The Au Pair Body
Sex Object, Sister or Student?
Rosie Cox
BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
ABSTRACT The employment of au pairs to provide childcare, cleaning and other
domestic services has been steadily increasing in the UK. This article provides
an analysis of representations of au pairs in the British press and on the websites
of agencies placing au pairs. This analysis seeks to understand how such imaginings
of au pairs affect their life in Britain and how au pairs themselves respond
to such imaginings. It argues that the competing portrayals of au pairs as both
sexual sirens and committed carers works with other ambivalences in the
scheme to facilitate the growth of au pair employment in Britain while simultaneously
denying their place as an important source of domestic labour for
British families.
KEY WORDS au pairs ◆ bodies ◆ employment agencies ◆ migration ◆ representation
INTRODUCTION
The employment1
of au pairs has been steadily growing in Britain and
other parts of Europe during the last decade (Addley, 2002; Anderson,
2000; Cox, 2006; Hess and Puckhaber, 2004; Lowe and Gregson, 1989; Lutz,
2002, 2004; Platt, 2001) and au pairs have proved popular, not only with the
families who depend upon them, but also in the public imagination. This
article explores the ways that au pairs are imagined and portrayed in the
British press and by au pair agencies. Overwhelmingly, au pairs are represented
in the press as young, attractive and promiscuous, while agencies
strive to portray them as pretty and happy but not sexually available. This
article considers the effects that such competing images have on au pairs
in Britain and how they respond to the contradictions in such imaginings.
The ambivalence in representations of au pairs can be related to other
European Journal of Women’s Studies Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore), 1350-5068 Vol. 14(3): 281–296;
http://ejw.sagepub.com DOI: 10.1177/1350506807079015
ambivalent aspects of their position. They are migrant domestic workers
who are constructed by official discourses as neither workers nor migrants
but as participants in a ‘cultural exchange’ programme.
The au pair scheme is an agreement between a group of European
countries2
that is meant to allow cultural exchange for young people
and provide a bit of help to families with young children. In Britain, au
pairs can come from any European Economic Area (EEA) member
country or a list of other European countries. Until the end of 2002, this
excluded much of Eastern Europe but in December 2002 seven Eastern
European countries were incorporated into the scheme because the
British government was concerned that the expansion of the EU would
restrict the number of au pairs available to British families (Addley,
2002). Au pairs must be aged between 17 and 27 years, cannot be married
or have dependent children. They can stay in Britain for up to two
years but must leave the country within a week if they are not living
with a ‘host family’ (Home Office, 2002). Au pairs are meant to live as
members of their employers’ families and should be treated as equals
(the translation of the phrase ‘au pair’) rather than as paid servants.
They are meant to do 25 hours a week of ‘light housework’ or childcare
plus two evenings of babysitting. They must have the opportunity to
learn English; however, employers do not contribute to the cost of language
classes. The Home Office advises that au pairs are given £45 per
week ‘pocket money’ plus their own room and meals. Au pairs do not
have work permits but au pair visas, and employers do not have to pay
tax or national insurance for them, nor does minimum wage legislation
cover their work. Au pairs, therefore, are defined as largely white,
young, European and unmarried. The vast majority are women and
until 1993 men were not eligible to join the scheme (see also Williams
and Baláz, 2004).
Au pairs are thus constructed in official discourse as neither workers
nor migrants but as ‘guests’ of ‘host families’ on a temporary sojourn.
Their labour is not considered to be labour but the natural activity of any
family member (see Cox and Narula [2004] and Hess and Puckhaber
[2004] for discussions of the effects of supposed family membership on au
pairs’ workloads and exploitation). This article explores other representations
of au pairs that join this official portrayal to create the milieu within
which au pairs experience Britain. It begins with a discussion of the
importance of embodiment and appearance to paid domestic work in
general. It then moves on to explore the representation of au pairs within
the mainstream press in Britain and how this contrasts with the images
used on agency websites, before discussing how these imaginings affect
au pairs working in Britain and how they respond to these competing
constructions.
European Journal of Women’s Studies 14(3)282
EMBODIMENT, APPEARANCE AND PAID DOMESTIC WORK
Geographers and sociologists have become increasingly interested in the
body and physical appearance as producers of both experiences and reactions
(Holloway and Hubbard, 2001; Longhurst, 2001; Pile and Nast, 1998;
Pratt, 2004; Skeggs, 2004; Teather, 1999; Valentine, 2001). Our bodies can
modify experiences of space and elicit reactions from others. This is true
most obviously in terms of mobility, gender, age and skin colour but there
are also more subtle differentiations between bodies and bodily experiences
(see, for example, Longhurst [2001] on pregnant bodies, Colls [2004]
on ‘big’ bodies or McDowell [1997] on corporate bodies). Following from
Bourdieu, who described the body as ‘sign bearing and sign-wearing’
(Bourdieu, 1984: 192), Skeggs (2004) has argued that class is also read from
the body in myriad ways, from ‘big hair’ to sensible shoes.
Bourdieu argues that the body is a powerful purveyor of messages
because it is imagined to be natural and to represent ‘the most natural
expression of innermost nature’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 192). Rather than just seeing
the exterior of people, we imagine that we are able to see their abilities,
character and moral worth. As Bourdieu puts it, ‘there are no merely “physical”
facial signs; the colour and thickness of lipstick, or expressions, as well
as the shape of the face or the mouth, are immediately read as indices of a
“moral” physiognomy, socially characterized’.
MIGRANT WOMEN – LABOURING BODIES
Appearance and embodiment, therefore, affect life chances and one of the
most important realms in which this has been identified is in the world of
work. The embodiment of personal service workers has been shown to be
a particularly important element of their work (see, for example, Erikson,
2004; Hochschild, 1983; Monaghan, 2002) and discourses surrounding
migrant workers have made visible these otherwise invisible assumptions.
Migrant women’s bodies have long been identified as particularly well
suited to heavy or demeaning work. In the 19th century they were actively
differentiated from the home-bound, conspicuously idle bodies of indigenous
ruling-class and middle-class women (McClintock, 1995; Walter,
2001). Walter (2001) has argued that the ‘cult of domesticity’ – so important
to both male and female middle-class identities – depended upon the
labour of Irish women servants, and also upon the identification of
Catholic Irish servants as ‘a race apart’ from the British middle class. The
creation of the Victorian and Edwardian middle-class home as a space of
idleness and the conspicuous display of wealth was dependent on large
amounts of labour by women (and some men) who were characterized as
Cox: The Au Pair Body 283
appropriate workers on the basis of physical and moral attributes read
from their class and nationality (McClintock, 1995).
In more recent times, other groups of women migrants have been identified
as appropriate workers by the British state. Webster (1998) has
shown that the 1950s ideology of a return to the home for a broad swathe
of British women was actually based upon the increased labour of black
Caribbean women in the public sphere. Similarly, McDowell (2005) details
the migration paths of Latvian ‘volunteer workers’ who came to Britain
following the Second World War. They were recruited through government
schemes to fill unattractive jobs as domestic workers in homes and
hospitals and as workers in textile mills. She shows that at each point in
their journeys their embodiment as young, white and female cast them as
appropriate for particular types of work. The British government imagined
them as suitable workers because they were not British, yet also as
possible mothers of future Britons because they were white and European.
These studies demonstrate the ambiguous relationship between the British
state’s need to attract migrant labour while still wanting to repel foreign
‘others’ and maintain that women’s proper place is in the home. The body
of the female migrant is used to negotiate this contradiction. In each case,
government discourses produced these women as both sufficiently different
from and similar to British women to make particular forms of work
acceptable or appropriate.
A number of studies in a range of different countries have revealed the
attention paid to various aspects of domestic workers’ bodies. Racial/
ethnic stereotypes appear to shape entry to the workforce in a number of
places. For example, Pratt (1997) has detailed the contrasting images of
Filipina and European nannies in Vancouver. A range of competencies,
characteristics (such as caring/formality) and pay scales (!) attach to nannies
depending on whether they are Asian or European. Similarly, Stiell and
England (1999) have offered a detailed hierarchy of ethnicity for domestic
workers in Toronto, with workers of different ethnicities assumed to be
suited to different types and amounts of work.
My own research in London, UK, revealed precise differentiations
between different parts of the domestic labour market with only certain
types of bodies able to get certain jobs (see Cox, 1999). In fact, when I was
carrying out interviews with agencies in London an agent told me that
she had been concerned when I had first walked into the office. She did
not know her colleague had an appointment with me and had assumed I
was looking for work. In her words, she knew ‘as soon as she looked at
me’ that she could not place me. She elaborated that it was impossible to
place British women, as they ‘were not subservient enough’. This agent
was obviously used to the currency of bodies. My own, acceptable as a
researcher perhaps, was observed, considered and rejected as not containing
an appropriate domestic worker.
European Journal of Women’s Studies 14(3)284
In addition to the broad categories of ethnicity and gender, the specific
shape of domestic workers’ bodies has also been revealed to be an important
component of their ability to access work and their experiences at
work. Hondagneu-Sotelo (2001) reports in her study of domestic employment
in Los Angeles that domestic workers are always asked to submit a
picture of themselves with job applications and that agencies reported the
attractive woman would always be selected by employers over a less
attractive one. However, only certain forms of domesticated attractiveness
are encouraged and domestic workers in almost all situations are
advised not to wear ‘sexy’ clothes to interviews or work, or even to wear
clothes that look too ‘upmarket’ or smart.
Despite this aversion, there is a long history of an association between
the servant and the sex object. McClintock (1995: 94, drawing on Gallop,
1982) describes sex with servants as a threshold act ‘somewhere between
incest and exogamy’. Feudal masters assumed rights to sexual access to
all the young women they employed, as did slave owners over slaves. In
later centuries, it was often assumed that young men would have their
first sexual experiences with the servants (Dawes, 1989; Horn, 2004;
McClintock, 1995; Swift, [1745]2003) and the ‘French maid’s outfit’ is still
with us today as a representation of the sexualization of domestic labour.3
The embodiment of domestic workers is, therefore, very important both
as a control over access to jobs and to experiences within them.
AU PAIRS AS PORN STARS AND SISTERS – MEDIA AND
AGENCY IMAGES
It is not just the ‘real’ appearance of ‘real’ domestic workers and au pairs
that matters. It is the meanings that are read from bodies that produce reactions
and dictate how people are treated. Skeggs (2004) has argued that to
read a body or an object as containing meaning is to commit a fallacy: ‘the
meaning of things is assumed to be a property of the object itself, rather
than a response to the feeling, or the relationship of the reader to the object’
(Skeggs, 2004: 100; emphasis in the original). When we read meaning from
a body we bring to it our previous experiences and knowledge and also
our own prejudices, fears and priorities. This means that representations of
things that are in circulation, for example in the media, are important in
influencing how meanings are read. Such representations provide a store
of ‘information’ that we can use to read meaning from other people’s bodies.
So while young men who look like they could be Muslim could have
their bodies read as ‘terrorist’ and ‘extremist’, some other groups, such as
au pairs, have their appearance read in a quite different way.
In this section, I look at how au pairs are represented and discursively
constructed in Britain both in the mainstream media and on specialist
Cox: The Au Pair Body 285
agency websites. For some reason, the au pair has a very particular place in
the British imagination as a sexually available and attractive young woman
and this representation emerges in many media representations. However,
agencies, while still representing au pairs overwhelmingly as attractive,
white and female, produce images of a more domesticated femininity than
an overtly sexual one. The images on agency websites actively construct the
au pair as pleasant and attractive yet unthreatening and sisterly.
Data on representations of au pairs were gathered from two sources.
First, a search of newspaper articles was carried out on the Lexis Nexis
database to find articles in the UK press that contained the phrase ‘au
pair’. The subject matter and tone of the first 50 of these (all published in
July and August 2005) was then recorded as an indication of widespread
representations of au pairs. This used a simple content analysis involving
recording the frequency with which the topic of au pairs’ appearance or
attractiveness was mentioned compared to other topics and how often
phrases drawing on national or ethnic stereotypes were used. Second, an
analysis of images on websites of agencies that place au pairs in British
homes was carried out to provide information on representations circulating
within the sector. Thirty websites were explored and the images on
their home pages, pages aimed at employers and pages aimed at au pairs,
were categorized according to content. The images chosen by agencies to
represent au pairs – i.e. not the pictures submitted by au pairs looking for
placements nor images on the sites of things such as tourist attractions –
were then subjected to a simple content analysis. An analysis of this type
is used to show how images construct accounts of the social world and
how specific discourses become constructed as natural or truthful (Rose,
2001). In this case the analysis was used to reveal the ways images of au
pairs were used to construct their place in British families and society.
In addition, as part of a larger project (see Cox and Narula, 2004), information
was gained from au pairs and those working in the sector. A questionnaire
survey of 140 au pairs working in London, focus group discussions
with over 30 au pairs attending language classes and in-depth interviews
with 11 au pairs provided detailed information about experiences of migration
to the UK and treatment while in the country. Two agencies that place
au pairs and a representative from one voluntary group that supports au
pairs were also interviewed to gather data about the sector as a whole.
ICE MAIDENS, GODDESSES AND SULTRY TEMPTRESSES –
MEDIA IMAGES OF AU PAIRS
The idea of au pairs as sexually available and desirable appears to have
great tenacity in the British imagination. There seems to be something
about the combination of gender, youth and location within the family
European Journal of Women’s Studies 14(3)286
home that positions au pairs as willing and available sexual partners.
Their slight foreignness, different but not dangerous, seems to add to this.
As the blurb for the film Au Pair Girls puts it ‘The very mention of au pair
girls conjures up images of continental nymphos wanting to jump into
any bed’ (found on Amazon.co.uk). A content analysis of newspaper articles
was carried out to discover if sexualized images did dominate the
representations of au pairs that were in common circulation.
The analysis of 50 press articles found that 23 articles used the term ‘au
pair’ in passing as a neutral description of someone’s job; a number referred
to an au pair who had been killed in the 7 July bombings in London, for
example. Of the remaining 27 that discussed issues relating to au pairs in
more detail, 15 discussed au pairs specifically in terms of their appearance
or sexual availability and 12 discussed issues such as finding an au pair or
negotiating work. In other words, those newspaper articles that discussed
au pairs in any detail at all were more likely to comment on issues of
appearance and attractiveness than anything of substance to the role.
The majority of these articles focused on the possibility of au pairs having
affairs with the fathers from their host families. They either contained
discussions by men fantasizing about such an event or advice to and from
women about how to avoid such a thing. For example, in an extremely
sexist and lascivious piece in The Observer (24 July 2005), Toby Young
described his family’s new au pair as ‘a sunny optimistic goddess’, ‘fresh
meat’ and ‘a hot little number’ and despaired at the fact that his wife had
caught him trying to take her out to dinner at The Ivy.
National and ethnic stereotypes were also mobilized by newspaper
articles to express particular forms of sexual attractiveness. The Express (25
July 2005) advised readers never to hire ‘a flaxen-haired Swedish ice
maiden or a sultry Italian temptress’ as an au pair. One article used stereotypes
of Eastern European women as overly masculine when advising
readers how to find a non-threatening au pair and the (male) Sunday Times
restaurant reviewer (24 July 2005) even described Ikea restaurants as ‘the
best place in Britain to pull a homesick au pair’ – the implication being
both that au pairs are Swedish and that they are ‘pullable’.
Newspaper reports representing au pairs as sexually attractive have a
resonance with Victorian representations of nursemaids and nannies and
can be thought of as drawing on oedipal fantasies as well as the
Madonna/whore dichotomy. McClintock (1995) has argued that a sexual
attraction to servants involved in childcare ran through the Victorian
British male, middle-class psyche and surfaced in memoirs, stories and
pornography. She suggests that oedipal sexual fantasies were as likely to
focus on nannies as on mothers. In fact, in his letters Freud documents his
own early sexual experiences with his nanny and his sexual fantasies surrounding
her, which he later develops into his work on the Oedipus
complex.4
This division of labour within the middle-class home also
Cox: The Au Pair Body 287
underpinned the Madonna/whore dichotomy. It allowed middle-class
women to appear remote and pure while maids were associated with biology,
lechery and excess. ‘The Victorian splitting of women into whores and
Madonnas . . . has its origins, then, not in universal archetype, but in the
class structure of the household’ (McClintock, 1995: 87; see also Stallybrass
and White, 1986). The newspaper descriptions of au pairs can be considered
in this light. The ‘threshold act’ of sex with the au pair who is both
outside and inside the family – a mother figure who is not a mother – may
be particularly attractive. When au pairs are portrayed as overtly sexy in
comparison to more dowdy mothers and as sexually available when mothers
are distant and uninterested, we can hear echoes of potent male fantasies
that have their roots in British history as well as in the nursery.
These media representations are both drawing on and feeding into
widely held imaginings of au pairs as alluring, exotic and sexually available.
The au pair is assumed to be female and attractive and her foreignness
is portrayed as part of her attraction rather than as alien or unwelcome. She
is represented as an object of desire not as a scrounging migrant nor as an
important provider of childcare. Such representations are part of the context
within which au pairs experience life and work in Britain.
SISTERS AND CARERS – AGENCY IMAGES
For those involved in the au pair sector, as (prospective) au pairs or
employers, placement agencies are an important source of information
and advice as well as of work and domestic help. An analysis of the
images used on agency websites was undertaken to give an ‘inside’ view
of the sector, a view that is largely aimed at families (normally women)
looking for an au pair. The images on websites were selected for analysis
rather than text as the text on most sites was practical, guiding users
around the site and visuals of some kind dominate most web pages. Some
sites have easily accessible pages where au pairs looking for work and
families looking for au pairs describe themselves but on many sites these
pages cannot be accessed until a person has registered and therefore comparison
of such pages is impossible.
An analysis of the images used on 30 websites placing au pairs in
Britain reveals that images of au pairs are not unproblematic, and that
particular kinds of domesticated attractiveness are focused on. It seems
that employment agencies have to escape the highly sexualized imaginings
of au pairs that circulate in society generally but still represent them
as attractive young women without responsibilities other than those for
their employers’ family and home. While the majority of sites did use
photos, one-third of the total examined did not and one used only images
of tourist attractions.
European Journal of Women’s Studies 14(3)288
In total, there were 52 pictures of au pairs on the websites (other than
on listings pages) and these overwhelmingly represented a single, female
au pair with one or more child. In the majority of pictures, the au pair was
smiling and looking intently at the child or children, thus portraying her
deep care for the child and her enjoyment of the role of carer. All of the au
pairs pictured on sites I examined were young women who corresponded
to the norms of healthy and youthful good looks. Almost all were blonde,
had gleaming white teeth and all but two were white and northwest
European in appearance. In fact, there were more pictures of black children
(two) than of black au pairs. A good looking ‘girl next door’ or sister
might be imagined (see Hess and Puckhaber, 2004). None of the au pairs
pictured had low cut tops or short skirts, obvious jewellery or make up.
In fact none of them was portrayed as overtly sexually attractive in any
way. Rather, they showed a scrubbed-clean and brightly smiling enthusiasm
for whatever childcare activity they were involved in. Interestingly,
the poses shown often have the body of the au pair concealed behind the
child. The au pair may be cuddling the child, reading to them or playing
with them, but normally, very little of her body is visible. The au pair is in
some way ‘disembodied’ by her intense care for the child, in a way that is
equivalent to women in general being desexualized by the duties of motherhood.
Perhaps such agency images are going some way towards reversing
the au pair’s placing in the Madonna/whore dichotomy.
Many of the pictures used, particularly on the home pages of the sites,
appeared to be professionally produced and featured professional models
rather than being snapshots of real au pairs. Agencies are, therefore, considering
carefully the images that they want to show and the representations
they are choosing are of a slightly domesticated but still very
attractive femininity. Where lists of prospective au pairs were accessible
all had photos of the au pairs (see Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Pratt, 1997)
but the equivalent pages listing families looking for au pairs were much
less likely to contain images and even those that did have a space for a
photo did not always have this filled. The appearance of au pairs is, therefore,
assumed to be an element of her (or sometimes his) employability by
all involved in the sector.
Images used by agencies differ from the overt sexuality of newspaper
representations of au pairs but they do not challenge the ideal of the au
pair as female, white and blonde. In contrast, websites that arrange nanny
placements use very few photographs and tend to have cartoon-style
motifs or text only rather than large images of ‘nannies’. The physical
appearance of the au pair, both real and imagined, seems to be a much
more important element of employment arrangements than it is for other
childcarers.
The representation of au pairs as highly feminine and physically attractive
is in contrast to the discourses surrounding the bodies of other
Cox: The Au Pair Body 289
migrant women workers. It has been common for the femininity of
migrant workers to be denied and for them to be seen as unattractive and
excessively masculine; in being workers they could not also be real, feminine
women (McClintock, 1995; McDowell, 2005; Walter, 2001). However
the femininity of au pairs appears to be heightened in both media and
agency representations. This is not an unequivocal good, however, as
such representations tend to disguise the real work that au pairs do.
Imagining the au pair as sex object or sister negates her role as childcarer
and domestic worker and in doing so protects both the families that
employ au pairs, and the British state more generally, from giving the
impression that labour is being imported to carry out domestic work (see
Hess and Puckhaber [2004] on the portrayal of au pairs as ‘big sisters’ in
Germany and the US).
AU PAIR EXPERIENCES: LIVING WITH THE IMAGES
Au pairs living and working in London have to cope with and negotiate
a route through these competing and contradictory imaginings. Outside
their host family they can find themselves subject to assumptions and
innuendo about their sexual availability, while inside their home and
workplace au pairs often encounter employers who are fervent in their
efforts to police their sexuality and their encounters with men. Many of
the au pairs interviewed found the interest in their appearance from
employers and others inexplicable and sometimes offensive and countered
these portrayals by de-emphasizing their physical attributes and
emphasizing their status as serious students or professionals.
Au pairs’ experience of the interest taken in their physical appearance
can begin when they first start looking for a position and they may find
that appearance can be a control on accessing jobs. As shown earlier, in
many domestic jobs there is a ‘perfect’ level and type of physical attractiveness,
with women who deviate from this, by being too sexual, or
thought to be unattractive, finding it more difficult to get positions or to
get desirable positions. Agencies who were interviewed commented that
employers do not want au pairs who appear to be unfit or unhealthy –
characteristics that they read from weight and acne – but neither did they
want someone who is going to be a rival. Thus au pairs are expected to fit
a narrowly defined type of attractiveness that represents fitness enough to
do the (quite physically demanding) job without overt sexual attraction.
In addition, au pairs who are too ’exotic’ – who are not white, or are wearing
traditional Muslim dress for example – may find they have the wrong
kinds of bodies and have more difficulty getting au pair placements or are
steered towards the least attractive placements – those outside London,
with responsibility for many young children or in single-parent families.
European Journal of Women’s Studies 14(3)290
The au pairs interviewed had all successfully found positions in Britain
and had, therefore, passed this first ‘test’. They did not have trouble conforming
to the image expected of them nor did they find such expectations
problematic or troubling, or at least no more so than the other
demands put on them to secure a job. Those who had arranged their positions
through formal routes, such as agencies and websites, rather than
through friends, had sent photos of themselves in advance. Some of the
au pairs had been given detailed advice about the best way to present
themselves and had conformed to this and selected their photos carefully.
Once they arrive in Britain, au pairs face greater contradictions in the
ways they are imagined as the agency portrayal of the ‘clean-living carer’
is joined by the media portrayal of the ‘sexual temptress’. The most obvious
outcome of the imagining of au pairs as attractive and promiscuous is
that they can find that men in Britain assume that they are sexually available
and often have to counter insinuations about their sexual activities
when they meet British men. As one of the interviewees put it:
Most of them, I’ll tell you, especially the guys, the first time you meet and
say ‘I’m an au pair’. Arrgghhh! [in a man’s voice] ‘I know, at night we can
be together’. I’m not for that, you know, I’m not there to have sex with you.
But they think, the first time, because you are an au pair, you are ready.
Other interviewees commented on the fact that many of the people they
came into contact with advised them to ‘get a boyfriend’. This was seen as
the best way to learn English and to solve other problems. One of the au
pairs reported that a friend of hers had gone to the police when she had
been harassed in the street by a group of drunken men. The policeman
had responded by saying ‘I don’t know what’s this au pair girl’s problem.
Why don’t they get a boyfriend or something to walk them home?’ While
the policeman may have made an equally crass comment about any
woman walking home at night, the au pair it happened to and her friend
retelling the story both saw it as a comment on their position as au pairs
specifically.
Within their host family, au pairs can confront other interpretations of
their bodies. First of all it must be stated that, despite journalists’ seeming
fascination with tales of affairs between host fathers and au pairs, research
among au pairs and agencies found no evidence of such relationships. In
fact, relationships of any kind between host fathers and au pairs seemed to
be largely absent. Au pairs related to host mothers to discuss their work and
few mentioned their host father by name. One agent explained that many
fathers would avoid the au pair as much as possible, to the extent of not even
learning her name, both because they took no interest in the running of the
house – of which she was seen as part in the same way as the vacuum
cleaner might be – and because they did not want to be accused of taking too
much of an interest in her. In this situation, the stereotype of the father
Cox: The Au Pair Body 291
running off with the au pair actually works to isolate au pairs within their
employing households and reduces their contact with other adults.
A second way in which employers’ imaginings of au pairs’ sexuality
can affect their experiences is in rules and limitations put on having male
visitors to the house. In the survey, au pairs were asked if they would be
allowed to have a boyfriend to stay the night and 41 percent said no,
while 18 percent were not allowed to have any male friends to visit at any
time (see Cox and Narula [2004] for a more detailed discussion of such
rules). One of the au pairs interviewed explained the strictness of this
prohibition from her employers:
Any boy is strictly prohibited, even my boyfriend, it is no question, no point
at all [asking], even my brother, or any body. . . . She told me at the beginning
that it would be best if they even didn’t wait in front of the gate, they
should wait for me somewhere at the tube station, not, not to even approach
the house.
While there can be a range of reasons for these rules, some of which are
framed in terms of concerns for the safety of the employers’ children if
‘strange’ men are allowed in the house, the au pairs interviewed saw
them as hinting at the likelihood of promiscuous behaviour if they were
not constrained. In fact, very few of the au pairs interviewed or taking
part in focus groups had boyfriends, and of those that did almost all were
in their home country. Rules which restricted interaction with female
friends were seen as much more problematic than those banning male
friends. They had not come to Britain to find an English boyfriend and
they found rules designed to police their sexual activity, and the instrumentalist
attitudes towards relationships that were displayed when people
advised them to find a boyfriend in order to improve their English, insulting
on many levels.
For au pairs the competing imaginings of their bodies are problematic
and surprising and contrast with the ways in which they think of themselves.
While most au pairs do not perhaps consciously respond to these
imaginings, among those interviewed there were two strategies that
could be seen as reactions to these stereotypes. The first of these is to
emphasize their status as students or professionals. The vast majority of
au pairs, including all those surveyed, come to Britain primarily to learn
English or to improve their English. All the au pairs interviewed were relatively
highly educated; those from Eastern Europe all had a degree and
those from Western Europe were generally between school and university.
They were studious and serious, devoting as much money and time
as possible to their studies. In interviews the identity of ‘student’ or a professional
role that predated au pair work (and might be returned to afterwards)
such as ‘engineer’ could be claimed by au pairs to counter other
identities that they felt were derogatory. Most often this was in response
European Journal of Women’s Studies 14(3)292
to being cast as ‘a servant’ but it was also mobilized by au pairs to oppose
assumptions that they were flighty or only interested in meeting men. For
example, when au pairs were asked what they did in their free time, only
one said she liked to go to pubs and clubs to go dancing and meet people.
The others all emphasized the cultural activities and visits they took part
in and the efforts they made to practise their English. They were happy to
portray themselves as quiet, bookish and hard-working.
The second strategy au pairs appeared to use to counter representations
that focused on their appearance was to try to be as physically unobtrusive
as possible. Zuzana Búriková (2006: 113) has written on the ways in
which au pairs in London use a ‘series of strategies of self-erasure’ to cope
with the ambivalent position they have within their employers’ homes.
She argues that ‘rather than wanting to make a good impression, au pairs
become increasingly concerned not to make an impression at all’. Her
work details the ways in which au pairs strive to minimize their physical
impact within their rooms by hiding away their belongings and not decorating
the walls. Such strategies can also apply to au pairs’ bodies. Not
only do they absent themselves from the home whenever possible, the au
pairs who were interviewed tended to look unobtrusive at most times.
They had little money to spend on clothes or cosmetics and favoured saving
money to spend on trips or more English classes rather than perfecting
their appearance. The result of these two strategies is that au pairs are
able to present an image which conforms to that favoured by employers,
of the healthy but not sexy young woman, while also highlighting their
status as educated and serious adults.
CONCLUSION – THE YOUNG WHITE WOMAN AS AN
INVISIBLE MIGRANT
As Skeggs (2004) has argued, representations matter. Representations of
au pairs – as attractive and available sexual partners and simultaneously
as devoted and happy carers – not only frame their experiences of life in
Britain, they work to deny the reality of their labour. When combined
with official discourses that construct au pairs as neither migrants nor
workers such representations are powerful. Their work is overlooked and
trivialized in the same way by media and agency representations as it is
in their official construction as ‘cultural exchange’ participants.
This denial of au pairs’ work is convenient both for the British state and
for individual employers. There is a shortage of childcare options for most
families in Britain and there is pressure on the government to facilitate
this very cheap form of childcare rather than clamp down on it (see
Mattingly [1999] for an account of a similar situation in the US, where
immigration policy has facilitated the employment of undocumented
Cox: The Au Pair Body 293
migrants in private homes). For employers, anxious to find affordable
domestic help, there is little interest in the cultural exchange element of
the scheme and few take it seriously. Employers seldom treat their au
pairs as equal nor do they stick to the working hours and conditions set
out by the scheme, yet rarely will they be confronted by this reality.
Instead of thinking of the person providing their childcare as an undocumented
migrant being paid less than the minimum wage, employers can
think of their ‘au pair’ and ‘common sense’ and the media tell them that
au pairs are not illegal or exploited, they are happy-go-lucky young
things or perhaps ‘sunny optimistic goddesses’.
NOTES
I would like to thank the Nuffield Foundation Social Science Small Grant number
SGS/00466/C, which made possible the research on which this article is based; Rekha
Narula who acted as research assistant on the project and Lewis Holloway, members
of the Gender Studies group at Birkbeck, University of London and the editor and two
anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
1. I use the terms ‘employment’, ‘employed’, etc., although strictly speaking
au pairs are ‘guests’ of ‘host families’ rather than ‘employees’. My research
to date has suggested that au pairs are much more like other domestic workers,
in terms of the tasks that they do, their relationships with employers
and the issues they face, than they are like members of the families they live
with (see Cox, 2006). I am anxious to foreground their labour as real work
and not to treat it as trivial.
2. When the research was being carried out these countries included all of the
European Economic Area and Andorra, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus,
the Czech Republic, the Faeroes, Greenland, Hungary, Liechtenstein,
Macedonia, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland
and Turkey. In December 2002, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and
Romania joined the scheme because of government concern that a greater supply
of au pairs was needed (Addley, 2002).
3. The Independent newspaper, in a guide to spending on 28 October 2006, featured
a range of lingerie called ‘The French Maid’. The newspaper invites
readers to ‘emulate alluring Parisian seductiveness in traditional black and
white frills’ and to ‘bring alive the French Maid fantasy’ (p. 8).
4. McClintock argues that in his development of the oedipal complex Freud
replaces the maid with the mother to produce a seemingly universal theory
based in nature, rather than one that admitted to the importance of historically
specific social class structures.
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Rosie Cox is lecturer in London Studies at Birkbeck, University of London and director
of the masters programme ‘Gender, Sexuality, Politics and Culture’. She has been
researching paid domestic employment in the UK for over 10 years and has a particular
interest in the au pair scheme and the experiences of au pairs. She is author
of The Servant Problem: Paid Domestic Work in a Global Economy (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2006). Her current research project is investigating the commoditization
of male labour in the home in New Zealand. Address: Faculty of Continuing
Education, Birkbeck, University of London, 26 Russell Square, London WC1B
5DQ, UK. [email: r.cox@bbk.ac.uk]
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