Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Did Tippy Hedron start the Vietnamese manicure industry?
13 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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That's right. Thanks to the following Inside Fullerton website, National Museum of American History, kcra.com, osu.edu, and a website called Viet Salon. And if you're like, that's a funny sounding name, it's not because we're talking about the interesting fact that Vietnamese American and Vietnamese women generally populate
the manicure nail professional system like no other group in the United States.
Yeah. And it's one of those things that you just know that in the United States, even if you don't get your nails done, you just kind of know. Vietnamese people tend to be the ones that run and own nail salons. But it's one of those things that you probably have never stopped to ask why.
And this is one of those great stories where there's actually a specific answer, a specific date, specific people involved that answer that question why. Like there's an answer to it, not just, well, that's just how it turned out.
Yeah, for sure. I do have a stat for you here. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, and this is in California, but this is also true in a lot of the country. But they have the number at 82 percent of nail salons in California are staffed by Vietnamese people, generally Vietnamese women. But some men are doing that thing, too. And it goes all the way back to 1975 after the Vietnam War ended.
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Chapter 2: What sparked the Vietnamese manicure industry in the United States?
Sounds a little hippie to me, but apparently it was a high-end nail salon, like the first nails-only salon. Because at the time, there was no place to just go get your nails done. It was something you did at a larger salon. But Dusty Boots Butera founded the nail patch in Encino, California, which is the setting for the movie Encino Man.
And Tippi Hedren said, hey, Dusty, do you want to come teach these women in Hope Village how to do some nail stuff? Because they're crazy about my manicure. So you want to just have a lark and come show them what to do? And Dusty said, yeah.
Yeah, she's like, I'm Dusty Boots Butera. The answer is always yes. So Dusty Boots went up there. First training session went really well. And so Tippi Hedren flew her up basically every weekend over a few months, you know, while she was still running that nail patch in Encino and just kept teaching them like new techniques and like kind of all the ins and outs of the business.
Yeah. So there were, I think, originally 20 women who became the first class that Dusty Butera essentially graduated. And this was also just ready made to be adapted to actual like beauty schools, beauty colleges. In particular, the first one was Citrus Heights Beauty College, which is well known for also being the one that Frenchie dropped out from in Greece. Yeah. Oh, yeah?
No, I just made that up. I just had to give a Frenchie shout out, and that was the only way I could come up with it. I got you. And the owner, Becky Hambleton, was like, hey, let's figure out how to create a nail manicure curriculum, essentially, so we can take anybody who wants to learn, especially women from Hope Village, and train them how to do this so they can go create a life for themselves.
Yeah.
That's right. I feel like we should take our little break here. Sure.
And we'll come back and get to, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story right after this.
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