Wax works: Hairlessness, infrastructure, and the air that we breathe

Working across urban sociology and critical beauty studies, this thesis examines the materials, spaces, infrastructures, and embodied forms of labour which effect the production of ‘feminine’ bodies in London’s beauty salons. Interrelatedly, it explores the toxic harms imbricated in this beauty work. Given the increasing ubiquity of extended hairlessness for a ‘feminine’ appearance, the thesis focuses on the journey of depilatory wax to and through the beauty salon and on how wax works. In particular, the role of oil is underscored: as a key raw material which affords the product and its packaging certain ways of performing; as powering the wax’s diesel-fuelled journey to the salon; and as enabling its easy disposability and replacement. The thesis also considers the spaces upon which this work is predicated: salons but also ports, wholesalers’ warehouses and stores, light industrial estates, and waste facilities, and the road networks and waterways which connect these. Following wax and other beauty products across London, the materials and places necessary for beauty work to actually happen are put into relief. As are the forms of potential toxicity which are co-extensive with beauty practices, for the products’ application in the salons, the journeys they make through the city, and what is released as they are incinerated are replete with petroleum-originated emissions. Taking materials, places, and bodies to be in de/generative interchanges, the toxic harms are epitomised in the air that ‘we’ breathe where vulnerability to these is patterned by intersecting structural disadvantages. Petro-permeated air circulates through spaces and into lungs and is inhaled and metabolised on starkly different terms. Drawing these together, the thesis argues that the production of ‘feminine’ bodies in the beauty salon is materially and spatially effected, heavily permeated by oil, and inseparably entangled with unevenly distributed toxic harms

The Cessation of NSSI: Differences in Acquired Capability and Distress Tolerance

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the role of cessation of NSSI in acquired capability and distress tolerance. It was hypothesized that individuals with longer time in-between assessment and NSSI would show lower levels of acquired capability and higher levels distress tolerance regardless of lifetime frequency. These hypotheses were tested by surveying 375 undergraduate university students (64% female; mean age = 20.3) Participants completed packets with self-report measures that included: Inventory of Statements about Self- Injury, Acquired Capability of Suicide Scale, Distress Tolerance Scale, and Demographics. Results suggested that individuals with longer amount of time since last NSSI showed higher levels of acquired capability and distress tolerance when compared to individuals with less recent NSSI even when controlling for life time frequency

Synthesis and properties of lipoamino acid/fatty acid mixtures. Influence of the amphiphilic structure.

The acylation of amino acids by acid chlorides with from 8 to 12 carbon atoms, in alkaline aqueous medium following Shotten-Baumann reaction, results in sodium salts of Nα-acylamino acids and fatty acids mixture. These lastest are present in proportion from 40 to 60%. These compositions represent mixtures of amphiphilic anionic surfactants. They contribute together to the properties of the formulation. Measurements of the surface-active properties of these formulations, such as critical micelle concentration (CMC), surface tension at the CMC (TS), foaming capacity (FC) and foaming stability (FS), show that surfactant mixtures with the longest chain have the most desirable properties. They are comparable to commercial petroleum-based surfactants. Thus, the CMC, TS and CM values of the formulation obtained starting from leucine and dodecanoyl chloride (310 mg/L, 30.1 mN/m and 200%, respectively) are similar, even better than, sodium dodecylsulfate (290 mg/L, 39.1 mN/m and 230%, respectively

Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham: Policy Brief

A briefing report for policy-makers based on the findings of the project 'Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham'

‘Fighting for breath’: Inhabiting uninhabitable places

Data availability statement: Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.In 2021, clean-air activists Choked Up put up hacked road signs in the London neighbourhoods of Catford, Brixton and Whitechapel. The signs stated: ‘People of colour are more likely to live in an area with illegal pollution levels’. They also demanded ‘Clean air for all’. The following year, Breathe: 2022 by artist Dryden Goodwin was installed across the borough of Lewisham. Depicting people struggling to breathe, like the road signs, the delicate pencil-drawn images were a way of ‘making the invisible visible’. These interventions highlight both the elevated levels of air pollution in particular locations and the unevenness of its distribution. They also point to how places and bodies are interconnected in the air that ‘we’ breathe. Foregrounding this activism, this article draws on Nirmal Puwar’s conceptualisation of the ‘somatic norm’ whereby particular spaces are (or, rather, become) ‘reserved’ for particular bodies and, concomitantly, the ‘ontological anxiety’ provoked when bodies enter into spaces not meant for them. I extend Puwar’s work on Space Invaders in two ways. First, reading air quality research data through work which has theorised the spatial–bodily relationship, the article explores how the yoking together of spaces and bodies can serve to locate people in places which are not fit for habitation. Second, I draw attention to the highly corporeal and emotional ways in which these interconnections are manifested, and like the visceral registers of ‘ontological anxiety’, I consider what this might tell us about spatialised and bodied power relations. To render the asymmetries in air pollution exposure not only visible but sense-able, the article draws on a mobile, emplaced and embodied methodology of walking and cycling through London. The processes of moving, breathing and leaving put into relief both the deep fleshiness of spatial–bodily interconnections and the palpability of the power dynamics which permeate them.The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham: End of Project Report

A short report containing the headline findings of the project 'Place-making and the Rivers of Lewisham'