Slick and smooth: The role of petro-products in making and maintaining ‘femininity’ in the beauty salon

Drawing on research mapping the commodity chains associated with beauty salon consumption, this article examines the subtle yet pervasive ways in which oil works to make and maintain hairless ‘feminine’ bodies. Developing a methodological approach focused on the liveliness of depilatory wax, which included fostering a close attention to how wax behaves and asking Beauty Therapists to narrate what they were doing whilst carrying out treatments, the article explores not only why but how hair removal happens. The article shows how petro-products are a key and active force in the material production of smooth bodies, simultaneously entrenching socio-cultural expectations of ‘feminine’ hairlessness. Making the wax always-available – it is taken-for-granted that more can always be manufactured from a seemingly infinite source – oil is also active in enabling the maintenance of ‘femininity’ through the required repetition of hair removal. An attention to how these practices are quietly but deeply predicated upon petroleum, the prevalence of expectations of ‘feminine’ hairlessness and the social sanctions if one does not engage highlights the extent of the challenge facing calls for divestment from oil. The bi-monthly, 45-minute waxing treatment exemplifies the under-noticed but unrelenting ubiquity with which petro-products thoroughly permeate and produce the socio-material world.