“I have always loved cutting hair. As a child, my sisters would get mad when I cut their dolls’ hair, but before long I was cutting their hair for them and on my way to graduating beauty school.”

“I started my first job at a locally-owned salon in our mall after graduating beauty school in 1987. There, I got great training along with my first paycheck and the ability to buy my first car all while doing what I loved. Since then, I have worked at four different salons.”

“I decided to retire years ago to be more hands-on at home and to help raise my grandchild, but recently, I decided to return to my career that I felt so fulfilled in. Little did I know that the process of renewing my license after only a few years of being out of the workforce would be filled with burdensome roadblocks.”

“Just renewing my license would’ve costed $325 and I would have to go through strenuous testing for a job I had spent my life doing. I’d need to travel hours away to Baton Rouge and take an exam like the one I’d already taken years ago. Much of the information I would need to study didn’t pertain whatsoever to the work I do day to day.”

“Topics I would need to learn included responsibilities of beauty school, requirements for opening a mobile salon, requirements for eligibility to take the exam, requirements for taking a high school cosmetology course, and how to report my hours. None of this had anything to do with actually performing the work of a hairdresser.”

“I was ready to start doing what I loved again, but the burdensome process and the daunting fees started to wear me down. In the end, I didn’t return to hairstyling. If the licensing requirements had been more reasonable, I know I would probably be working in a salon doing what I love.”

“It should be up to the salon to decide if I’m going to do hair again. Certainly not a state board that doesn’t know me or what I can do. Just because I know these things about schooling requirements and other things like that, I don’t think that really has anything to do with whether a salon would hire me.”

“I don’t mind a little bit of oversight on things, but the heavy fees and testing is just not helpful. The customers should decide if they like my work. Obviously, I wouldn’t have customers if I didn’t know what I was doing.”

– Candy Billiot |  Retired Hairdresser | Bourg, LA