Speaker 1: Hey, Dream listeners. If you like this podcast, you're going
Speaker 1: to love the book. Yeah. I wrote a book. It's
Speaker 1: called Selling the Dream, and it's coming out March twelfth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, on Atria. It's about all of your
Speaker 1: favorite characters from MLMs and some that you've never even
Speaker 1: heard of. I hope check it out. Previously on the Dream,
Speaker 1: I think there are some FBI men in the room.
Speaker 1: I went, oh, far out? Is it really? Thinking correctly
Speaker 1: in America is supposed to lead to prosperity. I knew
Speaker 1: it was a It was trappings for a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker 1: How in the hell did I not see this? Eventually
Speaker 1: there will be a peasant in Bangladesh who can't come
Speaker 1: up with the money, and the game will die. I
Speaker 1: knew that multi level marketing has codified into an actual business.
Speaker 1: The deceptions, the delusions, the manipulations that the Airplane Game introduced.
Speaker 1: All right, pulling into a wasso just past the bone
Speaker 1: air the Bone air Motel. Oh boy, this is where
Speaker 1: you gotta slow down, start going forty because it's a
Speaker 1: speed trap. Pulling into town. Open your maps app, look
Speaker 1: up Flint, Michigan. Now zoom out. Two ticks and look
Speaker 1: directly to the left of Flint, you'll see a bunch
Speaker 1: of faint boxes township lines to the west between Flint
Speaker 1: and the next noticeable town over Owasso. This stretch of
Speaker 1: no man's land is where I'm from. Thought I saw
Speaker 1: a yard sale, but it was just junk in the yard,
Speaker 1: all right. And now we're pulling up to what is
Speaker 1: this called Bentley Grill? Didn't used to be called that.
Speaker 1: My uncle used to work there, Salem Lutheran School, Dollar General,
Speaker 1: the Library, Carl Minke's barbershop. You may have actually seen
Speaker 1: this part of the country in b roll footage from
Speaker 1: Michael Moore films. You know, tiny rural homes on dirt roads,
Speaker 1: with rusted out cars in the front yard and chicken
Speaker 1: coops and decrepit barns leaning over out back. Michael Moore
Speaker 1: is fine, I guess, but he's from here, so I've
Speaker 1: always been kind of suspicious of his ogling, like, ooh,
Speaker 1: look at all the poor people in their natural habitat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're poor, you know that, Michael. But we're a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff too. Technically, none of my extended family's
Speaker 1: actual homes appeared in those movies, but they might as
Speaker 1: well have. As far as I'm concerned, those shots are
Speaker 1: of us. My family's lived around here for a long time.
Speaker 1: My dad's mom, Ruth, comes from an old English family.
Speaker 1: It's been around these parts for a few centuries. My
Speaker 1: dad's dad, his family mostly came over from Prussia in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. That's what the ship manifests say, Prussia.
Speaker 1: As a preteen, I'd dig through the piles of junk
Speaker 1: in the garage on our family farm, and I'd pore
Speaker 1: over my great great grandfather's elementary school textbooks written in German.
Speaker 1: They were right next to some giant, dusty glass jugs
Speaker 1: of dark brown homemade dandelion wine. I never tried it.
Speaker 1: My parents got married here too, right out of high school,
Speaker 1: and then left brann Arbor, but came back to a
Speaker 1: waso When my dad finished school. He became a dentist,
Speaker 1: and when I was ten, we moved out to the
Speaker 1: family farm. There's Kerwood Castle everybody, James Oliver Kerwood's writing space.
Speaker 1: It's got a couple turrets. Awasso is famous among Awasson's
Speaker 1: for being the home of James Oliver Kerwood, author of
Speaker 1: The Bear, a nineteen sixteen book originally titled The Grizzly King,
Speaker 1: which was adapted into a mostly silent French film in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. There's an annual festival in his honor,
Speaker 1: the Kurwood Festival, which is a carnival plopped on Main Street,
Speaker 1: great beer tent, and three on three basketball tournament. We're
Speaker 1: also the birthplace of Thomas E. Dewey of Dewey Defeats
Speaker 1: Truman infamy. He didn't beat Truman, but almost. We're the
Speaker 1: home of the Real Polar Express, whatever that means. And
Speaker 1: Paul Spaniola, the world's only six time world pipe smoking champion,
Speaker 1: was born in a Wassa, Michigan, and growing up out
Speaker 1: here felt kind of like being in a time warp,
Speaker 1: partly because no one in my family throws anything away.
Speaker 1: So yes, there are those old cars and rusty road
Speaker 1: to tillers lying around the front yard, just like you
Speaker 1: see in a Michael Moore movie, along with one hundred
Speaker 1: year old tools and books and toys and clothing and
Speaker 1: furniture beds that I know more than a few of
Speaker 1: my grandparents died in. This was a town slow and
Speaker 1: sleepy enough that the half hour trip to the mall
Speaker 1: in Flint felt like a big production. In the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: we still had a canning cellar and a milkman in
Speaker 1: the nineties. The nineteen nineties, no one bothered to lay
Speaker 1: cable lines. For the few of us who lived out here,
Speaker 1: we burned our trash in a barrel because there was
Speaker 1: no garbage service, even though you could see the county
Speaker 1: landfill from our front yard. In place of cell phones,
Speaker 1: we had a pair of binoculars on the windowsill. We
Speaker 1: could watch what was happening next door at my grandma's house,
Speaker 1: or across the field a mile away at some strangers. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm not here to reminisce. I'm here because my homeland
Speaker 1: has another weird quality, one that I'm constantly reminded of
Speaker 1: through Facebook and at family get togethers. This place is
Speaker 1: a hotbed for multi level marketing. I'm back here to
Speaker 1: find out why. And more than that, I'm back because
Speaker 1: I want to walk into my friends and love one's
Speaker 1: homes and ask them the question that pops into my
Speaker 1: head every single time they try to pitch me some
Speaker 1: new miracle essential oil or a makeup kit or you know,
Speaker 1: tell me about the key to financial freedom. I'm here
Speaker 1: to ask them what the fuck, and I'm terrified. I'm
Speaker 1: Jane Marie and this is the dream episode two Women's Work.
Speaker 1: I told you that over the course of this season,
Speaker 1: we'd be looking at MLMs from the bottom of the
Speaker 1: pyramid shaped business model thing, all the way up to
Speaker 1: the top, where a few people sit counting bags of
Speaker 1: money they're making off of people below them. It works
Speaker 1: for the top because the majority of their workforce is
Speaker 1: at the bottom, including members of my family. We've been
Speaker 1: trying to sell this stuff to each other and to
Speaker 1: everyone around us for decades. Take my aunt Amy. Over
Speaker 1: the years, Amy's sold Mary Kay Malaluka, Protandem, Herbal Life, Ladhara,
Speaker 1: Young Living Oils. I think that's it. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it is actually and working on this project, I've realized
Speaker 1: most of my friends here have had experience with MLMs.
Speaker 1: One reason why is pretty obvious. Awaso is poor. According
Speaker 1: to the latest census, twenty five percent of people here
Speaker 1: lived below the poverty line. There was once a thriving
Speaker 1: economy here a while ago, like early last century, Oaso
Speaker 1: and Corona were bedroom communities for the auto industry in Flint.
Speaker 1: In the seventies, when I was born. About half the
Speaker 1: people around here worked for the car industry. Even my grandparents,
Speaker 1: along with their soybean and winter wheat farm, had a
Speaker 1: trucking company that shipped parts for GM. But then you
Speaker 1: know what happened. The bottom fell out in the eighties.
Speaker 1: As plants closed, people would scramble. I remember the summer
Speaker 1: of fifth grade a big GM plant shut down, and
Speaker 1: everyone was trying to get jobs at Saturn in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: When school started back up in the fall, it was
Speaker 1: like the rapture. It happened. Just oof gone today is
Speaker 1: half the size it was then, and almost half of
Speaker 1: those who remain live in poverty. If you live here,
Speaker 1: you live with risk of the bottom falling out, of
Speaker 1: racking up debt to keep your house or your family together.
Speaker 1: Sonocal gas stations still going strong, great. And it's not
Speaker 1: just that a wahso is poor. It's that being a
Speaker 1: girl here there's no clear path to a career or
Speaker 1: an escape. Guys they at least grow up believing that
Speaker 1: their uncle or their dad can get them a job
Speaker 1: on the line or on the farm, or at the
Speaker 1: tool and die shop that supplies stuff to the guys
Speaker 1: on the line or on the farm. But being a
Speaker 1: girl here, the advice was Number one, don't get pregnant.
Speaker 1: Not sure what you're going to do after you don't
Speaker 1: get pregnant, but whatever it is, it won't be an
Speaker 1: option if you're pregnant. Number two, Okay, so you're pregnant,
Speaker 1: definitely get married to anyone and make sure the grandmas
Speaker 1: are cool with watching the kids for free while you
Speaker 1: work on Number three, securing some sort of job or
Speaker 1: training that you can fall back on when you inevitably
Speaker 1: become a single mom, which is what happens if you
Speaker 1: get pregnant. I felt weird saying this, so I called
Speaker 1: around to other girlfriends of mine who also left a Wasso,
Speaker 1: and they were like, yeah, that's what they told us.
Speaker 1: While the population of most communities around the country has
Speaker 1: naturally grown by five percent over the last ten years,
Speaker 1: awassos has lost five percent. A lot of us leave.
Speaker 1: So that's really what's on my mind when I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in my apartment in California flipping through Instagram seeing a
Speaker 1: post from an a Waston friend begging all of us,
Speaker 1: her friends, her followers to help her sell like ten
Speaker 1: more pairs of banana leggings in an hour so she
Speaker 1: can earn some bonus. It makes me feel an embarrassing
Speaker 1: mix of pity and shame. But driving around here, I
Speaker 1: get it. Of course she's hustling. I would be doing
Speaker 1: it too. Around here, you've got to try something. And
Speaker 1: King's Corner Market used to be called quick Check. They'd
Speaker 1: let me buy for my parents there when I was
Speaker 1: like ten. And now I see Amy's house. It's yellow, So,
Speaker 1: like I say, Amy is who I want to talk
Speaker 1: to first, Maya. Amy is my dad's youngest sister and
Speaker 1: she grew up next door to us on the farm
Speaker 1: with my grandparents. Amy has a lot of MLM experience, yes,
Speaker 1: but she's also been a successful hairdresser, an MMA fighter,
Speaker 1: a wife thrice over, and she's currently the high school
Speaker 1: swim coach and drama club director. They're making me nervous, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they make everybody nervous. They get so close to the
Speaker 1: board that the whole audience goes and then I laugh.
Speaker 1: She was just six when I was born. The generations
Speaker 1: in my family are very very short, babies, having babies
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Amy and I were super close growing up.
Speaker 1: I idolized her. She was my very favorite playmate and
Speaker 1: she has memories of going to direct sales parties at
Speaker 1: our aunts and cousins farmhouses back in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: Mostly Avon, but there were others thrown in. I remember
Speaker 1: for the jewelry parties. I remember it's still smelling like
Speaker 1: an Avon type of situation where they all were wearing
Speaker 1: Avon and then the heavy eyeshadow and like the heavy
Speaker 1: liner and that sort of thing, and then the hairspray.
Speaker 1: You could always smell the hair spray because it was
Speaker 1: always some form of plate, the AquaNet or something, some
Speaker 1: form of an inexpensive hairspray and tons of it. Sarah
Speaker 1: Coventry was another big direct sales company with our extended family.
Speaker 1: Sarah Coventry was a jewelry brand, one of those party
Speaker 1: based ones where a bunch of women get together in
Speaker 1: a house and look at catalogs, kind of like a
Speaker 1: Tupperware party. They would have just a few pieces of
Speaker 1: jewelry that were still, you know, in their boxes, and
Speaker 1: they would pass them around. Basically, I think probably most
Speaker 1: of them didn't have enough money to really invest in
Speaker 1: like the display part of it. And there was always
Speaker 1: some food, usually a lot of jello. I remember the
Speaker 1: jello a lot, and then like those little roll up
Speaker 1: or derbs with the cream cheese and the meat and
Speaker 1: the What I remember too is that like our house
Speaker 1: was conservative as far as decorating was concerned, and these
Speaker 1: other ladies lived in houses that were gilded, and they
Speaker 1: had have a lot of mirrors, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the sculpted shag carpet in very deep and odd colors.
Speaker 1: I remember faux flowers kind of around the room. A
Speaker 1: lot of faux ivy things like that, Yes, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of the faux flowers. A lot of
Speaker 1: black velvet paintings, yes, black velvet paintings of horses. No
Speaker 1: clowns though, actually oh there was a clown. A clown.
Speaker 1: I don't have a babe's house. Yes, it was an
Speaker 1: ant babe's house, and she had red carpet. I'd forgotten
Speaker 1: some of this. Yes, people join MLMs out of desperation
Speaker 1: to try to restart their lives, but also they trained
Speaker 1: to have fun. These were wonderful gatherings, big to Doo's
Speaker 1: in a town where there wasn't much to do, and
Speaker 1: everyone looked forward to getting together. I remember one time
Speaker 1: they were all together at one of these parties, and
Speaker 1: the one lady comes in and because she was the
Speaker 1: one that was there to sell stuff, she had gone
Speaker 1: to someone's house to have a party. But she was
Speaker 1: standing at the front door and ringing the doorbell. And
Speaker 1: they used to wear nylons inside their pants, like their
Speaker 1: polyester pants. And I was at the time. It didn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me that you would wear a pair
Speaker 1: of control top pantyhose underneath your polyester pants. I thought
Speaker 1: that that not only does it sound weird when you walk,
Speaker 1: but it would feel really awful, you know, like spanks.
Speaker 1: You mean, uh huh. So I think that that's what
Speaker 1: these ladies did, was use the control top panties or
Speaker 1: control top pantyhose as like spanks. So her story was
Speaker 1: that she was standing at someone's house middle of the
Speaker 1: day or whatever, and she was ringing the doorbell, and
Speaker 1: so she realized that there was a pair of pantyhose
Speaker 1: stuck inside her pants. Between her pantyhose and the pants.
Speaker 1: She bent down and took a hold of the pan
Speaker 1: the pantyhose toe, and then started pulling it out like
Speaker 1: a magician, we kind of, you know. And so when
Speaker 1: the person answered the door, she's standing there with these
Speaker 1: pantyhose in her hands and her pant leg halfway up
Speaker 1: and she's still pulling pantyhose out of her pants. And
Speaker 1: they had all found this so hilarious that they were
Speaker 1: all laughing so hard they were crying, And I just
Speaker 1: remember sitting there and watching all these women in this
Speaker 1: state of like hysteria because of the story, and like
Speaker 1: how warm that was. Like that was one of the
Speaker 1: things that was really cool about those parties was they
Speaker 1: were always really warm and really happy. And I've never
Speaker 1: experienced that again with any of the parties that I
Speaker 1: hosted or anything like that. They just were that group.
Speaker 1: And that's one thing that like that makes me a
Speaker 1: little bit sad because they they're like almost all of
Speaker 1: them are dead at this point, but that one it
Speaker 1: makes me want to cry. Even they were so sweet
Speaker 1: and so fun. We kids, we loved these women, loved
Speaker 1: the excuse to hang out and laugh as opposed to
Speaker 1: sitting in a basement shucking black walnuts, which is something
Speaker 1: else women around here are gathered together for My great
Speaker 1: grandma Max scene Amy's grandma started selling avon in the fifties,
Speaker 1: and you could always rely on Grandma Max for some
Speaker 1: sort of direct sales product in your stocking, and leftover
Speaker 1: samples she'd leave for the kids, which piled up in
Speaker 1: a drawer over generations. They've only recently run out after
Speaker 1: Amy's own daughters used up the dregs. I always wanted
Speaker 1: to play makeup, so when you were born, you were
Speaker 1: like at this doll that I had to play with,
Speaker 1: and you were always willing. So when we would play makeup,
Speaker 1: it was like the makeup that we got from from Grandma.
Speaker 1: Most of the time it was just the little, teeny
Speaker 1: tiny lipsticks, and so that made it more real because
Speaker 1: our hands were little and our faces were little, so
Speaker 1: it felt like we were using like big things. They
Speaker 1: felt good, and they smelled that certain smell, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it was because they were getting old
Speaker 1: or if they all smelled that way. And I remember
Speaker 1: we always ended up with the ones that were kind
Speaker 1: of the tan or beige color being left over because
Speaker 1: we didn't want those. We wanted red lips. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: made everything seem real. But we actually took this one
Speaker 1: step further. We weren't just makeup artists. We were business women.
Speaker 1: I remember playing like store too, because we could use
Speaker 1: the catalogs and the and the order sheets and stuff
Speaker 1: and like setting up a desk with the phone yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And we were avon ladies. Yeah, and we would call
Speaker 1: and make sure that everybody was, you know, good on
Speaker 1: their orders. Amy's mom my. Grandma Ruth was not really
Speaker 1: into the makeup and jewelry scene. Gramma Ruth is, in
Speaker 1: a word, frugal. Some might say miserly. Others might say
Speaker 1: she's a hoarder. I say she's all three. One direct
Speaker 1: sales company in particular, was completely blacklisted in Ruth's house.
Speaker 1: We didn't do tupperware parties. We didn't go to tupperware parties.
Speaker 1: We didn't purchase tupperware. We didn't We didn't have any
Speaker 1: tupperware at the house. She used reused old containers, so
Speaker 1: that was tupperware was waste of time to her and money.
Speaker 1: So because storage containers are free, because all your food
Speaker 1: comes in a storage container already, and she could just
Speaker 1: wash it and reuse it. Because she still does that
Speaker 1: with like ziploc bags and tidfoil. Yep. So she's not wrong, No,
Speaker 1: she's not so. And she's very efficient and has a
Speaker 1: lot of money. I think to show for it because
Speaker 1: of those behaviors her whole life. So she uh, she
Speaker 1: was right about all those things. Grandma, did I take
Speaker 1: my shoes off? Okay, don't get up, that would go
Speaker 1: to fan worship. Just go to the canvas right here
Speaker 1: for this all night. Now. I'm visiting my grandma Ruth
Speaker 1: to ask her about her mom's time as an avon. Lady.
Speaker 1: Ruth doesn't really wear makeup or get gussied up for
Speaker 1: anything other than church, so it's always been funny to
Speaker 1: me that her mom was so into it. There are
Speaker 1: two houses on the property a quarter mile apart, along
Speaker 1: with a couple of barns. Both properties are quite modest.
Speaker 1: The one we're in my Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Bill,
Speaker 1: who now sits in the living room with dementia watching
Speaker 1: Bob Ross. They built this house as teenagers when they
Speaker 1: first started their family. They put the basement in first
Speaker 1: and lived in it with their growing brood, which would
Speaker 1: eventually number six kids, while they finished the upstairs. Can
Speaker 1: I have your name, Ruth Golmbiski? Thank you. Can you
Speaker 1: just tell me a little bit about yourself? I know
Speaker 1: a lot about you because you're my grandma. I live
Speaker 1: in Cruna, Michigan. I've been mostly a stay at home wife,
Speaker 1: although there was a stint when I did some truck driving.
Speaker 1: And I'm eighty one years old and I enjoy everything,
Speaker 1: and I love every morning. Even for Ruth, direct sales
Speaker 1: were a part of daily life for as long as
Speaker 1: she can remember, and she says it was for one reason,
Speaker 1: the same one MLMs count on to power their sales.
Speaker 1: She'd rather buy from people she knows. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: when you go to the grocery store and you stand
Speaker 1: and you read about something that you don't see the
Speaker 1: value that you can be introduced to by a salesperson.
Speaker 1: But I do know you can introduce yourself to products
Speaker 1: that do work. But I think that this other way
Speaker 1: is better because you have someone that educates you, and
Speaker 1: there are things you miss when you're just reading it.
Speaker 1: The thing is, my grandma Ruth never signed up to
Speaker 1: sell these things, but she has signed up for the discount.
Speaker 1: She's careful and sentimental. And one of the companies that
Speaker 1: I remember when I was young was the Jewel Tea Company.
Speaker 1: And I remember that when I was a child, when
Speaker 1: they used to come to my grandmother's house and they
Speaker 1: were a good company. I do have some pieces of
Speaker 1: hauled dishware that came from them that I remember. So
Speaker 1: that was like a door to door kind of sales,
Speaker 1: kind of slutely, and the gentleman that I remember selling
Speaker 1: it became a family friend, and so that made it
Speaker 1: kind of precious. This was seventy five years ago, all
Speaker 1: this sitting around with the jewel tea guy. But I've
Speaker 1: eaten off those exact plates. And the reason my grandma
Speaker 1: still has those plates is because she learned the value
Speaker 1: of a dollar really early on. I went to work
Speaker 1: when I was nine years old. The first time I
Speaker 1: went to work at a neighbor lady's house. She was
Speaker 1: crippled up with arthritis. She couldn't comb her own hair,
Speaker 1: and there were many many things that I did for
Speaker 1: that lady that she just couldn't do for herself, and
Speaker 1: though I was very young, I could help her with
Speaker 1: her needs. I made a quarter, I think an hour
Speaker 1: for the lady that I worked for, and then from
Speaker 1: there I went to work with another lady at another
Speaker 1: lady's house. And when I was ten years old, I
Speaker 1: had gotten to the point where I was out picking
Speaker 1: strawberries and a patch from eight in the morning, one
Speaker 1: hour after noon, and five o'clock in the afternoon. If
Speaker 1: I had to pick strawberries that day, that's how the
Speaker 1: day went. So when you're poor like that, you learn
Speaker 1: to scrape money off the walls, and you know what's
Speaker 1: there if you're looking. When I was a child, I
Speaker 1: didn't think I was suffering. But when you wear cardboard
Speaker 1: in your shoes because you got holes in the bottom
Speaker 1: to school, and your mother's cut off nylons for socks,
Speaker 1: and on Christmas you have hamburgers, but you're still happy.
Speaker 1: Your stomach's full and you're happy. I always told myself
Speaker 1: that I could do better with my money than some
Speaker 1: other people could. Without naming anyone. My parents had a
Speaker 1: difficult time, and I always felt like I could do
Speaker 1: better with my money, you know, as I got older
Speaker 1: and she did. Ruth and my grandpa scrimped and saved,
Speaker 1: never spent a dollar. They didn't actually possess. Rumor has
Speaker 1: it they're rich now, but you can't tell looking at them,
Speaker 1: or at the house or the yard. Ruth's parents, my
Speaker 1: great grandma Maxine and her husband Leo, did have a
Speaker 1: difficult time, and I hope my grandma forgives me and
Speaker 1: her youngest daughter for elaborating here, But this part of
Speaker 1: the story is crucial and understanding why Avon entered our
Speaker 1: lives in the first place. Here's Amy talking about my
Speaker 1: great Grandma Maxine. When she was really small, she had
Speaker 1: quite a bit of money, and that's when she would
Speaker 1: wear the first clothes to school and whatnot. This is
Speaker 1: a common refrain when anyone in my family speaks of
Speaker 1: great Grandma Maxine. You know, max she sen wore for
Speaker 1: coats to elementary school. She wore for coats to school.
Speaker 1: Do you know when she was little she got to
Speaker 1: wear for coats to school? If you don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with that information, neither did I as a
Speaker 1: little kid. Should I offer her Royal Highness more deference?
Speaker 1: Should I pity her that everyone around her thinks it's
Speaker 1: so crazy that she had a fur coat? These days,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I owed her both of those, So okay.
Speaker 1: Great Grandma Maxine apparently her father was a successful veterinarian
Speaker 1: who doted on her when she was a very little girl.
Speaker 1: But then he left a band in the family, and
Speaker 1: a few years later things got worse. She met Grandpa Leo.
Speaker 1: They got together when she was fourteen, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: he was like twenty one. Yeah, And so he and
Speaker 1: she had their first baby when she was fifteen, had
Speaker 1: their second baby when she was sixteen, and then had
Speaker 1: the third baby when she was eighteen, and we're done
Speaker 1: having kids when she was twenty one. And so she
Speaker 1: literally was a child with children, and she was incredibly abused,
Speaker 1: and they had no money, and Grandpa Leo spent it
Speaker 1: all on who knows what, I have a feeling you
Speaker 1: spent most of it on beer and just hanging out
Speaker 1: with his buddies. So that's the kind of life that
Speaker 1: Maxine had. Do you think that there was anything in
Speaker 1: grandma becoming an Avon lady that was like her chance
Speaker 1: to kind of like be fancy again, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: My mother was a pianist and she was good, and
Speaker 1: she taught our children and Jane, and it was the
Speaker 1: poor girl never even had a piano. No, my heart
Speaker 1: aches because my mother never had a piano in her home,
Speaker 1: and she was such a wonderful pianist, and it's just
Speaker 1: something that was gone out of her life. So yes,
Speaker 1: I think that selling Avon or eggs would have been
Speaker 1: an outlet. So I'm grateful that she had that opportunity.
Speaker 1: It may look like a small opportunity to some people,
Speaker 1: but for her, it was a way for her to
Speaker 1: use her graciousness and be able to communicate that My
Speaker 1: great grandmother was poor, overwhelmed, and life had decidedly not
Speaker 1: kept her in the state of fur coated happiness she'd
Speaker 1: been born into. But I think she got a kind
Speaker 1: of independence through direct sales, through Avon in particular. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that mix of entrepreneurship and escape that
Speaker 1: appealed to thousands of women a whole wave of women
Speaker 1: just like Maxine, who made the industry what it is today.
Speaker 1: You can hear how personal this all is for me.
Speaker 1: So I wanted some perspective outside my family, someone to
Speaker 1: answer a few basic questions about a town like mine,
Speaker 1: questions like why why us? Why here? My name is
Speaker 1: Tracy Deutsch and I'm a professor of history at the
Speaker 1: University of Minnesota. Tracy studies gender and capitalism, And she says,
Speaker 1: this whole direct sales thing, especially women in direct sales,
Speaker 1: was the result of a few things. One in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, door to door salesmen had a bad rap,
Speaker 1: so peddlers and direct sales people had a really terrible
Speaker 1: reputation in the late nineteenth century. They had, in some
Speaker 1: cases a well earned reputation as being swindlers and untrustworthy.
Speaker 1: They were itinerant. If you wanted to complain or return something,
Speaker 1: good luck finding them. They were mostly male, and some
Speaker 1: might have even been Jewish. Anti Semitism, remember, was very
Speaker 1: hip at the time, so town started making laws restricting
Speaker 1: door to door sales. At the same time, some companies
Speaker 1: that couldn't break into the mainstream marketplace, in particular black
Speaker 1: beauty products, found that women selling directly to other women
Speaker 1: in their homes was a way to get around both
Speaker 1: restrictive markets and inviting strange men into your house. I
Speaker 1: think that it was a way to bypass the politics
Speaker 1: of distribution that made it difficult to find products for
Speaker 1: people who were marginalized. So there weren't you know, large
Speaker 1: department stores didn't carry skincare products or cosmetics for black women,
Speaker 1: but it could be sold through social networks. Annie Turnbow
Speaker 1: Malone and her protege, Madam C. J. Walker, both set
Speaker 1: up huge networks of female distributors to sell black hair care.
Speaker 1: At the turn of the last century, and both of
Speaker 1: them became millionaires. Their innovation, their networking helped develop a
Speaker 1: sales strategy that would later be emulated by countless companies,
Speaker 1: including Avon. Avon actually was founded in eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: They yeah, I know, and they developed this system of
Speaker 1: recruiting women to sell their products very early on, so
Speaker 1: by nineteen oh two they had like ten thousand reps.
Speaker 1: Avon was founded by a former door to door salesman,
Speaker 1: David H. McConnell. He started out selling books. And this
Speaker 1: might sound a little creepy, it did to me, but
Speaker 1: at some point David began concocting perfumes in his home
Speaker 1: and would offer tiny bottles as a free gift to
Speaker 1: women who opened the door. HM. Anyway, the perfume took off,
Speaker 1: and eventually he dropped the books and put those women
Speaker 1: to work. It's really impossible to separate questions of gender
Speaker 1: from questions of business strategy. Right. They weren't selling products,
Speaker 1: they were selling women's products, and they weren't just using
Speaker 1: sales people, they were using women. So every aspect of
Speaker 1: a lot of cosmetics firms, but especially places like Avon,
Speaker 1: was mindful of the gender politics of the time. Period.
Speaker 1: One reason that Avon turned to women was because they
Speaker 1: were selling perfume, but also because they were wanted to
Speaker 1: sell perfume in women's homes. Having women come into other
Speaker 1: women's homes was more within gender conventions than having strange
Speaker 1: men come into your house, which could raise, you know,
Speaker 1: questions about propriety. It was also the case that, as
Speaker 1: is often the case, they expected that they would have
Speaker 1: to pay women less. Ah right, yep. Being a traveling
Speaker 1: salesman was a career path for men in a way
Speaker 1: that women weren't expected to have careers that took them
Speaker 1: outside their areas of residence. Yeah, I suppose yes. You
Speaker 1: could say, well, women can't travel, right, they have to
Speaker 1: stay home, So then they're necessarily valued less because they
Speaker 1: don't have the mobility. Well, it cuts both ways, right,
Speaker 1: On the one hand, women have to stay at home
Speaker 1: and so their valued less. On the other hand, women
Speaker 1: are valued less, so they have to stay at home.
Speaker 1: They don't have right, they don't have the option. The
Speaker 1: assumptions that women are responsible for childcare and managing households
Speaker 1: also keeps them tied to one place. So this was
Speaker 1: back in the twenties and thirties when everyone had to
Speaker 1: be scrappy, you know, find a way to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: Unmarried women had often engaged in some kinds of wage
Speaker 1: earning work, or they had supported their families through unpaid
Speaker 1: work like caring for other children or elderly grandparents or
Speaker 1: parents or stuff like that. Married women typically had moved
Speaker 1: in and out of the workforce as household economies demanded
Speaker 1: it when somebody was laid off for whatever reason, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: or they worked in what is and this is really
Speaker 1: useful to understand what's called the informal economy, which are
Speaker 1: jobs that are not regulated, often buying and selling products
Speaker 1: that are not regulated. What do you mean like bake
Speaker 1: sales or yeah, I do mean bake seals, things like
Speaker 1: making food and selling it out of your house to
Speaker 1: neighbors who come by. It also is included what we
Speaker 1: would think of as homework, so women who finished fabrics
Speaker 1: or textile or clothing in their homes and then brought
Speaker 1: it back to a central site. So it's a term
Speaker 1: for economic activities that are actually often quite important, generate
Speaker 1: a lot of money for the economy, but aren't formalized
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's regular and regulated. Right. So,
Speaker 1: and women had often engaged in that kind of money making.
Speaker 1: Married women had begun to participate in what you might
Speaker 1: think of as like the formal economy in larger numbers
Speaker 1: than ever before during World War Two, and they often
Speaker 1: wanted to keep doing that after the war because the
Speaker 1: money was more stable for all kinds of reasons, right
Speaker 1: that you can imagine. But those jobs were less valuable
Speaker 1: to them in some ways well because the guys were back.
Speaker 1: Because the guys were back, and because the rigors of
Speaker 1: wartime no longer could excuse their employment. So one reason
Speaker 1: that they worked for companies like Avon was that they
Speaker 1: had been working right. This was a job that they
Speaker 1: could get in the nineteen fifties, and it was a
Speaker 1: job that often was understood to be one that could
Speaker 1: accommodate childcare and husband care and housework and things like that.
Speaker 1: And it also furthered the ideology of domesticity because of
Speaker 1: the products that were being sold were people making money
Speaker 1: the women. So interestingly, that's a really hard question to answer.
Speaker 1: Both of these firms kept and keep very tight control
Speaker 1: of data about how much money people made doing this.
Speaker 1: All the data that we have suggests that there's very
Speaker 1: little money that's made what does happen at these companies.
Speaker 1: Tepperware jump started this process of rewarding people socially for
Speaker 1: their successes. So what they get is a lot of
Speaker 1: affirmation they feel appreciated, and that I think should not
Speaker 1: be missed in understanding the appeal of these firms. The
Speaker 1: part of what they reward is the affective, emotional labor
Speaker 1: and the social connections that many women maintain no matter what.
Speaker 1: My great grandma was poor, but she didn't need much
Speaker 1: in terms of actual cash. She died in the same
Speaker 1: shock she'd raised her kids in and lived off social
Speaker 1: security and the kindness of her children. The thing that
Speaker 1: was most lacking in her life was love and self
Speaker 1: esteem and adoration and confidence. And some of that stuff
Speaker 1: comes at a high price, no matter how you go
Speaker 1: about getting it. Think about the cost of a beauty pageant,
Speaker 1: or getting an Ivy League education, or your gym membership.
Speaker 1: In a way, Maxine was investing in her quality of life,
Speaker 1: even if the checks didn't cover her new siding or
Speaker 1: a better wheelchair. That's a common refrain among people who
Speaker 1: did MLMs in the nineteen fifties and sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: was that they felt special. They had access to this
Speaker 1: world that rewarded them. Not every part of people's experiences
Speaker 1: in these companies is bad. They got social rewards. They
Speaker 1: often felt like they got like your grandmother, right, that
Speaker 1: they got to participate in social interactions that were really
Speaker 1: rewarding to them, right, that made them feel good, that
Speaker 1: got the out of their houses and justified time at
Speaker 1: a party or spending it with other people. And we
Speaker 1: missed the significance of what these organizations are doing if
Speaker 1: we only look at them in financial terms. They did
Speaker 1: historically provide things that conventional formal economy does not provide,
Speaker 1: and it's a real problem. The rigidity of working hours,
Speaker 1: the lack of understanding about women's responsibilities at home, the
Speaker 1: need for social engagement and social relations to be valued,
Speaker 1: that's all something that these jobs provided. So anyways, I
Speaker 1: began to develop my team and we did things together.
Speaker 1: I had team meetings. Everything that I did was for
Speaker 1: my girls. I mean, they were my heart. My team
Speaker 1: was my heart, and I gave my all. Now it's
Speaker 1: about the culture of the community sisterhood that I'm experiencing
Speaker 1: and then being able to be something besides a wife
Speaker 1: and a mother. Now I'm contributing to the household. It's
Speaker 1: building my self esteem, it's making me feel whole as
Speaker 1: a person. I really feel lucky, or as they say
Speaker 1: here in the South Left, that this came along because
Speaker 1: I really feel like everybody is rooting for you. And
Speaker 1: I doubted myself for a long time. I doubted myself
Speaker 1: for a very long time. But what I can tell you,
Speaker 1: I have met some of the most incredible women, and
Speaker 1: I've had so many people tell me you live in
Speaker 1: a fantasy world, in your little makeup world, And I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, this has been my happy place, and this
Speaker 1: has been the place. I'm sorry, this has been the
Speaker 1: place that has gotten me through so many rough points
Speaker 1: of my life in the past three years. I owe
Speaker 1: my success to you, my team, the people that have
Speaker 1: believed in me, and the people that have made me
Speaker 1: start believing in myself. Next time on the Dream, I'm
Speaker 1: happy to answer any questions that you might have about
Speaker 1: what we're doing before we get started, if you'd like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the biggest question I had is why why are you
Speaker 1: doing this? And what would have prompted such an endeavor.
Speaker 1: The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher,
Speaker 1: written and reported by Me Jane Marie, Dan Glucci, Mackenzie
Speaker 1: cassab Lyra Smith, and help from clar Rollinson. We are
Speaker 1: edited by Peter Clowney. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.
Speaker 1: The Dream is executive produced by Laura Mayor, Chris Bannon,
Speaker 1: Dan Galucci and me. We appreciate you subscribing, rating, and
Speaker 1: reviewing the show wherever you listen