Women in cosmetology

As far as women in the cosmetology industry, Walker’s success led her to influence many other women who worked for the Walker Company and the hair parlors and training schools. On of Walker’s most values employee’s, Marjorie Joyner, holds a patent for inventing the permanent waving machine in 1928 (Vare & Ptacek, 2003). Joyner was one of thousands of African American women who worked for the Walker Company in the 1920’s (Vare & Ptacek, 2003). To the right is a picture of Joyner.

While Madam C.J. Walker invented her “Wonderful Hair Grower” using household ingredients with her washtubs, the ideas of using household products were in correlation to Annie Turnbo Malone’s ideas for creating hair products to improve African American women’s hair (Bundles, 2001).

Annie Turnbo Malone was pioneer beauty culturalist much like Madam C.J. Walker was. Malone was the founder of the PORO system of beauty culture (Phillips, E. N., 2003). Malone’s PORO system was multi-million dollar business that help encourage African American women in a white-dominated society to enhance self esteem and personal beauty through her line of products (Phillips, E. N., 2003).