THE PINK PYRAMID SCHEME How Mary Kay Cosmetics Preys
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HARPER’S MAGAZINE/AUGUST 2012 $6.99 u THE PINK PYRAMID SCHEME How Mary Kay Cosmetics Preys on Desperate Housewives By Virginia Sole-Smith WELCOME TO FREE syria Meeting the Rebel Government of an Embattled Country By Anand Gopal PALM SUNDAY A poem by Frederick Seidel Also: The lies of food labeling u August Cover US Subs Final.indd_0625 1 6/25/12 9:15 AM repORT the pink pyramid scheme How Mary Kay cosmetics preys on desperate housewives By Virginia Sole-Smith met my first Mary Kay ladies at a der her own pancaked foundation “I’ll bring my catalogues next week!” beautyi school wedged between a liquor and penciled brows. one woman warned. store and an offtrack betting parlor on Kim and I had first met two months Kim passed out little Styrofoam the backside of a strip mall near earlier, when we both enrolled in the trays stamped with compartments, like Poughkeepsie, New York. “Indepen- beauty school’s 600-hour esthetician tiny TV dinner plates, and mirrors dent Beauty Consultant” Kim Mon- training program, where we spent our with black vinyl covers that folded tero was giving her very first “skincare weeknights learning to give facials and back to make a stand. Some of the class,” the preferred term for the direct- wax bikini lines. During class breaks, mirrors were streaked and spotted, and sales cosmetics brand’s shopping par- she smoked Newports and showed me my tray had cakey crumbs of eye shad- ties at which friends help friends buy cell phone photos of her ten-year-old ow lingering in the corners. lipstick, hand cream, and “unlimited son and their cat, both at home with “This one is busted,” said a fortyish opportunity,” as the company’s found- her live-in boyfriend. Before signing woman named Bronetta, trying to er, Mary Kay Ash, described it. Mary up for the program, Kim had worked— hand back a cracked mirror. Kay ladies have been holding skincare and been laid off from—a variety of “Can you just use it anyway?” Kim classes in suburban living rooms and low-paying jobs: bartender, bank teller, whispered, eyeing Daria. “I don’t have church basements since the 1960s, retail clerk. After signing up to be a any extras.” and have come to represent a Steel Mary Kay consultant, she had received Kim joined Daria at the front of the Magnolias kind of Americana—all big special permission to hold her “grand room, but before she could speak, Daria hair and folksy aphorisms. opening” skincare class in a small had begun: “My dream was always to be The modern-day version of the room off the beauty school’s main sa- at home with my children while they shopping party is a little more busi- lon floor. Kim had actually signed up grew up,” she told us, fingering the gold ness, a little less coffee klatch, though as a consultant twice before. “The first charms hanging around her neck. Not the hair, pink packaging, and talk of two times, I didn’t make any money,” only had her Mary Kay business allowed “opportunity” are much the same. she explained later. “But this time, her to realize that goal, Daria said, but Presiding over the evening class was with my esthetics knowledge, I think she now earned a “corporate income” as a kind of Mary Kay consigliere, Daria it makes a lot of sense.” a sales director. “My husband has even Rocco, carefully painted and pressed Happy to have a break from lessons been able to retire early.” Mary Kay, she into a royal-blue skirt suit, the official in zit extraction, my beauty-school told us, let beauty consultants buy their sales director’s uniform, which she classmates and I crowded around the inventory at wholesale prices and then accessorized with black fishnets, tables, chatting and flipping through sell it at a 100 percent markup. Consul- black knee-high boots, several rhine- glossy Mary Kay catalogues while Kim tants could also earn an extra “love stone pins, and a gold charm necklace and Daria unloaded bottles of cleanser check”—a commission of up to 13 per- from which dangled three heads in and foundation from a giant rolling cent on the purchases of women they silhouette, one for each of her chil- suitcase printed with tiny pink hair dry- recruited to join their teams—which dren. Next to Daria, Kim, at least ten ers and makeup brushes. Some of the helped explain why Daria had taken years younger, looked uncertain un- other students sold for Avon and Ar- such an interest in Kim’s fledgling busi- Virginia Sole-Smith is a reporting fellow with bonne, though they seemed good- ness. A new beauty consultant could set the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. natured about being Kim’s competition. up shop with an investment of as little 26 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2012 (26,29,31,34) Sole-Smith Final4 REV3.indd_0626 26 6/26/12 10:20 AM as $100, which would buy her the Mary really are helping a friend and yourself. books and housewares for Stanley Kay starter kit: trays, mirrors, and That’s how Mary Kay works.” Home Products. When her husband enough samples for her to hold her own A trim blonde student ordered eye left her at the end of World War II, skincare class. shadows for herself and took a catalogue Ash employed her talent for direct As Daria spoke, Kim squirted bits of home to show her mother. One of the sales to keep the family afloat. The cleanser, moisturizer, and other prod- beauty-school instructors wanted a way her biographers tell it, her chil- ucts—all interchangeably opaque and Satin Hands Pampering Set, and I dren helped pack and deliver orders gooey—into the various compartments bought the Satin Lips kit after Kim on Saturday afternoons as the family’s on our trays. Daria briefed us on each promised me that its exfoliating Lip version of quality time, and Ash one, instructing us to dab and blend as Mask would cure my chapped lips for- tracked her sales goals in soap on her appropriate. We exfoliated with a tacky, ever. And Bronetta put away her note- bathroom mirror. By the end of the granular scrub, then moved on to ton- book and bought the $100 starter kit. 1950s, she had worked her way up to ing and moisturizing. I kept discovering As the rest of us trickled out with national training director for the grainy patches of scrub on my face that our new purchases, Bronetta stayed World Gift Corporation. But when wouldn’t wipe off. “It’s really nice, behind to help Kim pack up. Together she was passed over for further pro- right?” Kim asked us. “Doesn’t your skin they lugged Daria’s giant suitcase back motion at age forty-five and saw the feel amazing?” out to her car, a Mary Kay–sponsored job go to a man she had trained, she My classmates realized that they Chevy Equinox LT. I watched them resigned in protest. weren’t just being sold makeup, and head to the darkened parking lot, Soon after, in 1963, Ash started Beau- spoke up accordingly. What was the two women in foundation-stained ty by Mary Kay with $5,000 and the minimum purchase requirement? How did white smocks, dragging pink luggage. tagline “Enriching Women’s Lives.” “I the commissions work? How do you learn Daria strode on ahead, unencum- wasn’t interested in the dollars-and- how to give these presentations? Daria bered and perfect in her blue suit, sti- cents part of any business; my interest in answered each question in the same letto boots clicking across 1963 was in offering women opportuni- assured tone. Bronetta had taken out a the asphalt. ties that didn’t exist anywhere else,” she pad of paper and began jotting notes. later wrote. Soon it was time to shop. “Remem- n 1938, Mary Kay Ash, a twenty- After being told for years by her for- ber, ladies, if you order tonight, Kim year-oldI Army wife raising three chil- mer colleagues to stop “thinking like a gets half of every sale,” Daria said. “You dren alone in Houston, began selling woman,” Ash was now free to rethink Photographs by Misty Keasler REPORT 27 (26-34) Sole-Smith Final4.indd_0625 27 6/25/12 8:58 AM much of the traditional direct-sales busi- rectors in 1969, ensuring that her best days. You don’t need connections, an ness model. She ditched the accepted earners would also advertise the com- impressive résumé, or a college degree practice of assigning associates to fixed pany everywhere they went. Today, to get hired in direct sales—you only territories, instead teaching her sales- Mary Kay distributes millions of dol- need an open wallet. Put that way, women to build circles of influence by lars’ worth of cars, vacations, and jew- the company’s $3 billion wholesale culling prospective customers from elry at every Seminar. figure seems to tell a different story; among their families, friends, and com- Ash’s talk of sisterhood, however, rather than documenting the suc- munities. Potential clients were invited was no byword for feminism. Her real cess of these newly empowered wom- to intimate shopping parties where they targets were the bored housewives en, it reveals just how much they could sample products. Ash kept the turned off by The Feminine Mystique spent to be in business gatherings small; she claimed her sales- (published the year Beauty by Mary with Mary Kay.