Philly Pre-School Teacher Calls Out Beauty Salon That ‘Made Me Feel Ugly’ (FB Post Goes Viral!)

*Social media gets a lot of bad rap. We did this. What with the Live broadcast of suicides, cyber-bullying, and being privy to the mood swings of everyday folk and their bouts with TMI, many of us only jump on long enough to post content that directly applies to our business. But one thing that makes the format valuable; something you can’t deny, is that social media is the equivalent of beast mode when it comes to putting stuff on blast. Whether that  “stuff” brings to light what rogue law enforcement officers are made of, or calls out businesses with unsavory practices and poor professional acumen. There is no more effective way to promote them than on social media.

Case in point…

…a Philadelphia beauty salon called L Amour Nails. The salon hee’d and hawed when Johnetta Hopkins, an attractive African American preschool teacher, walked in to get a mani-pedi.  She did the norm, wrote down her name and went to pick a color. But somewhere along the way, she noticed that she no one was welcoming her. You know, the whole “someone will be with you in a minute.” Heck, no one had even acknowledged her presence with a hello.

Hopkins, 28, said although she felt a bit embarrassed to do so, she shared the entire experience in detail on her Facebook page; where it apparently resonated with many; judging from the number of shares (more than 3,000), likes (more than 400), and comments (313 as of this writing) she has received

She told Yahoo Beauty, ?I went in to make myself look beautiful, but they made me feel ugly.? 

A partial read from her FB post says:

I went into this nail salon to get my nails done. I walked in said hello wrote my name down and sat down. After about 5 minutes I got up and decided to pick out my nail color. I asked one of the nail techs was this the only color station she said yes. I stood there for about 5 minutes trying to find a color. Then one of the techs walks up to me and says, it’s gonna be a hour wait because she’s going on lunch. I asked her why couldn’t another tech do my nails. She told me because they’re all going on lunch. I asked her so you close your business down for a hour everyday so that you all can take lunch she said yes. While we where talking two women walked in. I walked to pick up my purse from the seat I was previously setting into and said to the two women who walked in there closing for a hour to take lunch. Then another tech pulled me to the side and said our chairs can only hold a certain amount of weight and she didn’t want anything to happen to her chair. 

See more here, but please come back to this page to read how my own nail shop experience was turned upside when the techs went ape-sh*t and kicked me to the curb after a beautiful supermodel walked in. 

I was at a salon in the Valley, a Los Angeles suburb, over the Hill from Hollywood, in the city of Glendale. The shop is huge and its on Brand Avenue – almost directly across from The Americana. The woman had already started doing my nails, and had been working on them for a while, so I couldn’t just walk out when she GOT UP AND WALKED AWAY FROM ME BECAUSE TYRA BANKS HAD JUST WALKED IN!

The abrupt dismissal even made Tyra look at me, rather embarrassed, by the poor behavior. The entire shop, filled with Asian women, surrounded her and I was left sitting there until they got their fill of the pretty, light-skinned Black woman with the green eyes.

I wasn’t mad at Tyra. She had done nothing wrong. It was the behavior of these idiotic little women that made me want to slap the piss out of ’em.

But just like the woman in this article, I kept my cool.

These experiences happen often to Black women in nail salons. I hope that should you ever encounter any of these “isms” you won’t hesitate to put them on blast immediately. Now we DO have the power!

Leave a Reply