#sarah nir

You read Sarah Maslin Nir’s two-part exposé of New York nail salons the New York Times. You read the “How I got the story” interview with Nir in the Times. You read the rebuttal by nail salon owner and former New York Times reporter Richard Bernstein. You read the NYT rebuttal to Bernstein’s rebuttal. And then you read Jim Epstein’s three-part take-down of Nir’s two-parter. And then you read NYT Public Editor Margaret Sullivan’s grudging response to Epstein. But that isn’t enough for you, is it? You want more!

Well, never let it be said that Literature R Us, home of 9,000-word riffs on both Edward Gibbon and dinosaurs, is deaf to the public clamor. There are, in fact, many delicious bits of minutiae still to consider.

For example, Sarah Nir sets up her two-parter by remarking that “Once an indulgence reserved for special occasions, manicures have become a grooming staple for women across the economic spectrum.” A manicure an “indulgence”? Really? I guess Sarah is too young to remember Madge the manicurist, who appeared in dozens of Palmolive TV ads for decades.

And I guess she never saw W. C. Fields’ 1933 classic, The Barbershop, in which Fields’ one-chair shop features both a steam room and a manicurist (Dagmar Oakland).

In her interview, Nir waxes just a wee bit censorious on the whole notion of having someone else cut your nails for you: “There is no such thing as a cheap luxury. It’s an oxymoron. The only way that you can have something decadent for a cheap price is by someone being exploited. Your discount manicure is on the back of the person giving it.”1

If “manicures have become a grooming staple for women across the economic spectrum,” how can it be a luxury, much less “something decadent”? If Nir wants to see something decadent, she should read the Times’ “T Magazine”, where among other things, cool folks George Saunders and Carly Rae Jepsen rap about the wonders of $1,000 socks made of Peruvian vicuna. She could also check out Timesman Tom Voelk’s glowing reviews of a $125,000 Porsche that lacks a rear-view camera and a $250,000 Ferrari that’s totally worth it because, well, because it’s a Ferrari, asshole! And that’s not even counting the endless “What will $3 mil [$3 MIL!] get you in Baltimore?” house porn features the Times runs every week.

In his critique in the New York Review of Books, former Timesman Richard Bernstein focused largely on the shockingly low wages—often, no wages—described in the article, which, the Times insisted, were entirely accurate. However, Epstein’s three-parter in Reason clearly indicated that many of Nir’s claims were false, based on mistranslations and misunderstanding of ads in Chinese newspapers. Furthermore, Nir based her articles very heavily on the experiences of workers who were illegal immigrants, desperate for work and afraid to do anything that might call attention to themselves, treating their experiences as typical of all nail salon workers, which was entirely inaccurate.

Margaret Sullivan, in her response to Epstein, reluctantly concluded that much of what he had to say was true. The Times’ editors, who had scornfully rejected Bernstein’s earlier piece, were far more grudging in their response. When Sullivan contacted them, she said, “The editors objected to many elements of Mr. Epstein’s reporting, including his apparent defense of practices that allow undocumented or illegal immigrants to work in salons.” So, if the Times editors had their way, instead of living six to a room, as Nir reported, these people would be living in the street and starving to death. Hey, nice idealism, editors!

While Epstein’s reporting significantly damaged Nir’s claims of rampant underpayment of nail salon workers, which appeared in her first piece, he absolutely crushed her second, titled “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers”, demonstrating that it should have been called “Pretty Good Nails, Healthy Workers”. Sullivan, in her response, awkwardly notes that “Scientific evidence does not appear to fully support the impression created by the article,” which probably should have been written as “Scientific evidence explicitly contradicts the impression created by the article,” since Nir failed to demonstrate that 1) nail salon workers were more prone to any illness than women of similar age who did not work in nail salons; 2) failed to show that any of the chemicals nail salon workers encountered on the job could possibly have detrimental health effects.

But, hey, I’m still not finished! Even Epstein said some things that weren’t true! In her first article, Nir discussed a number of cases were nail salon workers filed complaints regarding underpayment and the government agencies who handled their complaints found in their favor, at least in some of the cases. So was Nir right, at least some of the time?

I suspect she was right, but Epstein doesn’t want to give an inch. According to Jim, nail salons actually pay their workers decent wages. They just don’t keep decent records! And it’s not their fault!

“Nail salons generally don't keep incomplete records because they're trying to hide that they're underpaying their employees. They keep incomplete records partially as a concession to their employees, who know that if all their income was carefully recorded, they could become ineligible for government benefits.”

And how do we know this is true, of all nail salons? Well, because Aiming Feng, “an accountant and business consultant who works with both nail shops and their workers,” says so. “They fear they might lose their Medicaid or food stamps.”

Color me cynical, but I wonder if the loquacious Mr. Feng doesn’t work a lot more for nail shops than nail shop workers.2 And I wonder if Mr. Feng really knows what all nail salons do. After all, if a business owner underreports the wages she pays, she’s underreporting her business costs, and thus inflating her net profits and also increasing her tax bill, unless she’s underreporting her gross profits. How many employers are going to increase their own taxes so they can help their employees cheat the government? I kind of wonder about that one.

In the case of employees who are illegal immigrants, it’s quite possible that the entire transaction is left off the book. Being an illegal is not fun. But, shockingly, being an illegal immigrant in the U.S. can be better than being a citizen of some other countries, which is why they come here. Sarah Nir, and the Times in general, seem to forget about that part.

Nir claims that while the national average charge for a manicure is $20, her survey found that in the New York City area, the average is $10. Since the national average appears to be $20, I find it almost impossible to believe that the “average” manicure in New York will only cost you $10. None of the replies to Nir deal with prices (the big concern is wages). It’s true that a $10 figure is documented, but I believe that’s a low rather than an average. ↩︎