French philosopher, Michel Foucault, discusses the concept of power and how it functions in Discipline and Punish. Power is having control or influence over others; it exists within social contexts and situations. Power is situational and contextual, it is not absolute. You may not have the same amount of power in every situation; that is one does not hold all the power all the time. Foucault identifies two forms of power, disciplinary and regulatory. Regulatory power is obedience obtained through an outside force; we obey regulatory power because there is an outside power out there making you, like the police for example. Disciplinary power on the other hand is more internal, it is a power that is largely due to self policing, certain rules and procedures are instituted that make people want to police themselves. The transformation from regulatory power to disciplinary power took place between the 16 and 17 hundreds during the time of the industrial revolution. Foucault arguers that disciplinary power became the dominant form of control in institutions like prisons and schools.
Disciplining the body allows the opportunity to control the body; it is regulated through the space and time it occupies. The governing institution controls this space and time, ultimately structuring the activities of the body. The body then becomes docile. A docile body is one that is malleable, the body is subjected used, transformed and ultimately improved. In terms of the salon, the assistant would be a docile body. The assistant has either just graduated from beauty school or is still attending school, beauty school teaches students the basics of what they need to know when it comes to cosmetology, and typically doesn’t have a lot of power in a salon. More often than not salons put their assistants through a cutting or coloring program, it is typically “taught” by senior stylists at the salon. In this situation the stylist has more power over the assistant, which is true more often than not. An assistant is hired under the notion that they will be helping stylists when needed and the assistant is responsible for keeping the salon neat and clean.
A stylist has more power over the assistant when they helping improve the assistant’s education, when they teaching them new tricks when it comes to cutting or coloring hair. The stylist has more education and more seniority over the assistant giving them more power. The assistant on the other hand is not powerless however, the kind of power they have over the stylist is different though. Stylists are able to double book themselves when there is an assistant working. Double booking is where a stylist another appoint during a color process time, this is only possible with an assistant and means the stylist is able to take on more clients because they have an extra set of hands to help them. Therefore, the assistant has the power for the stylist to make more money by being able to take on more clients in one day and the stylist has the power over the assistants education, they are responsible for teaching them the tricks and the trades of the industry. You can see both the assistant and the stylist have power over one another, their forms of power differ however and the power relationship is not always the same, that is the stylist doesn’t have all the power all the time, it is a give and take kind of relationship.