The Nail Salon Capital

Today in class a fellow peer Sarah Henzlik made a statement that the North Shore of Chicago was “the nail salon capital of the United States”.  Although I cannot find hard evidence for this, it is not hard to believe.  This statement got me thinking about the amount of nail salons; I discovered that Winnetka alone has at least nine salons and many of them are even on the same block.  Is the demand really that high for nail salons, and why Winnetka?

First of all I think it is important to establish that nail salons are purely cosmetic they serve no purpose in well being or health of humans, yet groceries stores do; and there about four times the amount of nail salons as there are groceries stores in Winnetka.  The fact that there is such a great concentration of Nail Salons in Winnetka is a great indicator of social class; individuals in Winnetka can afford to spend forty dollars on their nails weekly. 

In the grand scheme of things the fact that we have high class people spending forty dollars a week on coloring their nails while “The number of children living on $2.00 a day or less in the United States has grown to 2.8 million” is ridicules. This means in one week 2.8 million children in the US are spending about one third of what a Winnetka woman spends on her nails, for their necessities. There is a clear disconnect between the wealthy and the poor in America today, it is evident in these facts.  It is not right that wealthier Americans are spending such extravagant amounts on luxuries while children in the same county are struggling to survive.