Elegance and sophistication are widely lauded virtues of contemporary social theorizing. Susan Ossman's study not only exemplifies these qualities but it also engages with them as critical themes in social practice, identity construction, and globalization. Far more than an ethnographic examination of beauty salons (although somewhat less than this as well), Ossman’s book offers a philosophical meditation on representation and embodiment, desire and constraint, world making and transcendence. Her analysis moves among salon aesthetics in Casablanca, Cairo, and Paris, exploring both the connections among these places and their differences, making effective use of a methodology she aptly describes as "linked comparisons."

The central concern of Ossman's work is the condition of modernity, characterized by an absence of qualities. The venerable attributes of post-Enlightenment epistemologies and socialities such as generalizability, transposition, clarity, and transparency all prove to be absolutely central to the work of beauty. Through Ossman's subtle account we see how these values not only inform the images through which beauty represents itself in fashion magazines and the beauty industry but also in the aspirations that concretely motivate the aesthetic choices and pursuits of the women Ossman presents to the reader. Indeed, Ossman argues, it is absolutely critical to recognize that these values, which eschew all particularity and specification, derive their force and allure only in the shifting between highly contextual and grounded modes of being (a married, Muslim woman's veiled presence in Casablanca or the gossipy entanglements of beauticians and their clients in neighborhood salons in Paris) and the promise of unlimited potential embedded in beauty. The search for beauty is thus a means of "passing between worlds" and, so, a means of challenging hierarchical distinctions--and indeed, the boundaries between the "original" and the "inauthentic," the "traditional" and the "modern," the "local" and the "global." Ossman develops a kind of poetic idiom, a set of distinctive, more suggestive than analytical phrases that capture the processes and situated positions through which beauty works.

She begins her assessment with a discussion of what she calls "anywhere bodies," the elusive, deracinated, and decontextualized personae that are the mainstay of the beauty industry. These figures also function within the broader narrative or arc of identity construction that characterizes women's pursuit of beauty in all three cities. This pursuit is described in terms of "epics of opening" through which women seek not simply to transcend or replace the "heavy bodies" of religion, tradition, and proximity, but to locate these forms in a world that "en-lightened" women can navigate and master. This idiom—"anywhere bodies," "epics of opening," "en-lightening" dialectically paired with "heaviness," "density," and "reminders/remainders"--runs like a lyrical refrain through the work, pulling together disparate discussions of the sociality of salon conversation; a typology of salons characterized by neighborhood intimacies, "fast salon" efficiency, or the technical proficiency and luxury of "elite" salons; and the gaze within and beyond the salon.

The work of beauty--from images of Hollywood cinema stars, to wearing the hijab in contemporary France, to the creation of interior spaces for discreet bodily beautification in Cairo's sophisticated salons--clearly articulates with central philosophical and political questions about the nature of publics, of discourse, and of human freedom. Her work engages the concerns of Habermas and Rorty, among others, on these central concerns, to show not only how the salon constitutes a "public sphere" but also how its projects fashion society. Ossman is particularly astute at demonstrating how the optical praxis of the salon does much more than produce an abstracted image of beauty or even privilege a picture of reality. Instead, it facilitates a host of bodily techniques: ways of looking, of sitting, of orienting one's self to the touch, position, and perspective of others. In turn, Ossman shows how it is precisely such techniques, such repertoires of gestures and positions, that produce the salon as a recognizable transnational form. This dimension of her work offers a novel perspective on global relations that moves us well beyond efforts to describe the production of locality.

The range of issues raised in Ossman's work speaks to its sophistication. And the quality of the writing is elegant and alluring. Indeed, Ossman’s writing is often as seductive as the problems she investigates. This quality, though, will no doubt generate resistance on the part of many readers, especially because the poetic refrains of Ossman's style occasionally serve as shorthand evaluations of more complex issues. Her discussion is often more suggestive than it is persuasive--and I think this may even be Ossman's intention. This is certainly a legitimate tactic, especially given the insights that her suggestions often make possible. I found, for example, her rereading of Mauss's classic essay on bodily techniques to be strikingly original, but I also felt that she too easily dismisses the central problematic of Mauss's work, linking him to the project of modernity and "anywhere bodies" without giving due credence to the way he directly challenges many of modernity's assumptions. I am persuaded that beauty is no mere epiphenomenon, and so I am loathe to suggest that its significance needs to be further demonstrated (this, after all, is an all too familiar critique of the body, beauty, and women that this book successfully dismantles). Still, it seems clear that Ossman could have achieved greater depth in her discussion of salons had she situated the salons, beauticians, and clients in a wider world of practices and forces. What are the lives of women like in Casablanca and Paris and perhaps especially Cairo (which is not examined in the same detail as the other contexts), and how do women’s life worlds give beauty the value that it clearly has for them? A bit more flesh on some of these "heavy bodies" might have made the stakes of beauty work more compelling. In spite of these reservations, I have great respect for the intellectual quality and beauty of Ossman's text. It should be of interest to a wide range of readers for the breadth and depth of the issues it engages.