"Hands across the table": A short history of the manicurist in the twentieth century

Journal of Women's History

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 2005, Pages

  Willett, Julie ^a  

^a TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 43249167835     PISSN: 10427961     EISSN: 15272036     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2005.0038     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Wanda Coleman, "Putty in Their Hands," Los Angeles Times Magazine, 12 February 1995.
2. For a discussion of "putting on style," see Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), chap. 3,
3. and Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998).
4. "Trouble Corner," The American Hairdresser, August 1931, 69.
5. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 172.
6. "Says Manicure Stole Ring," The New York Times, 25 June 1925;
7. "Former Manicure Sued," New York Times, 1 July 1920, 8.
8. Tera Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 60-61.
9. Julie Willett, Permanent Waves: The Making of the American Beauty Shop (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
10. Randy D. McBee, Dance Hall Days: Intimacy and Leisure among Working-Class Immigrants in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 43-44.
11. Doris L. Rich, Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993), 19-21.
12. "Excerpts from Diaries of Delinquents," folder 6, Box 7, Institute for Juvenile Research, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois, 11-12.
13. Ida Connolly, Beauty Operator on Broadway (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954), 48.
14. "The Business of being a Manicurist," Good Housekeeping, May 1958, 178.
15. "Day at the Barbershop," McCalls, March 1954, 22.
16. "$21,500,000 Spent to Beautify Hands," The New York Times, 10 May 1947, 10.
17. On African American desires to seek beauty culture as means to escape domestic work, see, for example, Willett, Permanent Waves, 21.
18. Virginia Postrel, "The Acrylic Sector," Forbes, 2 November 1998, 104.
19. Diana Sierpina, "Fighting for the Manicure Trade, Block by Block," The New York Times, 29 December 1996.
20. Margot Mifflin, "Nail Art Creates Fingertip Renaissance," The New York Times, 14 July 1996.
21. For the most recent trends on services offered, see "Industry Statistics," Nails Magazine website, http://www.nailsmag.com/resources/ industryStats.aspx, last accessed 26 April 2005.
22. "At Their Fingertips, a World of Possibilities," The New York Times, 13 August 1997.
23. Mifflin, "Nail Art Creates Fingertip Renaissance."
24. Alex Witchel, "As 'Nail Art' Becomes the Fashion, Who's to Scrub the Broiler Pan?" The New York Times, 3 October 1999.
25. Liz Benston, "Vietnamese Run About 95 percent of Sacramento, Calif.-Area Nail Salons," The Record (Stockton, CA), 26 April 2000.
26. Benston, "Vietnamese Run About 95 percent of Sacramento, Calif.-Area Nail Salons."
27. Susan Bordo, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 51.
28. On Asians as model immigrants see Ronald Takaki, Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1998).
29. Nicole Bondi, "Salons Warn Against Cheap Shops," The Detroit News, 26 April 1998.
30. "A Texas Tragedy," Harpers, May 1997, 29-31.
31. Seinfeld, "The Understudy," episode 110 (New York: Castle Rock Entertainment, 1994).
32. For a fascinating study of language in Vietnamese-owned and operated salons in Austin, Texas, see Elizabeth Nicole Netherton, "Identity at their Fingertips: Language Choice and Use in Vietnamese-Owned Nail Salons" (master's thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 2001), 44-46.
33. Netherton, "Identity at their Fingertips," 44-46.
34. Sex and the City, "The Caste System," season two, episode 22 (New York: Home Box Office, 1999).
35. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Owl Books, 2001), 216.
36. For an engaging sociological study of salons owned and operated by Koreans in New York City, see Miliann Kang, "Manicuring Interactions: Race, Gender and Class in New York City Korean-owned Nail Salons" (PhD diss., New York University, 2001), 140.
37. See also Miliann Kang, "Manicuring Race, Gender and Class: Service Interactions in New York City's Korean Owned Nail Salons," Race, Gender and Class 4, no. 3,143-64.
38. Vijay Prashad, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), see esp. 102-104.
39. Dickerson, "Racial Fingernail Politics."
40. Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 2-3.
41. Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, The War Against Parents: What We Can Do For American's Beleaguered Moms and Dads (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 71-74;
42. and Arlie Russell Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Avon, 1997).
43. For a discussion of cosmetics and feminine identity, see Peiss, Hope in Jar.
44. Anne Merritt, "It's about time you met the metrosexual," 24 October 2003, Queen's University The Journal, http://www.queensjournal.ca/ articlephp/point-vol131/issuel7/poscript/lead1, last accessed 26 April 2005.