Three Faces of Beauty: Casablanca, Paris, Cairo

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Summary: Ossman Explores Global Beauty
Review: "Imagine you are getting a haircut. You hold a picture up beside your face, telling the beautician to cut a bit more here or feather the bangs, as in the photograph. In one salon you hear the voices of several women telling you that you really ought not to have your hair cut as short as the model in the picture" visiting Associate Professor in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Susan Ossman challenges readers in Three Faces of Beauty (Duke University Press, March 2002). In another salon, a beautician may strive to reproduce the pictured hairstyle as faithfully as possible; in another, you are the focus and asked to "please put away that awful photograph - would you not rather simply look like the real you?"

In her latest book, Ossman explores and compares the atmosphere, discourse and activity in a variety of beauty salons in three cities, which the publisher describes as "a unique approach to understanding globalization and cultural change based on a comparative, ethnographic study of a nearly universal institution: the beauty salon." She conceives of herself a "butterfly hunter" tracking elusive and fleeting images of beauty from Paris and Cairo with their "long histories as hubs of commerce, fashion, and scholarship" to Casablanca on the "outskirts of fashion," seeking to capture these images as representations of globalization and modernization.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted between 1993 and 1996, she treats beauty salons as public fora and as centers of empowerment for women that challenge tradition and mediate global trends into local practices. Choosing three cities outside the United States for her research, Ossman explores international perspectives on globalization as distinct from Americanization.

The return of beauty salons to Afghanistan, where they were banned under the Taliban, makes Ossman's new book especially timely. As images of Muslim women receive increased public attention around the world, Ossman's research uncovers practices that may seem exotic in the West, such as the publication of fashion magazines for veiled women.

Calling Three Faces of Beauty "a delightful and insightful read," past President of the American Historical Association Natalie Zemon Davis of Princeton University finds that "Susan Ossman lets us hear women's hopes for beauty and difference - out of or under the head shawl."