Aesthetic labor, racialization, and aging in Tijuana’s cosmopolitan sex industry

Abstract

Tijuana’s sex industry is an extremely professionalized and competitive sex work location where women engage in high levels of aesthetic labor. I will delineate different strategies of aesthetic labor that female sex workers deploy in order to maximize their financial gains in this trade. Aesthetic labor refers to the incorporation of workers’ embodied attributes into the labor process (Tyler 2012); it involves the creation of a physical appearance that is suited to the work environment. An “aesthetically pleasing performance” is expected in most service industries, especially those that boast a predominantly female workforce (Wellington and Bryson 2001, 934). In the context of sex work, some scholars utilize a concept of aesthetic labor, which indicates a conflation of work on one’s appearance with emotion work (Ditmore 2007; Sanders 2005a; Zheng 2009). Sex workers’ compliance with the aesthetic nature of “the prostitute role” constitutes a performance that is part of a business strategy to attract a steady clientele (Sanders 2005a, 334-335). Women actively manipulate their appearance to fit the desired commodification of attractiveness, body parts, and sexual acts and thereby to “capitalize on sexuality” (Singer 1993, 39). In this context, it is important to highlight that the heteronormativeaesthetic appearance 1 created for the work environment is not necessarily transferred by individuals into the private sphere. Rather, through aesthetic labor, women emphasize and effectively manipulate aspects of heteronormative femininity in order to capitalize on this financially.