While wrapping up the 1972 ski season, I met a male hairdresser who seemed to have everything I wanted: nice clothes, a new Porsche and lots of women. Wads of cash, thick hair on his chest, and lots of women. Socks with no holes, gleaming teeth and lots of women. But, what particularly impressed me was that he could afford a place without 18 roommates.
So, at the end of the ski season, I moved into a studio apartment with two friends and enrolled at The Hair Academy of Beverly Hills. I didn’t do much research to see if it was a good school – I surmised if it was in Beverly Hills, Barbra Streisand was bound to walk through the doors. As it turned out, our school was located on the fringe of Beverly Hills, in the seediest part of West Hollywood. I was heart-broken to learn that millionaire actresses usually don’t get their hair done in beauty schools by people with three weeks of experience.
The first thing that surprised me about beauty school was how much there was to learn. Ms. Tulip was the lead instructor and had over 67 years of experience in the trenches. She would be leading us through 10,000 hours of general theory that included organic chemistry, sterilization techniques, the principles of abdominal-thoracic surgery and an introduction to skin and nail care. They were important concepts to have when they brought in the homeless women from the Los Angeles Rescue Mission. Most of the women hadn’t had a shampoo since 1927, when shampoo was invented, so we got a lot of practice de-lousing and ridding them of seborrhea, ringworm, and the heartbreak of psoriasis – all of the things you’d expect to see at an upscale Beverly Hills salon.
Twenty hours were devoted to learning “cold waving” or giving permanent waves. I don’t know why they call it cold waving. Judging from the number of screams you heard from the perm solution scalding the scalp, it felt anything but cold.
Getting a permanent wave from a beauty school student takes a lot of guts and not much money or sense. What you tended to end up with was something between Darla’s cute little “Little Rascals” do and the business end of a warthog. I learned a number of valuable concepts during my permanent wave training – like not leaving the solution on too little or too long. My first failure happened when I rinsed the perm solution out too early. Mrs. Belvedere left the school with hair sticking out at 45 degree angles. I made up for it on the next client by leaving the solution on twice as long – resulting in my first “kick perm.” A kick perm is one where the hair is wrapped around the rods so tightly that the rubber bands literally dissolve the hair at the scalp. As each rod fell off onto the floor, Ms. Tulip taught me how to kick the rods underneath the sink before anyone saw them. Hence, the term, “kick perm.”
The next challenge came in the form of hair coloring. As every elementary school student knows, all color starts out as some combination of three primary colors: red, green or blue. Through the wonders of chemistry, I discovered others, like “moss-covered rock,” “decimated pumpkin rinds” and “fermented fettuccini.” To make it easy on us, Ms. Tulip started us out with blind women with thinning hair. It’s hard to stray too far from the center line when the client can’t see the results. The one thing we were never concerned with in beauty school is how to build repeat business.
Next up, 20 hours of shampooing practice. I learned how to give a “proper” shampoo: by strategically reclining the client in the chair so I got the best view down their blouse. It was also a good time to get to know my clients – asking how much they weighed and how they got that metal plate in their head. I learned about “Issur’s Law.” It states, “There is a direct relationship between how hot the water is and how far you can make your client jump out of the chair.” I also learned the importance of a good aim. Nothing turns off your client more than drenching the back of their dress, down to their butt crack.
Then, came the fun part: 30 hours of hair cutting. Like hair coloring, I found it amazing how much destruction you could wield in a short period of time with no training. They taught us not to worry about cutting their hair too short. By the time it grew back, we’d be long gone.
The final phase of my cosmetology training involved 35 hours of manicuring and pedicuring. We learned terms like cuticles, nail beds and specialized equipment like emery boards, buffers, and reciprocating saws. After weeks of practicing manicuring and pedicuring on each other, I developed my own unique technique for applying nail polish: I’d dip the client’s entire finger into the bottle of polish and wipe away the excess with a towel. The technique worked equally well on thumbs and toes.
After 37 weeks of intense instruction, I could see light at the end of the tunnel. There was only one skill yet to be learned: hot waxing. Hot waxing is one method of “permanently” removing hair from an area of the body using hot bees wax, covered in gauze. It’s popular for both men and women on eyebrows, the upper lip, face, legs, arms, under arms, the back, abdomen, feet and unmentionable areas. I was out sick the week the students practiced Brazilian Waxing on the homeless women. And, since none of the female students would let me practice on them, I had to practice on my dog.
While most salons describe waxing as mildly uncomfortable, clients told me it was like being slaughtered at Little Big Horn.
Graduation day from The Hair Academy of Beverly Hills came and went without fanfare. With over 100 new students in the queue, Ms. Tulip was far too busy with breaking up the cat fights in the women’s locker room to give me anything more than a nod and a shove out the door. But she did manage to help me land my first job at “Hair Today – Gone Tomorrow.” The rest is history.
