The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 11
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This chapter is designed to be a frank warning against the beauty shop and its arts as a means of livelihood for any American girl of intelligence and self-respect. I propose to tell my readers just what it means to work in such an establishment, and to induce them to seek some other means of self-support.
In penning such a warning, I speak from a viewpoint verging on actual experience. A member of my household and several personal friends have undertaken the work, only to drop it almost immediately because they found it uncongenial and degrading. This was not because of the scandal which always shadows a beauty-shop, because the self-supporting girl rarely finds any trade or profession over which the slimy trail of gossip does not pass. It was because these girls, possessing a sense of honor, natural reserve and refinement, found themselves placed in a position worse than menial.
You think you could not be a second-maid or waitress because you would be one of the servants. You think you could not endure clerking in a store because you would be compelled to serve customers who are personally offensive to you. You think you could not work in a factory because you have heard that foremen and forewomen are domineering and callous. Well, all of these drawbacks and more you will find in the life of the manicurist, hairdresser or masseuse in the so-called beauty shop.
The first time that a customer tells you to "keep the change," you will realize that you are on a plane with the butler, the footman, the public waiter. The first time that you decline to serve a customer who, though elegantly dressed, may be foul of speech or under the influence of liquor, you will be asked to find work elsewhere. And your first lesson from foremen or forewomen in the shop will be that, while there are tricks in all trades, at the beauty shops there are more tricks and more downright dishonesty than you, in your innocence, ever dreamed of. When you have read this chapter, I hope you will have no illusions about the trade and its tricks.
To begin with, if you are the average girl who knows little or nothing of the various trades or lines of business for your sex, you imagine that you can go to a school of manicuring, hairdressing and massage in New York City, and within a few months be managing an establishment of your own. But this is what will happen:
You will promise to pay anything from twenty-five to one hundred dollars, according to your gullibility, for the course of training that is to lead to a "diploma" and a guaranteed position. You will find yourself in a shop, not a school, where you will pay for the privilege of being an apprentice. You, who had such lovely visions of gliding over velvet-covered floors in a long black frock with perfectly coiffed hair and tapering white fingers, will be sweeping, dusting, running after hairpins, nets and shampoo mixtures, patiently holding the dye for the expert worker, washing brushes and combs and cleaning up the tiny apartments in which the various toilet mysteries are conducted.
If your hair is dressed at all, it will-be done by a fellow-apprentice who, in her inexperience, burns it. If you ask for some of the promised instruction, you will be passed on, from one worker to another, until the best-natured girl on the staff finally condescends to give you some very indifferent instruction. The head of the "school," you will generally find, knows little or nothing about the trades. He merely invests the capital and trusts the actual work to his hirelings. Among your fellow-workers, you will meet a few men, mostly foreigners of vicious habits.
Understand that this is all under the surface. Outwardly the shop is as beautiful as enameled paint, gleaming mirrors and suave attendants can make it. The game is well played before customers.
As the days slip by, you will realize that hairdressers deliberately burn the hair so that customers will be compelled to buy false pieces, transformations, switches, puffs, etc. You will discover that so-called experts in facial treatment often introduce poisonous properties into their lotions, and thus the customer who falls into their clutches must either continue to have her face literally plastered with cosmetics or go to some high-priced baths, where, in retirement, her natural complexion may be restored. You will learn of horrible cases of blood-poisoning due to the use of unsterilized knives and scissors in the manicuring and chiropody department. But all the while the white enamel gleams, and the mirrors glitter, and snowy white towels will be plentiful.
Gradually you will realize that you are get ting a smattering of very bad methods and learning no branch of the trade thoroughly, When you reach this point, if you are a sensible, brave girl, you will turn your back on the shop and seek some other sort of work. If, however, you become panic-stricken at the thought of the hard-earned money you have invested in your "course," you will begin to work desperately, cajoling and bullying those above you into giving you a little instruction.
Of this sort of girl the shop managers are very anxious to rid themselves, so very soon you will be pronounced fit for a position. This having been guaranteed, you will find yourself working in an opposition shop for perhaps eight or ten dollars a week. Here you will try very hard to do the right thing for your customers; but it will not last. To your amazement you are dismissed without warning and without cause. The proprietor of the shop will merely tell you that he is cutting down his force. Business has fallen off, etc. But in a few days you will learn that your successor is another girl from the shop or "school" where you were trained. When you become acquainted with more girls you will learn that shop managers have a system of interchanging positions that are merely temporary, in order to make good their worthless guarantee.
"You take my pupils off my hands," says one shop manager to another, "and I'll take yours." And so the fluttering moths are caught.
These tactics are followed not only in New York, but in other large cities where "schools" are advertised; and the crimes committed against society and especially against the inexperienced woman whose feet stray over their threshold in search of an honest trade are despicable. Manicuring, hairdressing and facial massage are legitimate trades, but they have been dragged into the very mire by unscrupulous workers. Do you want to become one of these?
Certainly not! Then keep away from the "beauty school" and learn your trade, if you think it is the one trade for you, in a more honest and earnest fashion.
In the shop you must serve all who come, sober or otherwise, able-bodied or diseased, and if the customer indulges in immoderate, unjustified fault-finding, which sometimes amounts to insult, a liberal tip is supposed to be the only apology necessary.
Understand I do not say all shops come under this head. There are a few establishments in every city where the bacilli of dishonesty and criminal carelessness have not yet found a nesting-place. But it is the shop such as I have described which, unfortunately, appeals most generally to the out-of-town girl, for whom this book has been written. She knows nothing of city life. She knows nothing of those who manage shops or patronize them. She judges the shop and its trade purely from cleverly-written, prettily-illustrated booklets, and she has romantic ideas, gleaned from reading Sunday papers, about the matrimonial opportunities of the fair manicurist.
To such girls—and their mothers—I trust this chapter will be a warning. From such shops girls issue forth only half trained, utterly unfitted to do honest work and utterly unable to carve a future for themselves or to build up the one desirable line of custom—the house-to-house or visiting trade.
The house-to-house worker is not employed in a shop, but calls on customers at their homes or hotels, carrying her implements and supplies in a neat hand-bag, which is made especially for this purpose. Many of her customers prefer to use their own implements, and have their own shampoo mixtures and face lotions, for they are the better and more refined class of women who do not care to patronize the public shop. They pay the same fees that are charged in the shop, or more. The worker who gives satisfaction soon has an established trade among the most desirable people, and is in a position to accept or refuse new clients.
The house-to-house trade has many advantages, not the least of which is the outdoor exercise which the visiting worker secures while making her rounds. She is not subject to the petty politics and favoritism found in every shop. She can arrange her appointments, at least in a certain measure, to suit her personal convenience, so as to have time to manage her own household affairs if she happens to be married or have an invalid dependent upon her.
The girl who thinks she would like house-tohouse work must become a first-class manicurist, for she will appeal to the most fastidious trade. If she lives in a large city, she should take private lessons from the best manicurist whose teaching services are available. These lessons will cost her at least two dollars each, and if she practices earnestly between lessons on her own hands and those of her family circle or intimate friends, six lessons will be sufficient. This statement is made on the authority of a thorough and successful manicurist in New York City, who has trained at least a dozen girls for the work. She insists that a girl who cannot master the theory of the trade in six lessons, one a week, and become moderately proficient in the same length of time through honest practice, is not suited to the work and never will succeed.
As soon as the worker feels sure of her own ability, she solicits trade. This may be done by sending out neatly-printed cards or circulars, giving home address and telephone. A telephone is essential to the success of a house-to-house worker. These may be distributed in family hotels, or boarding-houses, or through the mail, using the telephone directory for securing addresses. When the influence and help of a hotel manager, clerk or housekeeper is desired, the new candidate for patronage generally keeps in order, free of charge, the hands of the person who will be helpful to her. But the most desirable trade comes through the recommendations of satisfied customers. The stranger in a city will do well to take a room in some small hotel or large boarding-house, where professional and business women stay in large numbers. She will soon build up a good trade among her fellow-roomers.
The girl who lives in a small city may have some difficulty in securing a reliable private teacher, simply because established manicurists do not particularly desire to train competitors in a field which they feel quite able to fill. Such a condition can be met by having the hands done regularly by one manicurist, time and time again, studying every movement of the work keenly and putting what is thus learned through observation into practice at home. In addition to this, several good books on practical methods of beautifying the human form have been written by experts. They can be purchased at any reliable book-shop or ordered through any dealer. The conscientious study of these books and the diligent observation of methods employed by a first-class manicurist, together with practice, are perhaps the best substitute for private lessons.
Next to this comes the correspondence school. I fully realize that established workers will criticize this statement severely, but it must be borne in mind that the girl who served an apprenticeship in a beauty shop ten or even five years ago was really trained for the work, while to-day the methods, unfortunately, are those described in the opening pages of this chapter. On the other hand, I have investigated personally the courses offered by two reliable correspondence schools, and found them thorough, accurate, and workmanlike. The girl who cannot master the trade by the aid of such a course and diligent practice will never succeed as a "graduate" from a beauty shop or "school." In fact, in this trade, as in almost any line of work, the girl who really wills to succeed will find a way.
The manicurist who calls on transient customers, such as tourists stopping at hotels, generally receives fifty cents per treatment. Her regular customers, whom she visits two or three times a week, she charges at the rate of thirty-five cents a call. In addition to visiting customers in their homes, many house-to-house workers in large cities have hospital and sanitarium practice, visiting convalescents who, though they have hospital attendance, are glad to have the visiting manicurist care for their hands and incidentally keep them in touch with the busy world beyond the sanitarium doors. This sort of work is secured through trained nurses, superintendents of hospitals and sanitariums, physicians and regular customers who have friends recovering from illness.
When a girl has thoroughly mastered manicuring and secured an established trade, she may wish to study another line of similar work, particularly shampooing. This is by no means a complicated branch of the trade to learn. To thoroughly cleanse the scalp without drenching the customer or causing more than a minimum of discomfort; to select the correct shampoo mixture for the different sorts of hair, blonde, brunette, red, oily or dry; to dry the hair properly; to singe it and wave it if the customers so desire, complete the training of the girl who announces herself as ready to do shampooing. The waving is not essential, but it is often the means of holding a customer who does not patronize a professional hairdresser, and who dislikes the task of waving her own locks. But the girl who does waving only should never exploit herself as a hairdresser, nor should she claim ability as a scalp specialist until she has been trained thoroughly and honestly for the work.
Shampooing can be mastered through practice and the study of books on the care of the hair or a correspondence course. For such service customers pay from fifty cents to one dollar, according to the size of the city and the scale of prices that prevails.
The girl who has both manicuring and shampooing at her command will have plenty to do among her house-to-house customers. There is absolutely no need of further training, unless she aims in time to open a shop. Then she should save money until she can afford to study with an expert masseuse the art of massaging the face, the scalp and the body. The most successful and reliable workers insist that in this day and age it pays to be a specialist, especially for the house-to-house trade. The girl who is really an expert manicurist will soon have her engagement book full. The girl who masters shampooing should follow this up with scalp massage learned from a recognized specialist.
Hairdressing is a trade quite apart, and the girl wha would learn this should work first in a wig or hair-making shop, learning the composition of hair, the art of dyeing it and making it into pieces, such as puffs, transformations, switches, etc.; and finally the very beautiful art—of dressing the hair to suit the face. This trade cannot be learned superficially in a beauty shop among chattering girls. It is particularly the art or trade of a man, and men are the best Marcel wavers. Only about one girl in a thousand succeeds as a hair-worker and dresser, and she cannot really succeed and establish herself without serving an honest, sincere apprenticeship in a wig shop.
But to return to the house-to-house manicuring or shampooing, to which lines of work I hope most of the girls interested in the subject will turn their attention and their efforts, let us consider whether you are the sort of girl to succeed. You must be healthy, neat and tactful. You must be healthy because you are constantly giving forth vitality. Every woman who employs you leans upon you and asks for help. Yours must be the stronger nature. Particularly in the care of the hair and scalp, and massage, great demands are made upon your strength. A sickly or delicate looking girl does not inspire confidence in her customers. You must radiate strength, capability, confidence in yourself and your powers to remedy physical defects. The anemic girl cannot succeed. Her touch will be uncertain, trembling, and even dangerous in handling manicuring implements. The girl subject to headaches cannot succeed because her ailment deprives her of the nervous force needed to inspire confidence. The girl with catarrh or with an offensive breath cannot hold customers. Therefore, if you would be a beauty specialist start by setting your body in perfect order. Become well and strong and magnetic.
The appearance of the manicurist, hairdresser or masseuse counts almost as heavily, for success as that of the probationer at the training-school for nurses referred to in Chapter IV. You must be immaculate. Your skin must look well cared for, well groomed. Your hair must be clean and glossy, and it must be carefully dressed. Your frock, however simple, must be free from dust, spots and fringes, with immaculate linen at throat and wrists. Your hands must be the best advertisement for your trade. Many first-class workers wear a sort of uniform, and at least the shirt-waist should be of washable material. You must give forth an air of trimness, neatness and good grooming.
Tact is a most important qualification. The manicurist, the hairdresser or the masseuse is frequently the confidant of her customer. Your relations during certain hours of each week are intimate. The girl who has not the gift of sealing her lips, but who is a typical gossip, soon finds herself without trade. Customers do not recognize their own folly in making you their confidant. They simply resent your violation of their confidence.
Tact is also required in handling nervous, tired, overworked women, who will make up the majority of your patronesses. The woman who tears herself away from the turmoil of the social season or a mass of club work to have you undo the mischief of overwork, late hours, constant nervous effort, is not apt to be patient or easily pleased. You must be, above all things, restful and soothing, and this requires perfect physical strength, steady nerves, mental poise and tact.
In the matter of education, the requirements are not exacting—in truth, they are not as exacting as they should be, considering the fact that women place themselves and their appearance at your mercy. Every member of the human body is a delicate organ which you should handle with infinite care and conscientiousness. A knowledge of English, careful, accurate speech, these you should have, because your choice of language will betray to your customers your standing, and, to a certain extent, affect their confidence in you. Slang, bad grammar, and a high-pitched, unmusical voice will annoy women whom you may hope to count among your customers.
Before taking a practical course in any art of beautifying, study anatomy, and continue to study it so long as you follow the trade. You can never cease to learn about the human body, part of which you have undertaken to treat.
Massage, especially facial massage, is a line of work which makes legitimate appeal to the girl who wishes to learn a profitable trade; but it requires a gift which comparatively few women possess—a delicate, soothing touch. In this day of innumerable ailments which can be traced directly to tense or overtaxed nerves, modern medical science is treating more and more by manipulation and less and less by drugs, and a girl who can convince an up-todate doctor that she has soothing, healing qualities in her hands will have no difficulty in securing engagements.
"But," exclaims the girl, "how do I know that I possess this gift?"
Test yourself. Perhaps your mother suffers with nervous or neuralgic headaches. Take her into a cool, not cold, darkened room and gently rub or smooth the forehead, or the base of the brain, wherever the pain may be. Do not talk to her. Merely concentrate your thought on her pain and your desire to ease it. If she gradually becomes quiet, if her nerves stop twitching, and if she feels an inclination to sleep, you have the masseuse's gift in your finger-tips. Or, if your father has twisted his ankle and is suffering pain, rub the affected parts firmly, steadily, never spasmodically. If you bring relief and in time reduce the inflammation you have the soothing hand.
On the other hand, if you make patients irritable and nervous, if they beg you to leave them alone, you lack the touch, and only in cases of rare persistency and study can: it be acquired.
Quite generally this soothing touch is ascribed to personal magnetism. It is really a manifestation of a strength in both nerves and will. It indicates a firm, sympathetic nature and admirable self-control. It is never possessed by the self-centered, selfish or hysterical girl. The soothing hand is neither large nor small, never damp or clammy, and always firm.
There is a regular way of cultivating this power known as magnetism. Sit quietly until you are in absolute repose. Relax and drop everything. Then make up your mind what you want. You want to give forth help, to be helpful. Out of your calmness and strength you want to get the quality of giving forth or expressing through your hands your desire to aid others. This is not hypnotism or chicanery, but the influence of mind over matter. If the mind is cross or irritated, you cannot be helpful. You cannot have a soothing effect or stroke of the hand if your thoughts are jumping in a hundred different directions. The soothing hand presupposes mental concentration.
Scalp massage is excellent work for the beginner. It requires only a fair amount of strength, brings quick results and is very generally in demand. The scalp masseuse is really a hair culturist. Her office is to quicken the life in the hair, loosen the skin from the scalp, stimulate the little cells in which the hairs grow and prevent baldness. The tight scalp is a common cause of falling hair, and massage alone will cure it. The scalp masseuse generally goes to the homes of patients, charging from seventy-five cents to one dollar and a quarter for each treatment.
If you take up this work, study the constitution of the hair. Familiarize yourself with all sorts and conditions of scalps. Learn what the oily hair needs and what is best for dry, harsh hair. Keep a schedule or history of every case you treat, just as the trained nurse watches every change in her patient's condition and marks it in her report. Learn to make your own tonics.
Scalp massage is particularly desirable when a patient is recovering from fever, and in such cases the treatments should be given three times a week, gradually reducing the number and frequency as the condition of the scalp improves. Scalp masage is also desirable for anemic children, and a most profitable field for the sealp masseuse is the prevention of baldness among men. If you have men patients, always insist upon their coming to your home, and you are quite within your rights if, during the treatment, you have your mother or a friend sit in the room with you. The masseuse who wishes to build up a desirable clientele will be very careful in the matter of office etiquette.
Facial massage is more difficult, but also more profitable. When you can make the members of your own sex better-looking, you can command their last dollar. The prices are much the same as for scalp massage. Remember that the woman who comes to you for facial treatment is generally tired in body and nerves. First make her comfortable and quiet. Do not chatter. The secret of preserving your own strength and reviving hers is quiet concentration on the movements of your hands. If your hands are engaged in one direction and your thoughts in another, you must use double the amount of vital energy employed when you keep quiet.
Second, send your patient away looking attractive. It will take a little more time, but it will be casting bread upon the water that is bound to come back. Not long ago a friend of mine changed masseuses. I asked her why she had dismissed Miss Jones, who is considered a skilled worker.
"Oh," was her reply, "I know she had wonderful hands, but she never bothered to take the cream off your face. You have to clean up your face, powder and fix yourself generally. Miss Green, my new girl, leaves you feeling so cumfy. She washes off the cream, powders your face, perhaps she touches up your eyebrows, and smooths you down generally, and you go out looking so fit that every one remarks on your appearance."
Whose customers, think you, are the better advertisers for the masseuse's skill? It takes but a few minutes to groom your patient, and you have her bound by your chains. Just such little things as these make for success.
While the primary virtue of massage is giving forth strength and relief from pain, the facial masseuse must make her patients feel "better-looking." She must take a vital interest in the appearance of each patient and must not hesitate to suggest in a tactful way what would improve the customer's appearance.
Another important point for the house-to-house masseuse to observe is orderliness. Unless her customer has plenty of servants, the masseuse heats the water needed for steaming the face and waits upon herself. When the treatment is over, she should put the basins, tea-kettle, towels, etc., in their right places, and straighten up the toilet table. It is the work of only a few moments to stretch the wet towels and cloths to dry in the bathroom, to put the tea-kettle or basin in place, and to cover the cold-cream jar and powder-box, while the customer is enjoying the restful effects of her treatment. When that customer must pick up after the departed masseuse, she is very apt to lose some of the soothing effects of the treatment and to set the worker down as careless and disorderly. I have known more than one masseuse to lose good customers just through this little fault of untidiness. I admit that "cleaning up" is not nominated in the bond, but it is one of the little things that hold custom.
Body massage is the most complicated of all, and must be studied faithfully on scientific lines. It is employed for the relief of rheumatism, bad circulation, sciatica, nervousness and all diseases arising from congestion. It is invaluable, particularly in the case of children, for liver and bowel trouble, and it is employed to reduce inflammation and swellings from strains, bruises and abcesses, where there is no skin abrasion. Engagements are secured through physicians in private homes and in sanitariums, particularly those patronized by nervous patients or chronic invalids. An expert masseuse recommended by a physician of standing, receives as high as five dollars an hour, but she can take only two or three cases in a day at the most. Training for this high-grade work must be secured through private lessons or in a hospital training-school, in connection with special work in anatomy.
In the preceding pages I have tried to show to girls who have never given the trade of the "beauty specialist" more than a superficial—study the grave importance of really being a specialist, not a general worker. There is neither large salary nor dignity in the general work of the "beauty shop," and there is much danger for the American girl's standard of right living and honest working.