Melony’s natural hair braiding business, Naturally Speaking in Mississippi, now employs 25 people and has trained more than 125 people how to braid hair. But becoming a braiding entrepreneur was unnecessarily challenging: the state required her to spend 300 hours in a “wigology” class that didn’t even teach braiding; and out of the state’s 40 schools, only two taught this course. And then when she went to pass on her skills to others, she learned she had to take an additional 3,200 hours to become a licensed cosmetology instructor—learning skills she did not engage in, and learning nothing about braiding. Melony’s fierce advocacy led to the state exempting braiding from cosmetology licensing. 

Cristina is one of the hundreds of entrepreneurs whose small businesses were endangered when her state began requiring a cosmetology license for makeup artists.  Cristina is a cosmetology school graduate, but her $20,000 program only spent about a week on makeup; her instructor even recommended she take a separate $400 makeup artist certification course.  After she graduated and passed the exams, she couldn’t afford the license fee, so never got it.  When the state began requiring it, she was told too much time had passed since school—so she took her business underground to avoid fines and criminal penalties.  She teamed up with the Institute for Justice to successfully push for a bill that exempts special event hair, makeup, and blow-dry services from cosmetology licensure; providers only need to take a four-hour course on health, safety, and infection control. 

Brandy wanted to start a new chapter in her career in 2020 as an eyelash-extension specialist, so she trained for 320 hours to get licensed in Texas and opened a thriving eyelash extension business. When Brandy and her husband moved to Oklahoma, the State Board of Cosmetology insisted that she get a full cosmetology license before continuing her business. Despite her extensive training and experience, her expertise meant nothing to the Board.

Debbie knows better than most that makeup is an afterthought in cosmetology school. Herself a licensed cosmetologist, Debbie worked for years as an instructor and later education director for a large chain of cosmetology schools. As she describes it, cosmetology school just teaches students how to touch up clients’ makeup.  Debbie has also seen firsthand how cosmetology schools, hungry for financial aid money, reel in aspiring makeup artists. “They tell them, ‘Everything you want is on the other side of this contract,’” she says. These students would often ask her how they could build a career in makeup like hers. It gave her no pleasure to tell them they would not learn the necessary skills in cosmetology school. This experience inspired Debbie to open Faces Etc, the first dedicated makeup school in the Upper Midwest. But when the state started requiring cosmetology school for makeup artists, Face Etc’s enrollment plummeted since graduates could no longer legally work unless they also had a cosmetology license. Thanks to her advocacy alongside Cristina, her state exempted makeup artists from licensure.

Even after passing beauty school with flying colors, Kristin was not properly equipped for a career as a nail tech, so she has dedicated her own career to helping beauty professionals hone their talents through practical skills education.