Yours Truly, left, and James Love (aka Cassie Nova..)
On Sunday, July 10, I completed the seventh installment of “214 Trans4m,” my photo series about Dallas’ architecture, design, history and stereotypes that features transgender models.
This latest segment highlights Dallas’ cosmetic empress, Mary Kay Ash: a gender revolutionary for women in the workplace, and a multi-level entrepreneur ... (with many former beauty consultants who feel spurned by a Pink Pyramid Scheme.)
Sunday's temperature at 4 p.m. was triple-digit hell.
From left, Charles Yusko, James Love and Yours Truly.
We lucked out and were able to get ready inside the refrigerated coolness of The Rose Room's dressing quarters.
Dallas’ best comedic emcee, James Love (aka Cassie Nova), turned out Ash’s spooky-dead smile.
Emmy-nominated hair wiz Charles Yusko cut and curled a hairpiece that — when placed on James’ head — magically resurrected Mary Kay’s spirit and immediately possessed James’ soul.
Richard D. Curtin styled the impeccable executive-realness wardrobe.
Photographer and project collaborator Bryan Amann rolled on the grass to frame the shot.
And Juan Facio designed Mary Kay’s vintage logo for the pyramid prop, rolled cameras, drove a getaway car and kept on the lookout for the popo while we shot on location at Mary Kay’s guarded Addison headquarters.
If it's July — and you've noticed a lot of women dressed in pink buzzing around town — then you know Mary Kay's "pink flamingos" have migrated for "seminar."
That's Miss Ash's big annual convention, which has four different levels: diamond, sapphire, ruby and emerald.
I was recently at Mary Kay's headquarters, and saw this "Tadji" carpet, left, — an honest-to-god handwoven rug, featuring an image of Mary Kay herself.
The floor covering was threaded in 2000 by beauty consultant Nadija Abdullaeva, who lives in Tadjikistan, Russia.
If you want to read bitter commentary by former beauty consultants, check the entries in PinkTruth.com — a site that's turned into a war of words between consultants: the ones who are seeing red because they've been screwed over by MK's pyramid scheme; and the ones who are keeping the cosmetics-church alive.
Check out the enticing headlines...
• Mary Kay Is All About Recruiting.
• I Had a $600 Week – And All I Got Was This Bracelet. • Pink Truth members, you are pathetic! • Grieving a Vapor: The Handcrafted Persona of Mary Kay Ash.
While researching Dallas' cosmetic empress, Mary Kay Ash, I dug up a couple of Bloom County strips, circa 1989 — when cartoonist Berke Breathed lampooned Mary Kay as fugly animal-murdering glam guru who used rats to test her products.
In the storyline of these strips (which were also made into a book, "The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos," Little Brown, 1989), Opus — the penguin — reads that his mother is alive, and has been taken to a cosmetics lab.
Opus infiltrates the Mary Kay animal testing lab and witnesses the horrors of animal testing.
Before he can reunite with his mother, he is caught in a firefight between the Mary Kay Commandos ("Even their Uzis are pink!") and the Animal Liberation Guerrilla Front.
Opus is liberated to his natural habitat, a 7-Eleven ice machine.
The sequence was partly responsible for Mary Kay's 1989 moratorium on animal testing.
ALSO
In December 1987, Mary Kay raised a stink — writing letters to the Dallas City Council, complaining trash needed to be set out in plastic bags instead of trash cans.
Ash wrote, "The cats, squirrels and dogs have ample time to tear the plastic bags, strewing the garbage all in front of our home. It is disgraceful. I URGE you to rescind this stupid policy.... I've got a $5 million house and I don't like to come home to that junk in my yard."
Ash was also looking out for the less fortunate: "They don't have the money to buy those heavy-duty bags. My maid, for example, I know she cannot afford to buy those bags."
AND...
In August 1984, Ash was on the CBS Morning News when anchor Bill Kurtis mentioned that Dallas will always be remembered for the Kennedy assassination.
Ash responded, "It's terribly unfair. The man was not a Texan. He was not a Dallasite. He was just passing through."
Viewers didn't know if the non-Texan to whom Mary Kay was referring to was Oswald or Kennedy.
She meant Oswald (who spent much of his life in Texas and lived in DFW for 17 months before the assassination).
After Dallas' Kennedy museum folded, Mary Kay thought the city's memorials and reminders should be replaced by parking lots.
She felt the president should be remembered and that the book depository should be torn down.
