis provides new and useful language for both explaining and resisting this treatment.
The book ends on a cautiously optimistic note. Misra and Walters provide suggestions for improving retail conditions, but argue that substantial change would require federally instituted labor and anti-discrimination laws. They call for federal laws eliminating on-call shifts and for managers to have less authority over scheduling as they tend to schedule White workers more, reinforcing existing racial inequalities. Walking Mannequins is accessible for undergraduate and graduate students, and could be assigned for courses regarding race, gender, and labor. Misra and Walters’ findings broaden our understanding of the multiple ways race and gender shape the workplace from the relationships people form with their coworkers to unequal labor expectations, dress codes, and surveillance technologies.