The women at Julie's International Salon share their experiences of bodily self-presentation, femininity, aging, and caring. Their own words are at the center of the book; the stories of their lives, fresh and compelling, are told here with affection.

But beyond the stories themselves, Frida Kerner Furman explores the socio-moral significance of these beauty shop experiences, showing how they reveal as much about society at large as about older women. For in telling us how they perceive reality, make choices, and live in their worlds, the women of Julie's expose structures of power, inequality, and resistance in the larger world that all of us, young or old, beautiful or not, face every day.