Turns out beauty is expensive — Who knew, right? … So yeah, if your teenager is all gaga for glam, you can send him (yes, him) to a decent cosmetology school for about what you’d pay to send him to community college. Just cross your fingers he’ll stick it out through all the unpretty parts. I didn’t. Then again, I had a bachelor’s degree in my back pocket.

There’s a point in there somewhere — Oh! Parents, please teach your glamor guy that disorders like psoriasis and vitiligo and alopecia aren’t gross. Teach him to be kind, compassionate, and to be THE student who will take the clients that the less tolerant, less educated students will turn down. He’ll gain the respect of his instructors, which ultimately will mean the BEST hair models; that extra bowl of bleach for his cut-and-color project; that extra set of initials on his manicure sign-off sheet. And when your boy starts working with the usual beauty school clientele, you should remind him to keep his hands out of his eyes and mouth, because he’s going to be all up in people’s biological business; good, bad and weird. Prepare him, kind parents, to keep his cool when he finds himself holding Agatha’s fungus-riddled foot in his hands, freshly plucked from the pedicure bubble bath — If he doesn’t freak out he’ll have a client for life, and he’ll be very likely to NOT QUIT the program and be saddled with senseless tuition debt.

And while we’re on that topic: Clients, if you’re only willing to pay $10 for a cut and style, spare the poor kid the torture of handling your cesspool of a scalp by simply, you know, bathing. Some day I’ll tell you about that one hair model who was so gross I asked my instructor if I could put my hair dryer in the barbasol. Shortly after picking all of her dandruff out from under my nails (seriously people, she had long curly hair and every inch of it was coated in white flecks that were sticky like wet toilet paper), I walked outta that place and didn’t look back. Did I mention that I made it four months?

No, wait. That wasn’t the point. Here’s the point: Choose wisely when going into debt.

Yeah, that’s it. Even though I’m a Beauty School Dropout (sing it with me, now!) I still have to pay for the schoolin’ I received. But I’m okay with that, because I still cut hair on a regular basis for fun. That’s the key: My livelihood doesn’t depend upon the number of haircuts I give, so I can be super picky about my clientele, and I can practice my craft on a schedule of my choosing. Beauty School Graduate doesn’t get to pick his clients, though he may exercise a little control by getting a chair in a decent salon. And he’s got to work weekends, because that’s when the service industry rakes in the most bucks. He’ll still need a second job for awhile, to pay for living expenses, professional-looking clothes, and service that cumbersome tuition debt. But if he can get through the first rough year or two, he’ll be makin’ bank if he’s got the chops. It’s about patience. It’s about not letting a sense of glitter-flecked entitlement push him out before his time comes.

Before you sign the papers, ask him: Is he ready to scrape together those monthly loan payments by washing, cutting and styling head after head of lice-ridden, dandruff-shedding, grease-caked, matted hair; all after banking only four hours of sleep because he worked late at the bar the night before? In fairness, working in a salon doesn’t always involve biological warfare. What it IS, however, is REAL. Glamor, by definition, isn’t reality, and that can be hard to swallow while toiling through cosmetology school and an apprenticeship — I had my hands in a lot of other people’s hygiene and skin disease problems almost daily for four months, and despite the fact that I love, LOVE hair — I couldn’t stick it out. Even though I was that girl who got the BEST clients, the custom color formulations, the nod at my worst manicures; because I treated the $10 haircut clients like a million bucks… Life got to me, so I’m not a success story here. But if beauty boy can slog through all the things a student/new stylist must endure, he’ll feel happier about clicking “pay now” on that hefty loan.

I’m not a licensed hair person. At one point I thought I wanted to become one, but that didn’t pan out. Not to go on a rant about Aveda, but having my product sales numbers read out loud to the class wasn’t the kind of beauty school for which I thought I’d signed up. Nope. I did sales at The Container Store. Hell, I taught people how to sell at The Container Store. Why the eff would I want to be Aveda’s product pushing corporate pawn when all I wanted to do was learn how to cut hair really, really well?

And no, the Aveda Institute’s stupid sales stuff didn’t run me out of beauty school. You see, I’m grateful for learning that hair is really about products. I now can do some cool stuff with pomade and hair spray. But! I didn’t want to pervert my purpose, which was only about the art of giving a good hair cut. Being “just a good hair cutter” won’t sustain you in the beauty business, though. No, it’s product sales. And up-selling. That deep penetrating hair treatment that costs $120 in the salon? It will wash out in 48 hours and you’ll be back to looking like a frizzy mess. Worse yet? You’ll feel disappointed and misled. Take it from me: You’ll get greater satisfaction out of that money if you book yourself an amazing massage with a huge-handed guy named Sven.

I couldn’t keep lying to people in order to make money off of them. It’s wrong. I had to get out of hair sales before I ended up like Willy Loman. Worrying about what people thought of me and having to constantly watch my back was literally driving me crazy.

After about three months I withdrew from the Aveda Institute/Aveda Product Sales Machine and had myself a good old-fashioned summer vacation (those of you who know me personally are probably saying, “Whew!” because there is truth here that I am withholding because the Internet doesn’t get to know everything about my life). Thought I’d sworn off hair. Truly, I swore off sales.

When I go back and read the journal I kept during that period of time I see a lot of conflict between giving a good haircut and asking for money. I walked all over town and sweated and drank coffee and read books and contemplated selling my hair-doing kit. People, I have a golden curling iron. It’s ridiculous. I looked at it for weeks and said to myself, “Hair is so stupid. Look at this impressively shiny, yet poorly functioning piece of equipment.” That thing embodied everything I hated about hair school. It merely looked expensive. And I said to myself on a long walk from from NW 20th and Flanders to SE 50th and Hawthorne, “The only way I can do hair for people is if I don’t take money.” It was a breakthrough. A hot, caffeine-charged realization that freed me to pick up the scissors again.

“That’s right,” I thought, “I don’t want to do hair because I want to swim in cash. I want to do hair because it’s fun for me and helps people feel good about themselves.”

It’s all or nothing. I don’t want to ask for just a few bucks for a haircut, let alone a lot of bucks. When you put a dollar amount on something, an expectation is set. Nobody goes to Rudy’s expecting the most fantastic razored haircut ever. Why? Because Rudy’s is cheap and the people who work there want you cut, styled and paid up in as little time as possible. On the flipside, when you pay $80 for a smashing new style you expect better than smashing. You kinda hope that new ‘do will get you laid. In Nyco’s One-Woman Unlicensed Salon? I’m just honored that you asked me to do your hair. That’s it. If you want to make me cookies, cool. Otherwise, thanks for letting me do what I love, and do it for you.