Thursday, February 12, 2009
Sitting on her couch in Lawrence, 23-year-old Cathy Dinh laughs at comedian Anjelah Johnson’s stand-up bit called “nail salon” on YouTube.
“Hon-nee, why you don’t lie-ke? Pedicure it make look na-i. It so sexy. It better for you,” says Johnson, imitating a nail technician with a thick “Asian” accent.
Color me beautiful: Cathy Dinh, nail technician, is aware of customers sometimes stereotyping her profession.
The bit highlights the stereotype of nail salon customers not understanding the short and grammatically incorrect speech of nail technicians with an accent.
“At first I was so offended by it,” Dinh says when it ends, “but then I was like, ‘It’s so true.’”
Dinh is a nail technician in Lawrence, but she doesn’t fit the stereotype. Although she has the dark almond eyes that reflect her heritage and is fluent in Vietnamese, she is also fluent in English. She is from Dodge City and goes to college in Lenexa.
She currently works at Salon Di Marco, but her experience with the stereotype comes from her years working at Nail Citi. Most Nail Citi employees speak Vietnamese, so that is how they naturally talk to one another. Dinh understands the paranoia customers can have that the workers are talking about them. In reality, she says the co-workers just tease each other.
Former coworker and friend of Dinh, Matt Truong, says the boss of Nail Citi discourages workers from talking in Vietnamese. Truong says that the ideal customers are those who feel comfortable and act like themselves. That, Truong says, is what being at a nail salon is all about.
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