Mary Kay’s Contradictory Use of Rhetoric in The Opportunity
Xinyi (Phoebe) Xing
Opportunity, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, can be “a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something” (OED, n. 1). In the Mary Kay corporate recruiting video The Opportunity, May Kay creates a world that makes it possible for women to achieve success that they otherwise couldn’t do. On one hand, the Mary Kay opportunity seems to empower women through making use of women’s marginalization, but on the other hand, Mary Kay reinforces and legitimizes the hegemony of the dominant hierarchy that hinders women from challenging the marginalization. This paper will first look at the selection of rhetorical tools while making the video that helps make the Mary Kay opportunity shine. The paper, then, will explore capitalistic values and moral goodness embedded in the Mary Kay opportunity. Third, this paper will analyze the rhetorical device that Mary Kay uses to empower women with financial status and moral goodness, and finally uncover the hidden prerequisite of success, that is, success can only be achieved within the limitation of women’s gender identity and dominant hegemony.
Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc. is an international manufacturer and distributor of skin care and cosmetic products. The products are sold exclusively and directly by a network of self-employed women at their homes and offices. After closely examining Mary Kay’s career website and reading a case study from Harvard Business School on Mary Kay’s organizational structure and sales force incentives, it is concluded that the whole business of Mary Kay Cosmetics is built up from millions of beauty consultants buying makeup from Mary Kay and then selling the makeup they bought to other women (Kotter & Stengrevics, 1981). Although Mary Kay provides training and tools to help the sales force, once the products are sold to the beauty consultants, Mary Kay has no actual burden if the beauty consultants can’t sell their makeup to other women. Thus, the more women that join the army of beauty, the more makeup they will buy from Mary Kay, and the higher the income will show up on Mary Kay’s financial report. By 2009, Mary Kay has employed over 2 million beauty consultants around the world and achieved $2.5 billion in global wholesale sales (Mary Kay Cosmetics). According to ABC News (2011), even during economic downturn, Mary Kay remained profitable and recruited more people to the global sales force. The ultimate strategy for Mary Kay is to persuade as many women to join the company as possible. With this overarching telos in mind, the corporate recruiting video The Opportunity aims to immerse the audience in the premise that Mary Kay opportunity is so wonderful and leads the audience to the conclusion that women should join Mary Kay to achieve success.
The Opportunity was created in 2011 by Mary Kay Cosmetics along with two other videos about the company: The Founder Mary Kay Ash and The Products, with a theme of “enriching women’s lives” (2011). In the video, five Mary Kay beauty consultants entitled as independent sales force, one national sales director and two customers share their experience with Mary Kay. The video starts with a casual but touching conversation between a happy customer and a Mary Kay beauty consultant about how Mary Kay consultants make customers feel beautiful (0:04). Showing compliments from customers at the beginning of the video quickly establishes rapport between the audience in front of computers and the beauty consultants that speak in the video. Throughout the video, the consultants and customers sit shoulder by shoulder which implies a pleasant and relaxed customer relationship that is different from other sales positions. The video was made in a modern and fashion setting with white sofa, large windows and warm sunlight. The bright background color creates a pressure-free environment for the audience and at the same time facilitates and enhances the confident and friendly images of Mary Kay beauty consultants. With everything bright and warm, one can feel the promising future he or she can anticipate if join Mary Kay.
With a theme of praising the opportunity, Mary Kay strategically selects the rhetorical tools while making the video that help glorify the opportunity and demonstrate the benefits. Instead of using actresses, Mary Kay Cosmetics makes a smart choice of using real beauty consultants to speak for the company. Their identities as beauty consultants increase the source credibility and serve as channels to prove the opportunity as wonderful and to persuade women to join. If one were to Google the consultants who speak in the video, one can find them to be real “Mary Kayers” and they all have consistent online appearances as trustworthy beauty consultants. Having built the ethos, all the seemingly “too good to be true” descriptions about the job will be attenuated for the skeptical audience. With the trust built and the message understood, the video starts to make the audience feel good and emotionally moved. The national sales director from Mexico says in tears that “ladies, I began, without car, without money, without any means, and truly Mary Kay transforms your life” (01:38). Her speech appeals to audience’s emotion and empathy for women who have overcome obstacles and achieved great success. With all three rhetorical appeals, the video builds the message in audience’s mind that it is Mary Kay that provides this wonderful opportunity thus one should join the company.
If the rhetorical appeals are the three major trunks for a persuasion tree, the rhetorical cannons are the branches that are necessary to carry out a persuasive message and make it complete. Mary Kay strategically designs the rhetorical cannons that fit with the rhetorical appeals in The Opportunity video. Firstly, the style in which the national sales director Barbara Sunden speaks helps establish the pathos of beauty consultants and the emotional attachment between the speakers and the audience. Throughout her speech, Barbara uses pronoun “we” a lot. The use of “we” arouses the audience’s sense of belongingness and inclusiveness to the Mary Kay family and encourages them to become a member of the beauty family. Moreover, the delivery of the speech with a conversational tone and smiles on speakers’ faces is so genuine that boosts the ethos of the speakers. Additionally, the video was delivered through the Mary Kay company website and the official YouTube page. These delivery channels help the company reach to the specific audience they hope to persuade - women who have struggled to start or advance her career, women who have been seeking around for a part-time or full time job online, women who have heard about Mary Kay and have been eager to find out what is a job with Mary Kay all about.
Watching the video, these women will identify and imagine themselves to be the protagonist – independent women who have worked hard and overcome obstacles to achieve success under both capitalistic ideology and moral goodness that goes beyond monetary rewards. The following section will examine the two layers of values that Mary Kay tries to embed in the video and the connection between them.
The first layer of value that the video is trying to appeal to the audience is the American value of independence, hard work, making progress, achieving financial status and freedom. The national sales director Barbara Sunden represents the success in capitalistic ideology and carries out the value as she speaks. In the video, all the beauty consultants wear minimal jewelry and light color outfits with simple design. In contrast, Sunden wears darker color outfits well made from leather along with fancy necklace and earrings. This contrast implicitly conveys the message that with Mary Kay, one has the opportunity to advance with higher financial status and power. The lowest level of the Mary Kay sales hierarchy is entitled “independent beauty consultant”. The adjective “independent” emphasizes the nature of the job that one can remain independent and enjoy the freedom of planning your own business. With the wonderful Mary Kay opportunity, one has the chance to progress through hard work but does not need to work “as hard” because “we are our own boss” (0:57). Sunden leaves out the cores of the job that are hard selling and recruiting, and instead appeals to the value of self-controllability over one’s own level of success.
Besides being a successful businesswoman, the video also pinpoints one’s need and desire to be a morally good person which leads us to the second layer of value embedded in this video. Mary Kay delicately avoids the stereotypical images of salespersons that are concerned with their own interests. The message that Mary Kay fulfills one’s desire to be morally good is emphasized many times through different wordings in the video. At the beginning, one customer says, “my Mary Kay beauty consultant is about so much more than just makeup” (0:11). Later on, one beauty consultant says that “a Mary Kay beauty consultant can make a huge impact on customer’s life” (0:22). Through making the argument that Mary Kay can brighten customer’s day and transform women’s lives, the video not only appeals to women’s desirability of becoming someone whose existence is meaningful but also eliminates the guilty or embarrassing feeling one may have when selling for self-interest.
The video effectively depicts stories of success through making logical connection between capitalistic values and moral values that fits well with female American audience. Selling makeup is also changing other women’s lives. And becoming a significant person who can make differences to women’s lives also brings financial rewards.
Although the Mary Kay opportunity empowers women to achieve both financial success and moral goodness, the bound of power and the level of success are limited. The following section will first look at the rhetorical device that Mary Kay uses to empower women and then uncover the hidden prerequisite of success with Mary Kay.
In The Opportunity video, Mary Kay empowers women to do things they otherwise couldn’t do due to the marginalization of women in the business world. Mary Kay uses the rhetorical device anticategoria to make use of the marginalization of women to empower them to join the beauty army and sell makeup. Anticategoira can be broken into two parts: anti and categoria. Categoria is a rhetorical term for the direct exposure of one’s adversary’s fault. In this case, women are accused for their inferior ability to succeed in the business realm. Anticategoria is for the accused to take the accusation made in categoria as an opportunity to turn it back against the accuser. In the Mary Kay case, women are empowered to break the marginalization to achieve success as men do.
In order to make use of anticategoria effectively, the accused should acknowledge the truth of accusation in the first place. If marginalization of women does not exist, the Mary Kay opportunity would become another ordinary job that does not provide any add on values. In order to help women identify themselves as members of the marginalized group and feel the desire to change the situation, Mary Kay reinforces the hegemony of women as a group that needs to be helped. The national sales director from Russia says in the video, “how many women need your help? There are adults with their own life experience, problems, and hopes. You have an opportunity to help them” (1:46). And the way to help them is to join Mary Kay and sell makeup.
Having admitted the accusation, the next step is to turn against it. Mary Kay designs the Mary Kay opportunity in a way that is against the stereotypical perception of women. The stereotype that men are believed to be more knowledgeable and socialized has limited the opportunity for women in the industry to hold jobs with more prestige than male business leaders do during their careers. Making use of this imbalance, the Mary Kay opportunity empowers women to be their own boss and take on leadership responsibilities as national sales director Barbara Sunden says in the video, “We are in business for ourselves. We determine our own level of success” (0:44 – 1:00). Moreover, with white and heterosexual male considered to be the dominant group and play the hero roles, Mary Kay empowers women with the opportunity to become hero through its life-changing mission as mentioned numerous times in the video. Opposite to the accusation of being inferior, women can become leader and hero through selling makeup.
At the first glance, the video seems to use anticategoria to challenge the status quo of capitalistic framework within which women are marginalized. It seems that Mary Kay creates a new kingdom in which women are privileged with the opportunity to start their own business and are empowered to achieve self-determination and receive internal rewards. However, as we analyze deeper into the Mary Kay opportunity, the video is limited in the extent to which it is able to encourage women to rapidly change the domination and hegemony. Mary Kay constructs a hidden prerequisite to success that is women can succeed, but only within the limitation of their gender identity and dominant hegemony. Therefore, the Mary Kay opportunity is designed to reinforce and legitimize the hegemony that women are expected to be beautiful and remain femininity, to take on easier jobs and to serve the interests of those who are on higher hierarchy of capitalistic framework.
The “beauty statement” is made at the beginning of the video by a customer saying, “my Mary Kay beauty consultant makes me feel beautiful” (0:04). It is “natural” for women to want to look beautiful and feel important. This “natural” assumption implies that it is also a “natural” desire for people to buy and sell beauty products. The video tries to avoid the pitfall of overly emphasizing external beauty by arguing “Mary Kay is so much more than just makeup” (0:10). However, the achievement of self-actualization beyond external beauty all starts with the buying and selling of external beauty goods, Mary Kay makeup.
The video legitimizes the capitalistic ideology of pursuing economic well-being through the mission of changing women’s lives. The two arguments made by national sales director Barbara Sunden demonstrate the logic of legitimation that Mary Kay Cosmetics uses to gloss over its profit-driven capitalistic nature. “The real beauty of this opportunity is greater success and financial reward” (1:08). But “the greatest reward is the difference that we can make in women’s lives” (2:05). It is true that the video is created around women with the feminine structure rooted in the success stories of women, however, the only scene that men show up in this video when national sales director Barbara Sunden receives her awards from her “boss” exhibits the capitalistic structure of Mary Kay (0:55-0:58). If we look at the power structure of Mary Kay Cosmetics which claims to serve the best interest of women, we will find that eight out of twelve members of Mary Kay executive team are men (Mary Kay official website). And among the four regional presidents who directly lead the sales force, three of them are male and none of them started out as an independent sales force as the two million women did (Mary Kay executive bios). The business of Mary Kay is feeding the insatiable appetite of male capitalists, but this is moral because of the glorious life-changing mission.
The design of the job is particularly tailored to women based on the ideology that women are not capable of taking jobs that are highly challenged and require intensive hours. Women should instead work in ways that fit their femininity. The video shows women working from home in pajamas, meeting with customers in cute dresses and enjoying family time (0:40 - 1:00). Mary Kay pitches the career as a “work from home” opportunity that is ideal for women and allows women to take advantage of what they are considered and expected to be good at by the hegemony. Instead of encouraging women to re-evaluate and challenge their socially constructed gender identity, the Mary Kay opportunity encourages women to conform to their gender limitation and reinforces the dominant viewpoint that it is appropriate and ideal for women to take on easier jobs and to commit their times to childcare and housework.
Mary Kay Ash’s “god first, family second, career third” slogan expresses Mary Kay’s belief that women who join Mary Kay keep a good balance of their lives and individual success. Using rhetorical tools and device, The Opportunity video depicts a shiny opportunity for women to maintain a good balance. But as we look deeper, the balance itself carries the hegemonic ideology that women should prioritize their identities as women over the pursuit of success. Although the video claims to provide opportunity for women to achieve both financial success and moral goodness, the hidden purpose of achieving these goals is to reinforce femininity as expected by the dominant ideology and to serve the interests of the dominant power in capitalistic hierarchy. No matter women who join Mary Kay are attracted by the opportunity to make a huge difference, to achieve financial success, or to obtain recognition and prizes through conforming to the hegemonic femininity, Mary Kay is the big winner. As there is only one pathway to seize the opportunity, that is, selling makeup.
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