Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105/Section059/Bonnie Baste

Biography

Early Life

Bonnie Baste (1898-1979) was a white woman born and raised in Louisburg, NC. She grew up in an upper-middle class household with two sisters. Her father was a common carpenter and also did some farming on the side. Bonnie grew up cutting hair for her neighbors. At an early age of 12 years old, mothers across the neighborhood would bring their daughters to Bonnie to have their hair fixed. Despite makeup and hairdressing having an intense negative perception from the local church (that correlated faux beauty with poor moral character), Bonnie continued to sharpen her skills. This paved her into the successful beautician and entrepreneur she became in her future.

Family and Career

Bonnie first got married at 19 years old during World War I to a private in the military. However, she discovered her spouse had two wives back home and promptly left him due to his infidelity. Bonnie got married again to a man named Pedro in Spain. They had a son, Pedro Jr, together. Pedro Sr. ultimately sent Bonnie and Pedro Jr. back to America on a boat while he remained in Spain. Bonnie took Pedro Jr. and moved back to NC to work as a hairdresser. After a couple years, she sold her old shop on Fayetteville Street. Pedro Jr. was 15 years old so she sent him to school using the money she earned from selling her shop. She wanted her son to be more educated than she was. Bonnie’s fourth and final marriage was to Charlie, but after 3 months, he divorced her. After her final divorce, she brought Pedro Jr. back from school and started living with him again in an apartment back in her hometown, Louisburg. She started up a new hairdressing shop, “The Beauty Box”. Due to the increased cost of operating a beauty shop, Pedro had to leave school permanently to help Bonnie with her business. To afford both running a business and providing for Pedro Jr as a single mother, Bonnie had to significantly downsize their living conditions. Ultimately, Bonnie was able to maintain and operate her own beauty store in her hometown for the remainder of her life. Her son, Pedro, died in 1948, and Baste died in 1979.

Social Context (World War I - The Great Depression)

Women in the Workforce

Before World War I, the work-force was predominantly male. A woman's place was at home to take care of the family, cook, and clean. As a result of men being drafted to fight in the war, many spots in the labor union were left vacant. In light of the Rosie the Riveter movement, women (mainly white women) were encouraged to fill in these vacant spots and keep the economy running while the men were away at war. During this era of separate spheres, women in the work-force was perceived as a temporary, last-resort solution until the war ended. However, a permanent widespread shift in gender-roles occurred. Women began to realise that they had the capability to do whatever a man could; so, even after the men came back from the war, some women persisted in the labor force. The Great Depression further propelled this progressive shift as many men, commonly the primary breadwinners for households, were losing their jobs due to the recession and women were again pushed into the labor force to earn money to provide for the family. Additionally, “a 22 percent decline in marriage rates between 1929 and 1939 also meant more single women had to support themselves.” Therefore, a greater number of women became less dependent on men and were permanently incorporated into the workforce. With this newly grown respect and place in the economy, women began starting their own businesses such as beauty salons, bakeries, and stores.

The Beauty Industry

Makeup was surrounded by a negative stigma in the late 1800's and early 1900's. "Make-up and related beauty work have been subject to extensive feminist critique in terms of the double standard of beauty, the disciplinary requirements of normative femininity, and the spread of commercialised values”. Because of the grand emphasis put on a woman’s natural beauty during these times, women were too afraid to express themselves using makeup as they feared they would be judged by society for indulging in unnatural means of beauty. Additionally, hairdressing used to be something only men used to participate in before World War I. However, because of the increased independence that women got as all the men were off fighting in the war and they started earning their own money, hairdressing transitioned into a female-dominant career and leisure activity. “By pulling men out of the salons, it set in motion a process that feminized what had always been a predominantly male trade.” During the Roaring 20s, the market for beauty supplies expanded enormously as women began to further partake in the world of fashion. Trips to beauty salons and the use of make-up by women began achieving normative status and were no longer perceived under negative light, allowing women to openly become make-up artists and hairdressers as a successful and respectable profession.

Citations

Boyd , Robert L. 2017. “Race, Self Employment, and Labour Absorption: Black and White Woman in Domestic Service in the Urban South during the Great Depression.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 10: 67–78. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00825.x?casa_token=pZvOpcodQF8AAAAA%3AnZqCpaNx5tepGaI-r2Z6fPUNHZlbnP32uyVkTWMv0QpbY0-4YGK-sBCqKEHWwwQQaI7Jc2MrGmps2_E.

Goldin, Claudia . n.d. “The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family.” Richard T. Ely Lecture . Accessed October 6, 2020. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/000282806777212350.

Folder 377: Fain, Harry (interviewer): Bonnie, the Hairdresser, in the Federal Writers' Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Person, Steve Zdatny. “Hairdressers.” LoveToKnow. LoveToKnow Corp. Accessed October 6, 2020. https://fashion-history.lovetoknow.com/fashion-clothing-industry/hairdressers.

Rotondi, Jessica Pearce. “Underpaid, But Employed: How the Great Depression Affected Working Women.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, March 11, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/working-women-great-depression.

Twigg, Julia, and Shinobu Majima . 2014. “Consumption and the Constitution of Age: Expenditure Patterns on Clothing, Hair and Cosmetics among Post-War ‘baby Boomers.” Elsevier 30 (March): 23–32. www.elsevier.com/locate/jaging.