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��� Because of race and gender discrimination that limited employment options in the middle decades of the twentieth century, beauty culture attracted African American women across class lines. Middle–class, salon–owning beauticians sought professional status for beauty culture, while working–class beauticians sought the economic security and occupational autonomy beauty culture seemed to offer compared with domestic service work. While middle– and working–class beauticians shared a desire for occupational independence and job satisfaction, significant class differences emerged among African American beauti cians between the 1920s and the 1960s. These differences sprang from increasing class segmentation of African American beauty salons due to the Great Depression, New Deal legislation, state regulation, and the growth of upscale salons in big cities after World War II. Class differences emerged particularly around working conditions in salons and some beauticians’ choice to work from home or rent booths in salons, practices which middle–class salon owners disapproved of.