The Impact of COVID-19 on Nail Salons
Introduction:
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed people’s lives across the globe. Schools had to transition to online learning, people began working from home, and countless business owners have struggled or failed to survive during this time. One industry, nail salons, have struggled to make it through the pandemic as a result of mandatory shutdowns and anti-Asian rhetoric. At the start of the pandemic, President Trump consistently blamed China for the spread of the virus, leading to verbal abuse and physical assault toward people of Asian descent (Siu and Chun 421) and was pushed a step further after California’s Governor Gavin Newsom “haphazardly and incorrectly singled out nail salons as the start of the community spread for the state of California” (Sharma 501). This short research paper delves into how three separate nail salons in the San Fernando Valley coped during the pandemic. Through interviews and participant observation, this study will provide answers to how business owners in this industry were able to survive during mandatory closures and the implementation of strict protocols while having themselves and their business racialized.
Methodological and Ethical Approaches:
Research Methods
This is a qualitative study that compares the experiences of three nail salon owners as they tried to keep their businesses open during the COVID-19 pandemic. I conducted semi-structured interviews with a standard set of questions to provide me with background information on the businesses, their owners, and their implementation of CDC and Public Health protocols. I also carefully observed these businesses to see what protocols were used and how often they were employed.
Participants
There were three participants included in this study: two female salon owners and one male salon owner. All participants are Vietnamese. I chose the participants from my experience visiting these salons and my previously established relationships with the owners of these businesses.
The first participant is Emma, the owner of Ciel Nail Spa in Northridge, CA. This salon was opened in 2013. The salon has 8 pedicure stations and 8 manicure stations and a waxing room. The second participant is Angela, the owner of The Vineyards Nail Spa in Porter Ranch, CA. Angela opened this nail salon in 2019. The salon is equipped with 16 pedicure stations and 10 manicure stations, two waxing rooms, and two bathrooms. The third participant is Tim, the owner of Lovely Nails in Granada Hills, CA. This salon has been open since 2011. The salon has 6 pedicure stations and 6 manicure stations, and a waxing room.
Data Collection
The bulk of the data I gathered was through in-depth interviews and participant observation. The interviews ranged between 30-45 minutes and were loosely structured by a basic set of questions. After the interviews, I observed each business for about five hours and collected data on how the employees kept up with CDC and Public Health protocols.
Ethical Considerations
Before conducting interviews and gathering data, I obtained verbal consent from all participants and notified them that their names would be changed, and the data collected would only be seen by my professor and class TA. I asked for consent before recording audio of our interviews and I was granted permission to observe their businesses and take notes on what I saw.
Research Findings and Analysis:
As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, the CDC released a set of guidelines for businesses, schools, parks, organizations and more detailing the appropriate practices that should be in place to prevent further spread of the virus. There is an outline of general protocols for nails salons which include moving workstations to maintain social distancing, installing shields between clients and employees, screen clients for COVID-19 symptoms, disinfecting all surfaces regularly, and proper usage of PPE (CDC). In the midst of state-level reopening in April 2020, there were protests “fixated on the barbershop, the beauty salon, and the nail salon, each of which requires touch, and the inability to maintain six feet of distance” (Sharma 494). While it proved to be a struggle to reopen nail salons, business owners did find ways to make it through.
Ciel Nail Spa
In contrast, Ciel Nail Spa strictly follows all CDC guidelines and closed their doors during mandatory shutdowns. Emma was able to keep their business open by paying for rent with her savings. Although her and their employees did take a substantial financial hit because of that, they did receive some support from stimulus checks. Emma was compelled to follow stay-at-home orders and close her business because she lives with her in-laws and young children, so it was crucial for her to minimize risk since she lives in a three-generational household, like many others of Asian descent do as opposed to her white counterparts (Wang et al 3686).
When preparing to reopen the salon, Emma invested in plastic shields that are installed into the ceiling at each manicure and pedicure station, with additional portable shields that can be placed between clients as needed. When each client enters, they must sanitize their hands, get their temperature taken, and fill out a form which Emma saves to keep track of who enters their salon in case of an outbreak. Like The Vineyards Nail Spa, only gel polish is used, and swatch sticks are passed between clients so they can choose their color, although they do wipe them down before giving them to the next client. In between each client, the chairs and tables are sanitized. All customers and employees are required to wear masks.
The Vineyards Nail Spa
Angela opted to keep The Vineyards Nail Spa open despite stay-at-home orders and mandatory closures of salons. To avoid being caught or reported, Angela parked outside the store and stayed there for the entire day, communicating with clients and employees inconspicuously to sneak them into the salon when security was out of sight. Inside the salon, almost all of the lights were off and the shades were drawn to avoid detection. Clients were asked to pay with cash or on Venmo or Zelle so they wouldn’t have any income to report. Angela hardly suffered financially during this time since she was able to covertly run her business and was eligible to receive stimulus checks.
Once nail salons were permitted to reopen, the breach in protocols continued. Although most CDC and Public Health protocols were adopted, they seemed to be used when someone remembered or when there was time to sanitize surfaces. Although all manicure stations have plastic shields, they were not always in use at pedicure stations. I also noticed that clients were rarely distanced, even when the salon wasn’t busy, and there weren’t shields placed in between them. While all nail tools are sanitized between each use, the chairs and tables are not wiped down between each client. The salon also does not keep a record of the clients they see each day, whether they have potentially been exposed to COVID-19 or have experienced symptoms, and their temperatures are not taken, although there is a thermometer laying on the receptionist’s desk. Despite the lack of adherence to most protocols, all customers and employees do wear masks, and employees do wear gloves and switch them between clients. While regular nail polish is not being used due to the uncontrollable amount of people touching the bottle, gel polish is used for all clients. However, the swatch sticks showing the color options are not cleaned between clients and are just passed around.
Angela was shocked when I asked her why she didn’t follow all safety protocols, because she believed she was following them. She elaborated by explaining that she couldn’t find all the CDC and Public Health protocols in her language and had them translated by one of her friends. It has been documented that language barriers also pose a risk for certain populations and “serves as a social determinant because it affects employment, amplifies health problems related to racial discrimination, and restricts access to services” (Wang et al 3686). In Angela’s case, she was unable to properly understand all the protocols she needed to enact in her business, and therefore put herself, her employees, and her clients at risk by not being able to adopt them.
Lovely Nails
While Lovely Nails does follow CDC guidelines now that salons are allowed to be open, Tim did run his business from his backyard during the mandatory shutdowns. He attended to clients at his home where he had 2-3 employees working with him. Tim did suffer a bit financially because he was not able to make as much money working from his backyard since he had less than half of his usual business but did receive stimulus checks to relieve some of his financial stress. Tim believes that he lost some clients because of President Trump’s false accusations toward Asians for starting the spread of the virus, as he had many clients not respond to the invitation to his backyard nail salon. Trump’s explicit racialization of the virus caused an uproar in racialized terms like the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” that were being used in anti-Asian acts of discrimination (Siu and Chun 428).
In Tim’s backyard everyone was required to wear masks and social distancing was enforced. There were shields in between clients and employees, but there was not sufficient sanitization of chairs, tables, and foot buckets. Tim also failed to keep track of the clients who came to his house, their temperatures, or if they were exposed to COVID-19. Like The Vineyards Nail Spa and Ciel Nail Spa, Tim switched to only using gel nail polish, but did not sanitize the swatch sticks in between clients. Once he was able to return to business in his salon, the same safety protocols were practiced, but I did notice a slight increase in sanitization of chairs, tables, and foot buckets since Tim was able to have more employees working at the salon than he did in his backyard.
Conclusions:
In the near year and a half since the pandemic began, the world has adapted to a new normal in which we wear masks in public, distance ourselves from others, work from home, and substitute in-person interactions with virtual ones. In response to these global changes, businesses have had to alter their standard business practices to include sanitizing all surfaces, wearing masks and/or gloves while working, and social distancing. Some industries, like nail salons, were required to close their doors during periods when the virus had spread an insurmountably, which made it difficult to keep their business running. This study has demonstrated three strategies used by nail salon owners to keep their businesses open: following all guidelines, ignoring most guidelines and working covertly, and creating a makeshift salon in their backyard.
Potential Impact, Contributions, and Questions for Further Study:
The results from this study show how the guidelines put in place are not rock solid, as many business owners have found ways to secretly see their clients to continue earning a living and keeping their business open. However, this study is not enough to make any decisive conclusions because only three nail salons in the same area were studied. To further this study, a wider sample should be studied to see how nail salons coped in different states, countries, and continents due to the variance in COVID-19 protocols around the world. Despite the narrow scope of information collected in this study, I feel that I was able to provide some insight into how one industry was able to survive during this pandemic.
Works Cited
“COVID-19 Employer Information for Nail Salons.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 29 Oct. 2020, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/nail-salon-employers.html.
Sharma, Preeti. “Irresponsible State Care and the Virality of Nail Salons: Asian American Women’s Service Work, Vulnerability, and Mutuality.” Journal of Asian American Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 2020, pp.491-509.
Siu, Lok and Claire Chun. “Yellow Peril and Techno-Orientalism in the Time of Covid-19: Racialized Contagion, Scientific Espionage, and Techno-Economic Warfare.” Journal of Asian American Studies, vol. 23, no. 30, 2020, pp. 421-440.
Wang, Daniel, Gilbert C. Gee, Ehete Bahiru, Eric H. Yang, and Jeffery J. Hsu. “Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in COVID-19: Emerging Disparities amid Discrimination.” Journal of General Internal Medicine, vol. 35, no. 12, 2020, pp. 3685-3688.
