LIVING WITHOUT BEAUTY

The beauty business is layered with stereotypes. The movie, Grease, didn’t help its cause when, in 1978, one of the movie’s most popular songs was Beauty School Dropout. So began the plummet of the notion that choosing beauty school for a career was a step down from intelligence and being taken seriously.

The beauty business is often taken for granted and the perception of people working in it is certainly not of one filled with people and their intellect.
“What’s a nice Jewish girl like you doing working here?” A snarky realtor said to me when I was just starting my career at a hair salon in Newport. I had been applying lipstick to her at some type of group makeover party and she, being Jewish as well, felt that was an appropriate thing to say to me.

Little did she know I was already insecure about my career choice. I had been listening to my grandmother for many months, “Alayne, why don’t you finish college and become a teacher, you are so good with children.” What I wanted to say was, Because I don’t fucking want to, but like a good granddaughter, instead, I just said something like Because I really want to go to beauty school.

Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, it wasn’t the bragging choice my grandparents wanted for their first born grandchild.
We may not think about the wildly successful women and men who have famously forged a path of their own using the beauty business as their vehicle. The beauty business has been career choices for many highly over achieving entrepreneurs.