| Abstract |
In the course of the last two decades, Nuku'alofa, the capital of Tonga, witnessed an explosion of a particular kind of business, hair salons. For owners, workers, and customers alike, hair salons represent modernity and cosmopolitanism, and they thus attract a particular kind of clientele and labour, predominantly middle-aged women and transgender males. Salons are the site of feminine sociability, and illustrate how the body and its care can become, in many parts of the world, a claim to a dignity and respectability that is often not available through other means.
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