When Monique looks back on the night she decided to join Mary Kay, she remembers being hungry. She was thirty-six in 2013, fresh out of the United States Air Force after sixteen years, and living in Tallahassee, Florida, where she knew almost no one. She was sleeping fifteen hours a day in her small, hot apartment, subsisting off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spending more money on food for her ninety-pound bulldog than on herself. Her only source of income were her retirement checks from the military, just $1,200 a month. Barely enough to cover rent. Monique — who asked to use a pseudonym for privacy — knew she needed to find work, soon, but every lead she chased turned out to be a dead end.
