Vietnam and Nail Salons

There’s a stereotype that all nail salon workers are asian, or more specifically, Vietnamese. But has anyone wondered why this is? What’s the actual history behind the high saturation of Vietnamese people in nail salons, and how does this relate to the Vietnam war?

In California, Vietnamese people make up 80% of the licensed manicurists today, and nail care seems so common. But in the 60s, affordable nail care was a niche that no one had filled quite yet. That is, until a group of Vietnamese immigrants and an actress changed that.

Tippi Hedren was an actress famous for Hitchcock classics such as The Birds. She helped out those less fortunate than her when she could, and at the time of the Vietnam War, she visited Hope Village, a Vietnamese refugee camp near Sacramento. The refugees there had fled due to the communist takeover and the war that ravaged their country. Hedren wanted to do something more for the refugees than give them food or kind words. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Herdren wanted to teach a group of women who had immigrated from Vietnam to fish.

Herdren tried many different vocations, from typists to seamstresses. However, the women seemed to be dazzled by Herdren’s beautiful nails. This lit the spark that caused Herdren to have the idea that the vocation could be manicurists. Herdren flew in her own personal manicurist to teach the women how to do nails. She also recruited a local beauty school to teach the women. After they graduated, Herdren helped them get jobs all over California. Herdren had seen that the poor women had left their entire lives, families, and country, and had nothing in America, being forced to start over. She wanted to give them something to let them thrive in America. And her lessons led to many families finally being financially secure.

The prices of manicures lowered due to this new influx of manicurists. They used to be over $50 treatments only for the wealthy elite. Now, they can be less than $20. Tippi Herdren and the Vietnamese immigrants changed an industry and made it what we know today. We can see in our own towns how history still affects our world, and we should think about that next time we go in for a mani-pedi.



Tippi Herdren and the first graduating class receiving their cosmetology licenses, 1975

Sources:
https://www.npr.org/2012/06/14/154852394/with-polish-vietnamese-immigrant-community-thrives
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32544343
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/05/tippi-hedren-vietnamese-refugees-nail-industry