Meghann Chavez
PhD Candidate
History
Title of Dissertation : Beauty and the Market: Beauty Salons, Neoliberalism, and Female Political Activism in Chile
Meghann’s dissertation looks at the development of beauty salons in Chile between 1959 and 1998 – the women who owned them, the women who worked there, and the women they served – in order to explore the ways in which changes in political and economic structures affected small businesses, and the individuals associated with them. In Chile this time period includes growing student movements, the brief “Road to Socialism,” a seventeen-year dictatorship noted for its neoliberal “miracle,” and a peaceful, if cautious, transition to democracy. These distinct political and economic periods also held differing views on personal style and gender, making the salon – an industry built around the personal relationship between stylist and client – a site of potential political oppression, economic liberation, and the conflict between gender and the state.
