Why more girls should be hairdressers
Her fellow feminists will be enraged. But JENNI MURRAY says intellectually snobby schools should stop stigmatising a fulfilling and well paid career
Hold on to your hats because Jenni Murray, feminist and vocal promoter of equal opportunities in education and employment, has something to confess.
lately I have found myself deviating from my usual mantra of encouraging girls to take up engineering or rocket science, or prepare themselves to chair a board meeting.
Instead, I say: ‘Have you considered hairdressing?’
Apparently so few young men and women are taking up the profession that it’s heading for a crisis and salons are desperate to recruit. That’s despite the fact that it’s well paid, skilled, recession-proof and training is (usually) paid.
It was a conversation with my current hairdresser Karine Jackson that alerted me to the problem. Karine, who is the newly elected President of the Fellowship for British Hairdressing, says she’s deeply concerned about what she describes as a ‘desperate shortage’ of young people taking up training as apprentices.
A recent survey she conducted among her members found 54 per cent of salon owners had fewer apprentices than usual and 92 per cent reported challenges in employing apprentices.
The problems centred on schools and funding. lots of the salon owners had asked schools for permission to speak to students about the opportunities in hairdressing and to lay to rest the idea — still commonly held — that it’s an easy opt out for the less academically inclined. Most found the schools unresponsive or uncooperative.
It’s not so different from two views of the profession that I encountered when I was at school in the Sixties. Then, a number of girls dreamed of learning how to wield a pair of scissors like Vidal Sassoon. They pictured themselves sashaying down the King’s Road in Chelsea, in the footsteps of Mary Quant, bobbing the hair of rich and famous women.
It would be an exciting and a wonderful way to earn a living.
But careers advisers promoted a rather more pragmatic and less romantic view of the job. It would be a nice, useful, respectable and dependable little occupation for the less academic pupil to tide her over until she married and became a wife and mother.
Whatever the reason, it was a popular choice for several of my contemporaries.
I don’t think they made it to london, but they set up salons in and around Barnsley and seemed to do very well as a result.
It was my mother who taught me to appreciate the talents of a great hairdresser. I learned from her that feeling confident about the way your hair looked was a vital part of a woman’s armoury. Mum made weekly visits, every Friday afternoon. There would be a perm and cut every six weeks, kept under control with a regular shampoo and set.
As she grew older and her Parkinson’s disease made travelling difficult, her hairdresser visited her at home.
Mum missed the gossipy atmosphere of the salon, but was delighted to keep up what is, at its best, an intimate relationship where confidences are shared and the client places complete trust in
the practitioner to make her crowning glory, well . . . glorious.
I haven’t stayed in one place long enough to have a lifelong relationship with one hairdresser but, as I’ve moved around the country, I’ve been incredibly lucky to find hairdressers, sometimes men, sometimes women, for whom the job is more than just a craft. It’s an art.
There was Annie who, during the Vidal Sassoon sharp-cut bob era, knew exactly how to fit the style to the shape of my face. Then came Trevor when the fashion changed to the fluffy, lady di or Farrah Fawcett look. He knew how to perm without a hint of frizz.
Then there was olivier, a charming Frenchman, who nursed me through the horrors of hair loss during chemotherapy, wigs and restoration of my own style and colour through my 40s and 50s.
Part of the blame for the shortage of eager young trainees today is laid at the door of funding. Schools gain extra cash for the pupils who are prepared to stay on past 16, while students can claim travel allowances and
parents continue to receive benefit for children in full-time education. Apprentices and their parents are not supported in the same way.
It would, says Karine, make much more sense for the Government to treat all apprentices and students the same financially.
As for the perception of the job, Karine and other leading salon owners who took part in the survey are furious at the continued assumption, put about, she says, by schools, that it’s good work for the dim because it’s low skilled, poorly paid and easy, when in fact it’s hard work and highly skilled. That the job is low paid at the outset is indisputable, but all the training is paid for and 46 per cent of the salons surveyed reported stylists earning £30,000 plus.
Thirty per cent had stylists earning £30,000 to £40,000 and 16 per cent had team members earning £50,000 or more.
It’s also a job that can bring you fame and fortune.
Who doesn’t know the name of Nicky Clarke or Charles Worthington — stylists who can charge hundreds of pounds for a colour, cut and blow dry? That’s if you can manage to get an appointment at all, their services are in such demand. And you don’t have to be a man to have celebrities beating down your door to experience the latest style from the creme de la creme of the industry.
Look at Jo Hansford. Four years ago she celebrated the 20th anniversary of the salon she was told at the outset wouldn’t survive more than three months because it was run by a woman.
She now has an MBE for services to hairdressing, her own range of products, a huge salon in Mayfair, 48 members of staff and clients ranging from Angelina Jolie, through Nigella Lawson to the Duchess of Cornwall. She, like all the other big names, started as a teenager, sweeping the floor, working hard and learning her craft and her art.
So, with no irony at all, I say to girls, if A-levels and university are not for you, but you’re willing to put in the hours, be on your feet for most of the day, would love to make other women feel great and have an inclination towards running your own business, why not give hairdressing a go?
The women featured above did and have never looked back . . .