abbyjean:

oh, boy, that nytimes piece on nail salon employees in new york city. oh boy. i mean, as some of the commenters have helpfully pointed out, it is not exactly a surprise to learn that the women who speak little english and often are undocumented staffing a salon that charges $20 for a manicure are not being well paid. there is no way those women could be well paid and the salon stay open. 

but realizing exactly how un-well paid they are (pay $100 to get to work at a salon, 3 month period with no payment, then $30/day) and what an organized system of exploitation it is (they all live together in apartments organized by the salon owners, 12 women in a one bedroom apartment in queens, picked up in vans to go to the salon for their 12 hour shifts).

and people on twitter are immediately flipping to individualized solutions. we will all stop getting manicures! that will solve this problem! and while it feels ethically impossible to get a cheap manicure knowing these things, it is awfully naive to think that if we all do our own nails, these women will magically find a new career in which they will not be exploited. neither is it charitable to keep getting manicures to provide even this awful and exploitative employment for women in this precarious and vulnerable situation. there are no individualized solutions to this problem!

the solution needs to be systemic. the problems are the immigration system and capitalism.

(via chellmabell)