Turning Pink (cont.)

How a year with Mary Kay turned a shy writer into a gutsy moneymaker. It wasn't the lipstick.

“Oh.” She says. Even though we’re role-playing, she sounds worried, like a person would in real life if a crazy like me approached her on the street.

“You have such nice skin!” It comes out in an awkward burst.

“Thank you,” she says, still fearful.

“Have you ever modeled for a Mary Kay class?”

“Noooo,” she answers, with exaggerated meekness.

“Well, I’m a Mary Kay beauty consultant, and every week we invite guests to come and model for us. There’s food and drinks and—would you like to join us sometime?”

She agrees, of course, and the scene ends. Marti compliments the interaction, detailing the ways I did it correctly: I showed vulnerability by talking about my oversized feet. I made Emily feel good about herself (or scared enough of me that she at least played along). And I let her know how she could benefit with the promise of free food.

I test my skills a few days later. I meet up with a friend at Brendan’s Irish Pub at the Orleans hotel-casino to hear a local band, Killian’s Angels. To the tune of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”— played by a tuba-wielding Irish band, no less—I decide that tonight I will warm chatter. While drinking my second pint of Bass ale I proclaim, “I’m going to get our waitress,” a stunning brunette whose uniform is a kind of turquoise thong. My (non-Mary Kay) friends nod encouragingly, while exchanging semi-pained looks of “Whoa, boy. What’s she gonna do now?”

The waitress has been friendly all night. We’ve all chatted. It won’t seem that random, I tell myself. I swill some more beer while rummaging in my purse for a sample of microdermabrasion.

She comes over to our table. My heart is racing in anticipation. And while I’m practicing my lines inside my head, she walks away.

Through “Danny Boy” and U2’s “With or Without You,” she doesn’t come back.

And then, finally, she returns, asking if we need anything. I signal her over.

“Have you ever tried Mary Kay?!” I shout, cutting to the chase.

“What?!” she can’t hear me over the tuba in the background.

Compliment, compliment, I remind myself in mid-chatter.

“You have beautiful skin!” I shout into her ear. “I’d like to give you a Mary Kay sample!” I hand her the microdermabrasion. She looks at it kind of strangely, and then thanks me.

“I’d love to bring you to a meeting so you can model!” I shout. “You’ll get a free makeover and then you can show everyone how beautiful you look!”

I can’t believe it, even as the words are coming out of me. What am I, hitting on this woman? To make a few dollars by selling her a lipstick?

She thanks me. I think something about “beautiful skin” might have come out of my mouth again before she left, but honestly, between the anxiety and the beer, it’s all a blur.

“I’m. Awful.” I bow my head. My friends are looking at me now, bemused.

“I could never do that,” Beth says.

“Oh, have a few more drinks,” I say.

The waitress never calls.

THE MARY KAY ladies have a formula for dealing with rejection. “What if you go up to nine women and they say no, but the tenth says yes, and she hosts a party and you make $300,” says the chipper Elizabeth, co-leading another weekly Success Meeting at Studio Pink. “That means for each ‘no’ you should thank that person and mean it, because that’s $30, and it’s getting you that much closer to your next ‘yes.’”

Turns out my next “yes” is right around the corner. I get an e-mail on my Mary- Kay-themed MySpace page—Mary Kayt, that is. A friend of a friend is having a make-up emergency.

“So how do I get a hold of some Mary Kay cosmetics?” Stephanie e-mails. “I was going to try to order online but would much rather contribute on a local basis.”

I invite Stephanie—and any friends she wants to bring over—to my apartment for a free facial. I’m suddenly too proud to use the step-by-step flip chart that serves as the Mary Kay facial instruction manual. Why would they want to listen to me read something for 90 minutes, when I could be ad-libbing? I think I’ve got a good enough grasp of the Mary Kay material to wing it. Or do I?

Stephanie begins by asking me about “free radicals.”

“Hippies?” I respond, only half joking. When she mentions something about “emollients” I go with the old smile-andnod routine. When they ask the difference between firming eye cream and age-fighting eye cream, I can muster neither smile nor nod. I feel like I’m losing them. This is a lot more difficult than I thought. Mary Kay said that knowledge is 20 percent of a sale and enthusiasm is 80 percent. I realize next time I’d better brush up on that 20 percent.

They nonetheless leave with $200 worth of makeup and moisturizer. Two hundred dollars! Half of that is mine for about an hour’s work. Who wouldn’t want to do this?

I immediately e-mail Marti about my success. “Wow!” she responds. “You are a real Mary Kay HOTTIE!”

I keep on selling, and at my peak tabulate about $950 in a month, half of which is mine to keep. Can you say sizzle? I feel ready for more than Studio Pink. The ultimate Mary Kay dangling carrot (and carat) is just around the corner. The big event happens once a year in Dallas. It’s called Seminar.

THE STAGE at the Dallas Convention Center is topped with two curved stairways and a giant throne. Men in tuxedoes stand on every fourth or fifth step, offering their hands to support the glamorous ladies who are descending. The ladies, with sparkly eyes and shiny lips, look out to the crowd of nearly 8,000 and smile. Some blow kisses. Almost all of them do that characteristic wave, to the rhythm of elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist. It’s a salutation that we’ve practiced the entire year, while gathering at Studio Pink and other places like it. “Now, visualize you’re walking across a stage,” Marti told us. “Lift the arm that’s to the back of the stage, so you don’t block your beautiful face. Do you know why we wave in the elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist fashion, ladies? That’s right, because we don’t want our arm fat to wave with us.”

These waving women have sold enough mascaras—and more important, encouraged enough other women to also sell mascaras—that they’re being recognized for their impressive achievements by the corporate office: These are the new Mary Kay Sales Directors! We go wild in the stands. We’re a supportive bunch.

Seminar, which is always referred to only as “Seminar,” is the Mecca of Mary Kay Inc. More than 35,000 of us travel to Texas from July to August to pay homage. That’s a greater number than the Dallas Convention Center can hold at once, so five seminars actually occur during those two and a half weeks, and are classified as Diamond, Ruby, Emerald, Pearl, and Sapphire.

In the audience, our gowns sparkle with satin and sequins. I give up trying to keep track of all the tiaras after I count 88. We watch as our sister consultants climb the ladder of success, reaching from independent beauty consultant to independent sales director to independent national sales director. The women who’ve reached that level are superstarsplus, and their names are passed around with reverence: Gayle Gaston, Kimberly Starr, Joy Epps Breen. They each take the stage with the assurance of Marilyn Monroe. These are women who have made $45,000, $57,000, $62,000—in a single month.

Yet it’s those success stories that illustrate how Mary Kay really did the thing she did. She was the every-woman, and so was each person she got to join the company. They were mothers, wives, struggling women looking to earn a few dollars. And now, thanks to their ability to recruit, they’re up on a stage, being draped in diamonds and cooed upon.

But it’s not the money, diamonds and elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist opportunities that grab me. It’s the idea of a free car. The pink Cadillac gleams like a freshly chewed piece of bubble gum. One spins on a pedestal in a makeshift fountain outside of the convention center. More line the hallways, beckoning to the independent beauty consultants, “Come. Sit. Try me.”

They’re also on display in one of the large exhibit halls, and here it’s not just Cadillacs. Different cars are available to different tiers of Mary Kay ladies. I sit in the red Pontiac Vibe and detect a twitter in my heart. I will have this, I vow.

I’m not that far from getting it. I’ve managed to convince four women to join Mary Kay, so far. (And only one was a family member. Thanks, Aunt Midge!) To begin the qualification process for the Vibe, I need to recruit one more person, and the six of us must purchase $4,000 worth of products from the company in a single month. Over a four-month period I must recruit seven more people, and we must purchase $18,000 in products from the company. Easy, right? Only, the most my team has spent in a month is about $1,800. But if I can just speak with five people a week about Mary Kay I know I can get there. I know I can.

BACK IN LAS VEGAS after Seminar, the pink cloud looms. I start befriending drag queens on MySpace, offering them free facials. Having already tried to recruit my friends, I now leave messages on their mothers’ voicemail. I spend a day at Dressbarn handing out carnations and free samples. I even deliver a basket to a nursing home, filled with bottles of lotion and my business cards, which promise a free pampering session. I get no bites. Nothing.

Though I’d left Dallas drunk on the success of others, reality sets in. I’ve already exhausted the easy options for party hosts and customers. I’ve also proved to myself time and again that despite my best efforts, “warm chatter” with strangers isn’t my greatest talent. One year into my beauty career, I stop trying to solicit parties. I also quit sending solicitous e-mails with the subject line “MKdar!” and the text: “I sense you have moisturization needs.” Marti, my unit leader, also eventually retired.

I joined Mary Kay because I wanted to understand the makeup world and the women who love it. What I found was a challenging job at which I genuinely wanted to succeed, and a wonderful group of women supportive of me doing so. Ultimately, I left because I had my writing career to fall back on, which, for me, is far more easy (and less wrinkleinducing) than makeup sales.

But I still look in the mirror and see the mark that Mary Kay has left on me. With my freshly moisturized skin and lightly applied foundation, I have an air of naturalness, but it’s more neat around the edges than it was a year ago. Even strangers notice the change. Every couple of weeks I hear, “You have such nice skin!” And no, it’s not from a Mary Kay lady who’s practicing her warm chatter.

And the changes aren’t all physical. I can better shrug off rejection, now, telling myself that a “yes” is right around the corner. While my outer shell has toughened, I like to think that internally I’ve softened, become a touch more feminine and a tad more accepting and openminded. Mostly, I try not to take myself so seriously. After a certain age, shyness just feels weak and self-absorbed. “If you think you can, you can,” said Mary Kay. “And if you think you can’t, you’re right.” I think she’s right.

Just a few weeks ago, I took my new puppy to obedience school, where we had to introduce ourselves and our dogs. One year previous this would have put me on the brink. But now? Even in this room full of strangers I could have waved pom-poms to the red-hot dance with my pup at my feet. When I think about blending these days, the first thing that comes to mind is my foundation. I know it sounds small, but I’ve come a long way.

Kate Silver, who among other journalistic tasks has stalked celebrities for People, moisturizes regularly in Las Vegas.

PAGE 1 2 3 4 5