Sunday, November 22, 2015

Penelope

Cosmetology school is nothing like real school. There are some technical lessons where we sit in a classroom and take notes from powerpoints about different shampoos and scalp treatments. These slides later reappear, verbatim, as questions on the world's easiest exams. Most of our lessons take place on Penelope. She is our first mannequin head (they are all named Penelope by virtue of a neck tattoo/brand name). She has real human hair, which was sold to the Penelope company by people in developing countries. While knowing this kind of makes me feel like I have "white privilege" stamped across my forehead, she functions as incredibly helpful hands-on practice. The Kafkaesque rows of suspended Penelopes at our work stations, Penelopes floating in sinks, and Penelopes popping off their stands in a flurry of tangled hair and brushes have lost their surrealism and become commonplace. Some of us have distinguished our Penelope's with piercings and facial tattoos. My Penelope has a teardrop tattoo surrounding a blue dermal, and a classic "Mom" neck tattoo. This is my girl after our first curling iron lesson:

This week we learned a few different blow-dry techniques, as well as the functions of our various brushes. Since I have been living in a state of cosmetological ignorance for the last 25 years, the results of these techniques seemed more like magic tricks. For example: if you roll up a lock of hair in a round brush and blast it with the cold setting on your dryer for a few seconds, you can achieve big-texas-beauty-pageant-prostitute curls by literally unwinding the hair in a magic wand motion. Once we'd honed our magic on the Penelopes, we got to move on to each other. This part is especially fun because we practice giving head massages during the shampoo. Working on human heads was more nerve-wracking than I had anticipated. Unlike Penelope, my classmates have the capacity to feel pain if I get a brush stuck in a tangled nest of hair. Also, I feel really guilty if I turn a lock of someone's hair into a tangled nest. One time I stabbed my partner in the eye with my fingernail while trying to move his hair out of his eyes, but he was a great sport about it. Overall, our days are pretty fun and the atmosphere is really positive. Everyone mills around looking at each other's work and making encouraging comments about specific technical aspects. The phrase "killin it!" gets thrown around often. I'm quite pleased (and frankly a little surprised) at how much I've enjoyed this first week.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Back to School


We started our first day of classes by receiving free manicures from current students. This was both a pleasant surprise, and a pretty obvious way of filling time. My manicurist was an apathetic child. But she did a pretty good job, regardless. She was pleasantly unphased when I asked her to simply sharpen my stiletto nails. This service was followed by a leisurely hour long lunch break.

This afternoon we had what I would have referred to it as "syllabus day" in my past life at real school. In addition to briefly reviewing the syllabus, we spent the better part of the day inspecting our new kits (the aforementioned swag). We each collected an enormous box of gear from the peppy director-and/or-administrator-ladies, brought them into the upstairs hall, spread out, and tore into them like Christmas. We inspected the integrity of each individual makeup brush, fake eyelash set, creepy mannequin head, and so on. We plugged in all our blow dryers and irons and tested their settings. We made passwords for our new ipads. Then we used our new ipads to make a million other passwords for a million other online resource accounts. We skimmed through our only physical textbook: a thousand-pound instructional manual that is literally called Milady. (Anyone watch The League?) Then we set up our stations, did a little reading from Milady, and called it a day.

The other kids were pretty nice. I didn't have to eat lunch alone in the bathroom. The girls are mostly 18, and really sweet. My favorite 18 year old delightfully exclaimed that she had just graduated from high school and found it surreal to be "surrounded by so many adults!" I happily chose a work station between her, and the badass Alaskan girl with the knuckle tattooes. Overall I was feeling pretty good, very tired and excited as I carried my box of mannequin heads through the torrential downpour. Then I finally reached my car and found a waterlogged 80$ parking ticket.


Friday, November 13, 2015

Orientation

Yesterday I attended four hours of orientation. Myself, and about 30 other students were ushered into an upstairs classroom by the ebullient Aveda staff. Seven or eight female employees led us through a slide show explaining our curriculum and class policies. All the women have titles like "director of something" or "something administrator". They're all very pretty, endearingly plump, and have amazing hair. They spent the first part of the morning introducing themselves, explaining how they ended up at Aveda, and why they love their jobs. To me this portion felt more like a demonstration of how fun and quirky everyone thought themselves to be. Their tame and silly anecdotes were received with uproarious laughter from both their coworkers and my soon to be classmates. One director-of-something woman used the phrase "easy peasy!" like eight times (silver lining: she only finished with "lemon squeezy" once). I caught myself scanning the room a couple times to see if anyone else didn't find their antics roll-on-the floor hysterical. No dice. But despite my hesitation to share in their laughing gas, I believe their gregariousness and indisputable efforts to make us feel comfortable were genuine. Their attempts were appreciated.


My classmates are mostly young girls, as I had anticipated. A lot of them are really pretty, like really really pretty. I would like to think of myself as a wise and well-traveled 25 year old who is educated and compassionate, and isn't intimidated by a bunch of hot chicks with impeccable makeup... but maybe I'm not. I met a couple people that I thought could become my class friends. One of the very few boys in my class was nice, calm, and a few years older than me. I also liked this really badass girl who just moved from Alaska where she had been working the fishing seasons. She has "sink" and "swim" knuckle tattooes.

Overall, my classes seem interesting and fast-paced. We participate in some cool charitable events too, like Locks of Love. I'm nervous that I'm the only one who has absolutely zero base knowledge of all things hair or makeup (a lot of people have backgrounds in dance and theatre), but I'm probably not the only one who feels that way. Just have to keep my carpal tunnel in check and this should prove to be a pretty fun endeavor.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

I am equal parts excited and nervous to announce that I will start hair school in exactly two weeks. Technically I'm going to cosmetology school, but seeing as I am not interested in the doing-nails or waxing-vaginas portions of the curriculum, I prefer to avoid the 'c' word in favor of the more affectionate epithet: hair school. Hopefully I will not actually live up to the title of Beauty School Dropout. These are simply my preconceived anxieties about the program. I have orientation next week, which should either feed or quell said anxieties.

Pros: I am excited to learn a trade, have an income-generating skill that I can travel with, and a job that doubles as a creative outlet. I'm excited to retire from my nocturnal bar life and become a day crawler. I am also looking forward to receiving the 2.5 thousand dollar kit that is included in my tuition. I'm pretty sure Aveda products are on the expensive side of the cosmetics scale, so I can only presume that this kit is comprised of dope yuppie swag.

Cons: I am nervous that I will be surrounded by a hoard of vapid 18 year olds that think twitter counts as "liking to read", I will not be intellectually challenged or stimulated, and will spiral into a deep cavern of regret over my wasted time and money when I could have elected to go to "real" school.