Author |Shepherd.
Edit |Su Wei.
Title Picture |"The Last Haircut".
Where did all the girls in the salon go?
A chance haircutting experience made me curious about the group of female hairstylists. Unlike the previous haircut experience, from the moment she put the cloth on me, the whole service was very relaxed and comfortable, and I received a new hairstyle that I was very satisfied with.
When talking excitedly to her friend about the female hairstylist, she asked, "Ah, did you ask them to be replaced?" ”
Picture: "The Last Haircut").
This seems to be the attitude of many people towards female hairstylists: the less they are seen, the more they question their level of haircuts. In the face of this "particularity", people continue to ridicule male hairstylists, and also give them a collective name, female tony.
But obviously more than ten years ago, female barbers could be seen everywhere in the community shops on the streets, and those sisters and aunts were trimming Chinese hair inch by inch. But I don't know when they began to disappear like thinned hair.
Why did the female hairstylist, who used to play an important role in the industry, become a rare "lone seedling" today? When a woman chooses to pick up a hair scissor and stand in front of a mirror, facing all kinds of customers, what kind of prejudice does she need to overcome and what advantages does she have?
With these questions in mind, I spoke to a few female hairstylists, and here's what they had to say.
Being a hairstylist is never easy".
nori |1 and a half years in the industry |Chengdu.
Before becoming a hairstylist, I had been working in the workplace for 10 years. I have done Internet brand operation, has my own fragrance brand, and is also doing home furnishing blogger and photography design.
I'm a person who likes to toss my hair, and when I talk to hairstylists about my design ideas, they even think I'm a peer. By chance, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the skills I had accumulated over the past decade, such as communication, marketing, customer acquisition, design, and operations, were all in line with those required by a hairstylist. In recent years, the industry has been fiercely competitive, so I came up with the idea of switching tracks.
Nori uses a doll head for hairstyling exercises. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
I was 33 years old when I changed careers, and my peers in the industry have become "masters" in the industry. I don't have the time to start with chores like my peers who are more than a decade younger than me, so I can only choose a ** education with a higher cost of money but a short learning time.
At present, the training in the domestic hairdressing industry is relatively fragmented, and I have taken skills courses ranging from 3 to 15 days with different teachers, and I have also flown to South Korea to study. It has become my norm to use courseware and video resources purchased online to study on my own, and to practice with a dummy head and a hairstyle design book.
Nori made a list of the books he had read, hoping to give a reference to other older colleagues who had changed careers. (Figure @nori).
In addition to taking classes seriously, I also put a lot of thought into preparing the tools. When applying for a job, the store will only provide a workstation, and the hairstylists buy scissors, combs, hair dryers, curling irons, hair straighteners, including hairpins, essential oils, hair waxes and other styling products for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
To be honest, it's no cheaper to keep iterating and updating these tools and consumables than changing lenses and accessories when I play photography.
Roughly calculated, I have accumulated 300 offline class hours in more than half a year of study, plus various upfront costs, I have spent nearly 40,000 yuan before work.
The tools that Nori commonly uses are not expensive at present, but after the hairstylist level reaches a certain level, it is normal to use tens of thousands of scissors in a piece. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
In the early spring of 2023, I started renting space to provide services to customers who are on a reservation basis. I remember my first customer, who just saw my self-introduction and hairstyle sharing on social **, and became trusting in my aesthetic, so he came to me in his pajamas to cut his hair.
Looking back on it now, I am still grateful. At a time when the domestic hairdressing industry is still dominated by male hairstylists, female hairstylists are often in a position where they are not trusted or even excluded. When I was studying, there was already a serious imbalance in the ratio of men and women in the class; At work, male hairstylists crowd out female colleagues, and it is not uncommon for male and even female customers to refuse female hairstylists to serve them.
In other industries, it is not uncommon for women to be excluded by men. (Photo: "Queen of News").
Because of this, the unconditional trust of my first guest is even more precious, and it has become the motivation for me to continue to improve my skills and express myself to this day.
At the beginning of this year, I finally passed the interview and settled in a commercial store. My peers reminded me that the not-so-happy side of the profession only really shows up when I work full-time. But I believe that as long as I focus on technology and serve my customers well, I will be able to go far in this career.
"Hairdresser, once a glorious profession".
Ah Yan |42 years in the industry |Guangzhou.
I started the industry at the age of 16, in the late '80s, when the hairdressing industry was just emerging. At that time, the supply of barbershops was in short supply, I was not good at reading, and I did not have any skills, so I thought that barbering was a new industry, and it happened that a cousin in my family opened a hairdresser's shop, so I helped in her shop.
As an apprentice, I earned only 30 yuan a month, which was half the minimum wage. I said that I was an apprentice hairdresser, but I was so busy every day that I didn't really "learn" at all, so I could only quietly observe the operation of ** between mopping the floor, washing towels, and washing hair.
To this day, apprenticeships are still the main way for many newcomers to enter the industry. (Picture: "Life Deletion Office").
No way, that's the rule of this industry, ** almost no special teaching, it would be nice to allow me to "peek". **Say, if you still can't learn after watching it like this, don't do it.
I spent 3 years all year round, while doing chores to learn the basics of cutting, blow-drying, perming, and even learned advanced skills such as hair renewal, evening hair bun, and then spent 100 yuan to take a junior hairdresser certificate, and took the post with the certificate.
In the early 90s of the 20th century, it was actually a very honorable thing for girls to be hairdressers. When my relatives heard that I could "serve others and bring beauty to others", they felt very honored.
When the hairdressing industry first emerged in China, half of the barbershops were women. (Photo: "Female Barber").
But by the year 2000, a few people in the industry had done something unclean, and the entire industry of female hairdressers was looked down upon.
It turned out that some guests would call me very affectionately when they saw that I was a young girl: "Little sister, you can cut it for me!" "Later, when some customers saw that I was a woman, they avoided saying that they would not cut it. Some people see a female barber in the shop and won't come in at all.
When the elders introduced me to the subject, they waved their hands as soon as they heard that it was a female barber. It wasn't until I turned 50 a few years ago that I found my life partner.
It's ridiculous to think about it, obviously my skills are better than so many kids who have just entered the industry, and I am also seriously begging for life, but some people miss me simply because of my gender and solidified stereotypes, how is this not their loss?
Ah Yan's shop has only two workstations, but it has already received tens of thousands of customers. (Photo: Shepherd).
I've been running my own shop for 17 years, and I've cut the hair of tens of thousands of people, most of them repeat customers. Some of our young customers have never been to a chain salon since I had my hair cut. I'm happy that my skills have been recognized by customers, but I don't really like my job that much.
Doing this line is "hand stop", more than ten hours of standing every day, needless to say, when there are many people, I do it alone with smoke above my head, and when there are few people, I have to start worrying about today's rent from the ** expenditure.
Personally, I think that in the current industry environment, if there is another choice, girls should try not to be barbers. One of my nieces studied with me for a short time after graduating from high school, and then I asked her to switch to finance.
Getting a beautiful haircut for your guests is the "source of happiness" for every barber. (Photo: "Female Barber").
I still think a lot about when I was younger. Every time I accidentally scratch a customer's ear, I break out in a cold sweat. It is particularly difficult to stop bleeding in my ears, so I hurriedly looked for kaleidophera oil and hemostatic patches everywhere, and the customer was not unhappy, but comforted me with a smile while pressing his ears: "It's okay, little sister, don't be nervous." ”
"We deserve to be seen".
doris |6 years in the industry |Shenzhen.
Before I switched careers, I was a marketing director for a human resources company. But at the age of 28, after encountering a career bottleneck and a lot of age anxiety, I combined my interest in braiding and planned a career path to become a hairstylist.
After a 4-month hairdressing training course, I worked as an assistant in a store for 6 months. At first, I was really uncomfortable, after all, I was dressed up in the company not long ago, and when I turned around, I became a shampoo girl who rubbed more than a dozen heads a day in the hair salon, and this gap was quite big.
Doris worked as a Marketing Director before switching careers. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
In 2019, I went to Tokyo, Japan to study, and while I was impressed by the art of hairstyling full of craftsmanship, I also found that the proportion of female practitioners was quite high, which also strengthened my confidence to continue working in the industry. Now, 6 years later, I have my first store in Shenzhen.
I actually understand why many people are not optimistic about the development of women in this industry, because women, especially women with reproductive pressure, do need to pay more to reach the same career heights than men.
The first is professional bias, and I've met customers who ask me directly, "You're a woman, can you cut your hair?" "Their views aren't likely to change because I'm a store manager or a high-performing hairstylist.
Doris and Partners' store in Shenzhen. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
As a first-hand witness of childbirth, I know how hard a pregnancy can be for female practitioners. The wear and tear of a pregnant woman's body is obvious, and once the maternity leave is taken, the customer resources that have been accumulated so hard before are easily lost.
As a craftsman, if you don't hold scissors for a long time, you will be out of touch with fashion trends if you don't communicate with customers, and it takes a lot of courage and determination to start over, which is also the main reason why many female hairstylists do not choose to return to the workplace after giving birth.
As a result, I continued to work at a high intensity until I was 7 months pregnant, and I continued to work at least 2 days a week, and I returned to full-time work 4 months after giving birth.
After giving birth, we are also easily "kidnapped by motherhood", and it seems that if we do not accompany our children all day, we are "irresponsible mothers". I had to bring my children to work with me.
Despite all the difficulties, I am still happy to be a female hairstylist. Many of my clients tell me that they prefer a female hairstylist because many male hairstylists like to impose their own aesthetic on their clients, but female hairstylists prefer to listen to their customers and recommend hairstyles that are more suitable for them.
Doris is giving a haircut to a guest. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
When I meet customers who are similar to women my age, they will take the initiative to talk to me about their children and family, and I will also share my previous experience in dealing with similar things, encouraging them to communicate and fight for themselves. At the end of the service, it was as if we were both energized.
From my personal experience, most of the women I meet have higher levels of empathy, communication skills and responsibility than men, and these are very core skills in the service industry. Therefore, I sincerely hope that more girls will join the hairdressing industry in the future.
In fact, in countries and regions where the hairdressing industry is mature, female hairstylists are common. With the gradual improvement of domestic customers' requirements for aesthetics and service quality, I think female hairstylists will become more and more popular in the future.
In recent years, I have witnessed many women around me who have a clear plan for their future and pursue the development of the beauty industry. When the quality practitioners in the industry begin to be constantly filled, I believe that more and more female hairstylists can and deserve to be seen.
Proofreading: Encounter, Operation Typesetting: Ono.