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While hair and beauty salons are often thought of as spaces that reproduce normative ideals of gender and sexuality, the past decade has seen an increase in salons catering specifically to LGBTQ+ clientele. More broadly, research has shown that far from only treating 'surface' concerns, salons in general are sites of intensified affect, making them a unique space of entangled body, emotional, and identity work. This article draws on interviews with salon workers from 2017 and client responses to a survey about salons during COVID-19 from 2020, conducted in Australia. This article gives particular focus to salons catering to the LGBTQ+ community ('queer salons'), as well as data from salon clients that identify as LGBTQ+. Drawing on this dataset this article offers insight into how queer salons challenge our expectations of what hair and beauty salons can do for queer precarity in terms of physical, emotional and identity vulnerability and trouble ideas of the salon as a space which merely reinforces normative ideals of beauty. Furthermore, this article considers how salons might provide a sense of safety and belonging for some LGBTQ+ people, especially within the context of a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During Australia's first nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 in 2020, hairdressers and barbers were allowed to remain operating while beauty salons and similar businesses were ordered to shut. This article offers some preliminary insights into the impact of the pandemic on salon workers during the period, in particular the additional emotional labour required. Drawing on a survey of salon workers based in Australia (n = 92), this article considers the emotional labour involved in salon work in tandem with the impact of COVID-19 disruptions on this workforce. Results of the survey reveal the variety of emotional disclosures that salon workers generally encounter from clients and how these disclosures continued during the period, as well as the emotions experienced by workers themselves. Survey results suggest that many salon workers, who were themselves experiencing heightened levels of physical, emotional and financial vulnerability, were expected to continue their emotional roles for clients during a period of high anxiety and stress. This work suggests that future decision making ought to consider the impact on, and how best to support, all workforces who remain in operation during lockdowns, particularly emotional labourers, and not just those typically imagined as 'essential'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Across the world lockdowns during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis saw the forced closure of many hands-on services such as beauty salons, hairdressers, and barber shops. In Australia although hair services were allowed to stay open during the first National lockdown, subsequent state lockdowns mandated these grooming services shut to the public for extended periods. There has been much public debate about the necessity - or perceived lack thereof - of grooming services, especially given that hairdressers were permitted to stay open during the first lockdown when many other businesses shut. 2020 saw claims in Western media that the closure of these spaces was 'liberatory', particularly for women. This article interrogates this assumption, drawing on data from 383 Australian survey respondents collected between July and September 2020 to look at the impact of salon inaccessibility during the period. While some survey respondents relished the freedom of not having to 'keep up appearances', many also reported on the negative impacts of salon closures in terms of connection, self-esteem and identity. This article considers how the site of the salon is considered a transformative 'sanctuary' for some and untangles the deeper impact of the closure of these sites on individuals during a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay investigates the historical background of the manuscript BnF, n.a.fr. 12961, which once belonged to Carlo Firmian, Plenipotentiary Minister of Austrian Lombardy and an important collector and bibliophile. It contains a series of extracts from Friedrich Melchior Grimm's Correspondance littéraire, including Diderot's Salons of 1761, 1763, 1765 and the beginning of 1767. The manuscript copy was commissioned by Firmian from German journalist during the latter's Italian trip in 1775-1776 and was sent to Milan in May 1779. The request for Diderot's writings was the result of the Plenipotentiary Minister's keen interest in the works by the French author, as is also confirmed by his library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within existing literature, scholars have most often examined Denis Diderot’s Salons in the contexts of art exhibitions and discourse. While the art world is an apt place to examine his works, this essay intends to broaden the scope of historical inquiry by situating his writing in the context of natural disasters. By approaching his Salons from outside the artistic milieu, I do not intend to imply that the circumstances of the eighteenth-century Parisian art world did not play a major role in Diderot’s work. It did, perhaps first and foremost. I am merely offering the idea that art criticism in France—and especially Diderot’s Salons—developed alongside a cultural consciousness of material durability. Writing about art offered a supplementary type of sustainability. It could conserve not only a literary description of the artwork but also the author’s distinctive experience of it. Diderot’s Salons make for an interesting case study, because his descriptions of art on display at the salon exhibitions are lengthier than any other art critical text written at the time and may lend insight, more broadly, into the power of writing as a tool for art conservation.

This article looks at moralistic reactions to the fashion of décolletage during the seventeenth century in France. No previous research has focused on this specific movement, the scope of which is larger than has previously been acknowledged. A series of publications and sermons took aim at plunging necklines, particularly in church settings. Far from being isolated and discrete episodes, the wave of sermons and works condemning the fashion may be contextualised as part of a concerted campaign initially orchestrated by the secretive Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement. The anti-décolletage rhetoric coincides with the increasing participation and presence of women in culture and society and may be interpreted as an attempt to regulate female agency. The article concludes that this body of clerical works established a blueprint of victim-blaming that has proved to be enduring. Moreover, it gave such sentiments the stamp of religious respectability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A historical lack of access to healthcare and the mistreatment of Black women among those in the medical field have contributed to the health disparities against this group today. Based on existing health disparities affecting Black women, this study examined the feasibility of using nail salons, beauty salons, and hair salons as an avenue for health education efforts for Black women. An online survey was used to reach Black-owned salon workers. A total of 20 female participants completed the survey. Most participants preferred sharing health information with their clients through one-on-one conversations. Eighty percent of participants were willing to receive training on health topics so they could educate their clients. Findings suggest that it is feasible to utilize beauty stylists as lay health workers to promote positive health education among Black women. Further studies are needed to address health topics that clients would be willing to discuss with their stylists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Italian Studies / Rivista di Studi Italiani is the property of Rivista di Studi Italiani and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Court balls, organized in Serbia in the 19th century at princely and royal courts, modeled on European ones, were labeled for a certain class of society, which gave these social events a festive note and a certain reputation. By coming to the balls, people had already integrated into the highest cultural ranks and by adopting new elements of behavior they significantly differed from other categories of residents. Therefore, balls of the highest rank were important social events because participation in them proved membership in that circle and superiority over others in every respect. However, although the European cultural pattern dominated the balls, elements of traditional, national culture also appeared in it, in accordance with the general circumstances.