Beauty Salon: A Space for Self Construction of Thai Transgender

Abstract

For transgender people, beauty salons are a social space that has special meaning for it is there that they can express their identities more freely than in the outside world. Beauty salons thus provide transgenders with a social space where they can reproduce their sub-culture. This qualitative research found that transgender people are involved with beauty salons as owners, service providers and consumers. In addition, transgenders use beauty salons as a place for meetings, parties, gatherings, and building social networks for various purposes, including finding partners and jobs, selling and buying drugs, finding and giving sex services, and getting into beauty contests and the entertainment business. Beauty salons thus provide various channels for social mobility of transgenders, depending on each individual’s beauty, social and economic status, and strength of social networks. Beauty salons are also a space where transgenders as active agencies construct and express their collective, and sometimes conflicting, identities.