Icy Wave

Through Manhattan's Grand Central Palace last week crowded 20,000 of the nation's beauty-shop operators to inspect their trade's new tools. What they saw made some of them wonder if they hadn't wandered by mistake into a house of Procrustean horror.

In booth after booth, shapely models were mechanically whacked, pounded and rolled about. Among the exhibits: a coin-operated (50-c-), bedlike "Massage-O-Mat" for pummeling the body; a "Mac-Levy Leg Massager" for streamlining legs and thighs; chairs called "Gyro-Lators," with vibrating cushions and foot rests to slim down hips and titillate the soles of the feet. The beauticians had a deep interest in the new machines. They needed some tasty bait to get back the business they had lost through a revolution in the trade.

The revolution was caused by home permanent wave kits (TIME, Aug. 18). In less than three years, home "cold" waves, which women give themselves for $2 or less, had become a vastly profitable industry. The Rexall Drug chain had its own kit. So did Montgomery Ward & Co. Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co. was about to bring one out. Wailed a Boston beauty-shop owner to a Watt Street Journal reporter: "Don't talk to me about those things; I've lost half my customers already and unless we do something I'll lose the rest."

Nobody knew how many kits the 45-odd manufacturers in the industry had already sold. But Toni hair wave, the biggest, which Gillette Safety Razor Co. bought out, had alone sold 20,000,000, planned to spend $7,000,000 on ads to boost sales this year. Gillette hopes to lure women out of beauty shops just as successfully as it once lured men out of barber shops.

The 100,000 U.S. beauty parlors were still far from bankrupt; their last year's income (around $1,000,000,000) was down some $250,000,000 from 1946--due mostly to home permanents. And permanent waves make up one-half of all beauty shops' sales. Unless shops find a way to keep women loyal to store curls, or newly resolute in pounding fat off thigh and midriff, most of the beauty would go out of their business.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.