The commodification of the female body: The case of welcoming hostesses in Antalya

In the historical process, women's bodies have been the object of control in various ways. This study aims to explain the commodification of the female body by considering the change in the meanings created for women and the female body, by adhering to the historical process, of the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism. It is the concept of aesthetic labour, which is based on the transformation of the service industry and the change in the understanding of management and the use of aesthetic norms based on the transformation and control of the bodies of the employees. The quality and meaning of this concept has been tried to be explained with the sample of welcoming hostesses, who are the embodiment of aesthetic labour. The aesthetic labour and emotional labour experiences of the welcoming hostesses and how they make sense of these experiences were examined, and the similarities and differences were pointed out by discussing the field findings with the aesthetic labour literature. The study was conducted by the principles of qualitative research and in-depth interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview form as a data collection tool. Interview questions were formed by examining the aesthetic labour literature. The data obtained; were subjected to theme analysis, descriptive analysis and content analysis. Finally, analytical generalization was made and literature and field findings were discussed together. Visualization of data was made with MaxQda professional program. The following results were obtained in the research; the appearance and attitudes of the welcome hostesses are effective in the recruitment process, the body control and audit are carried out intensively during the working process, the supervision is not limited to the employer, the customers and colleagues are also effective in the supervision process, the welcome hostesses increase their consumption behaviors in response to their aesthetic labour expectations. It has also been seen that emotional labour and sexualized labour are also used also to aesthetic labour. Another striking finding in the study is that employees are subjected to verbal and physical harassment. It has been determined that the employees define only aesthetic labour and emotional labour in their job descriptions, and at this point, their main job is to exhibit aesthetic labour and emotional labour. Keywords: Women, female body, aesthetic labour, emotional labour, commodification, welcoming hostess