“The Price of Nice Nails” was written in 2015 by Sarah Maslin Nir, a staff reporter of The New York Times. Nir’s report exposes the unfair treatment of nail salon worker, who are manipulated by their bosses and have their wages withheld. Nir, who was born and raised in Manhattan, focused her investigation on salons within New York. The New York Times, a highly regarded and trustworthy news outlet, gives Nir immediate credibility.
The most probable motivation of Nir’s work on New York nail salons is to inform readers of the manipulative practices that occur behind the scenes. Informing people of what their purchases impact helps consumers make better decisions.
Nir most often cites her interviews with struggling nail salon workers, many without last names. She describes her investigation to have extensively researched and discovered a negative and prevailing practice in the nail industry:
“The New York Times interviewed more than 150 nail salon workers and owners, in four languages, and found that a vast majority of workers are paid below minimum wage; sometimes they are not even paid,”.
The Price of Nice Nails, Sarah Nir
Nir notably leaves out testimonies from the villains of this story — the nail salon owners. Each time a worker’s story is depicted, the owner in question is described as having “declined to comment”. As a reader, we are unable to hear their arguments against the allegations. However, Nir does include the idea that these nail salon owners believe they are doing their best for their workers:
“In interviews, many owners expressed a vision of themselves as heroic, shouldering the burden of training workers and the risk of employing people who are not legally permitted to work in the United States.”
The Price of Nice Nails, Nir
However, Nir juxtaposes this with an anecdote that quickly dismisses the sympathy towards owners, writing how salon owners owned a variety of luxuries. Nir paints owners as greedy, deceiving, and often racist individuals who restrict their worker’s wages as a method of their own self-gain. Although this could be true, Nir does not give the owners the opportunity to defend themselves. After this article was published, a number of protests were held by nail salon owners and workers against the New York Times. Written in a Politico article:
“‘The New York Times articles told only one side of the nail salon story,’ the flyer states. ‘Please listen to ‘our side’ of the story and help keep us in business,’”.
PUBLIC EDITOR: ‘NEW YORK TIMES’S NAIL SALON EXPOSÉ ‘WENT TOO FAR’, Michele Gorman
It is hard to detect at first read, but there are extensive overgeneralizations within the article. The comment section is quick to agree with Nir, comparing the nail salon owners to greedy corporate executives. And although this may be the case for some, it likely is not the case for all. A New York Times columnist writes in response:
“In places, the two-part investigation went too far in generalizing about an entire industry. Its findings, and the language used to express them, should have been dialed back—in some instances substantially”.
New Questions on Nail Salon Investigation, and a Times Response, Margaret Sullivan
Easily obtained pieces of evidence are not included in the story, weakening Nir’s report. Nir discusses Chinese newspapers in New York (Sing Tao Daily and World Journal) which advertised a starting wage at a nail salon at $10 a day as evidence for their poor wages. However, she does not include any photos these ads in her article. However, a counter-article by Richard Bernstein –a former New York Times columnist– includes photos of the advertisements which starkly contrasts Nir’s claims of $10 a day, which depict base pay as being as much as $120 a day.
Source: Richard Bernstein
Additionally, Nir refers to lawsuits filed against nail salon owners, one which was settled at over $400,000. However, it should be noted that the source hyperlinked simply redirected me to another article written by Nir.
Richard Bernstein’s article starkly refutes Nir’s article, describing his own perspective of the nail salon industry through the experiences of his wife and sister-in-law, both Chinese immigrants.
“But far more troubling, as we discovered when we began to look into the story’s claims and check its sources, was the flimsy and sometimes wholly inaccurate information on which those sweeping conclusions were based,”.
What the Times Got Wrong about Nail Salons, Richard Bernstein
Nir’s claims and accounts included in the investigation have essentially no proof to them. She often describes accounts as being “confirmed by several workers”. But there is no reference back to who or to which shop she is referring to.
Nir’s piece on the unethical practices of the nail salon industry within New York is riddled with overgeneralizations and lack of evidence. Although her conclusions may be true in specific cases, her assertions imply mass manipulation and wage withholding that is likely overstated by Nir. Despite it being an emotional and seemingly logical article, there are a number of times where Nir’s argument is unsupported and weak, misleading many into an inaccurate depiction of the nail salon industry.
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