How do we, as professionals who have no choice but to interact in close proximity with the public, protect ourselves and our communities? How can we close the gaps in our revenue? Will our state board regulations change, and if so, how? How will our salons change?

Why Things Can’t Go Back to Normal…Yet

Even after we’re allowed to go back out into the world, COVID-19 will still exist. It will remain a threat to everyone, including you. (Remember, healthy and young people are also being affected.)

Until we have a vaccine, we will likely still be expected to follow some measure of social distancing protocol. If we want to see what that might look like, we can watch what’s going on in other countries as they also ease their quarantines, but we shouldn’t assume that Americans will be as compliant with mitigation efforts as the citizens of other countries. As with social distancing, what worked there may not work here (at least not as efficiently or effectively) because our cultures and our governments are so different.

We’re wild, sometimes defiant individualists who don’t often take kindly to being told what to do, especially when the people doing the telling are politicians. As individual Americans, we may have our differences but do you know what we all have in common? We are nobody’s bitch. Our lawmakers understood this too, which is why only a few had the courage to order shutdowns early. These politicians risked their careers in an effort to protect their citizens.

From the outside, it can seem frustrating to watch leaders struggle to make what seems like the obvious (and inevitable) choice, but it’s hard not to sympathize. The decisions these leaders had to make were not easy ones. Even now, we don’t know which among them made the right decision, if any. We may never know whose approach was the least damaging and most effective. As much as I believe every American should have been mobilized months ago to do whatever would be necessary to protect each other and their income, I can understand how impossible the situation must have felt.

We’re all finding ourselves in impossible situations these days, but maybe this time we can prepare for the challenge we’re all going to face before we suddenly find ourselves neck-deep in it. Moving forward, we should anticipate how these lawmakers will ease society into a lifestyle that resembles what we had before while keeping COVID-19 under control. At a bare minimum, what can we expect to be required to do? Will our protocols need to change? Furthermore, will salon owners be at risk of being held liable for local outbreaks if they don’t comply?

How Salons May Change in the Wake of The Curve

Employer-Provided PPE
Employers are already expected to provide adequate PPE to their employees but these are different circumstances. Professionals who ordinarily wouldn’t require PPE will likely now require a steady supply of masks and gloves that salon owners will have to make room in their budget for. This will be something clients will absolutely expect from estheticians and lashers but will probably also demand from all professionals who work within their breathing zone (hairstylists and massage therapists).

Handwash Stations in Reception and/or Service Areas
Some nail salons have these already, but I anticipate they’ll become far more common as professionals put pressure on their employers and legislators to keep them safe.

Occupancy Restrictions & Distancing Rules
We may be told to grant additional square footage between each station and/or to limit the amount of people in our salons simultaneously. These changes may put salon owners in a position where they must eliminate positions or scale back employee hours. Should this come to pass, salon owners who take out PPP loans may have their eligibility for forgiveness compromised. (More information on the PPP’s forgiveness rules can be found at the end of the post.)

Service Restrictions
While I don’t consider this super likely, we may be temporarily prohibited from performing services that put us face-to-face with clients, like lashing, manicures, facials, and permanent makeup.

Periodic Mandatory Closures
Hopefully, breakthroughs in testing and tracking will pay off so we can avoid being ordered to shut down during local outbreaks. If not, then salon owners can expect to be required to close along with all other nonessential businesses when new infection counts start rising.

New Client Policies
I know I’m not the only salon owner preparing to communicate some new protocols to my clients. I can’t speak for those owners, but my salon will be requiring clients to wear face coverings until a vaccine is readily available. (We already require them to wash their hands upon arrival.)

Salon owners who do not want their brands tied to a local outbreak will ensure both their employees and their clients are following proper distancing and disinfection protocol at all times.

Until we know more, we have no idea what those social distancing protocols will look like for us. However, you should expect that failure or refusal to comply will come with hefty legal and/or financial consequences. Speaking of consequences…

Potential Problems for Salon Owners

Let’s talk about liability. I have so many questions and you should too.

• If your salon is deemed responsible for an outbreak, could you be held legally responsible for deaths, hospitalizations, or lost income?
• If a client or employee who contracted COVID-19 at your salon dies, can their family sue you for poor infection control?
• What happens if an infected person intentionally conceals their symptoms so they can return to work and ends up infecting others?
• If an immunocompromised employee doesn’t feel safe returning to work at the salon and is then fired for it, will it count as an ADA violation and will the employee have any legal recourse?

Before you comment that these questions are ridiculous, remember that Just a few weeks ago, we had idiots coughing on produce. Those idiots were charged with felonies for terroristic threats.

If you missed the produce debacle in the deluge of news, you don’t have to believe me. Proof provided. Here’s another one that happened last week. As a matter of fact, lawyers are already discussing how to prosecute purposeful exposure. Here’s an excerpt:

“On March 24, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen sent U.S. attorneys and federal law enforcement agencies a memo informing Department of Justice officials that they should consider prosecuting certain “purposeful exposure or infection of others with COVID-19” under federal terrorism-related statutes.”

Here’s more:

“The Rosen memorandum lists several federal statutes that may be relevant. The most important is 18 U.S.C § 2332a, which criminalizes the use of weapons of mass destruction. The statute makes it a federal offense to use, threaten, or attempt to use or conspire to use a “weapon of mass destruction” against persons within the United States. Section 2332a(c)(2) defines that term to include “any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector,” as those terms are defined in 18 U.S.C § 178, which in turn defines “biological agents” to include viruses “capable of causing death, disease, or other biological malfunction in a human.” Hence, using a weapon involving a virus capable of causing death would be a federal offense.

Unlike many federal terrorism statutes, Section 2332a does not require the government to prove that the offense contains a transnational or foreign element—so an infected person who maliciously coughs on someone else might be charged even if she is not doing so as part of a campaign to, for example, support the Islamic State. The individual need not have the specific intent to kill the victim to be found guilty of a violation of § 2332a. A person found guilty of a violation of § 2332a faces imprisonment for any term of years or for life; if the offense causes death, the person could face the death penalty.”

Read the bold print, then click into the actual article and read the whole thing. (I highly recommend adding “coronavirus exposure + terrorism” to your Google Alerts if you want to keep up with that conversation.)

You done? Good. Let’s continue:

• What constitutes gross negligence in the post-curve, pre-vaccine period?
• When does carelessness become recklessness?
• Will we be required to carry some kind of infectious disease insurance now?

We need to have the answers to these questions before we even consider opening our doors to the public again.

I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t ever want to end up in a situation where the only thing a group of local COVID patients has in common is that they visited my salon, nor do I want my brand associated with a legal precedent.

How Do Salons Survive the Post-Curve, Pre-Vaccine Period?

The answer to this will be different for every owner and depends highly on their personal and professional circumstances. Those who knew they weren’t strong enough to financially weather a two-month shutdown, let alone an 18+ month shutdown, have worked with their landlords to make a smooth exit so they can conserve their resources and hopefully return strong later. We’re not talking about them, but the owners who have decided to take the risk and weather the storm for however long they can. From where I sit in the industry I see three camps, each with different strategies. I’ll present them in order, from those I consider most viable to least viable.

Camp 1: “Buckle down, switch focus, and serve the community however possible.”

Instead of considering yourself a “salon owner” during this time, consider yourself a “business owner” and serve people however you can. This is what we’re planning to do by providing low-cost grocery delivery and errand running for our clients, the vast majority of whom are at-risk seniors.

How you choose to serve your community is up to you, but start thinking outside of the box many salon owners are stuck in.

Selling press-ons, Zoom tutorials, and gift cards will only get you so far for so long, so get creative.

Camp 2: “Stay closed and plan for a new future.”

Many owners in this camp are experiencing analysis paralysis, unable to decide whether to switch their focus or close until things improve. The ones I’ve spoken to are in financial situations that aren’t yet critical but will be soon if they don’t make a choice.

Now that we’re starting to see what the next year will look like, we can start changing our practices to accommodate social distancing mandates the best we can, but I don’t recommend taking a “wait and see” approach for long. If you’re capable of doing more to serve people than sit at home on that fence and write new service and operational protocols, do it. Start today.

Camp 3: “Enjoy the two-week vacay and wait for the busy bus.”

Back when everyone in the White House was holding up the “15-days to slow the spread” poster (over 30 days ago now), someone commented this on one of my articles and it horrified me. It has been echoing in my head for the last month. I often wonder if that commenter is still “enjoying the vacay” and waiting for that busy bus to arrive. (If so, congrats on the privileges your wealth has provided, I guess?)

Honestly, I don’t personally know a single business owner in this camp. Not a single one of my consulting clients is kicking up their heels right now (to my knowledge) and I’d argue that they’re a lot more successful than most as many of them have multiple profitable locations in major cities that aren’t easy to compete in.

If the successful people in this industry are taking this seriously, perhaps you should also.

I continue to stand by the opinions I shared in the article I posted last month, because the wait for that busy bus will be too long for most people to bear. Pride, ignorance, complacency, and a refusal to accept reality during this time will bankrupt people.

How the Beauty Industry May Change

In this shitshow, I have found one bright ray of hope, and it’s in our next ten years.

Exploitative salons will crumble, and with them, the business practices that have undermined and compromised the legitimacy of our industry for decades.

Nothing educates an entire workforce about why their employment classification matters quicker than having to file for unemployment during a pandemic only to be told you’re ineligible. Every tax season, my inbox is flooded with emails from individual professionals who learn what their status really means when they file their annual returns, but the pandemic has accomplished in two months what I spent the last 10 years trying to do.

I was hesitant to share any positive speculation for fear of being accused of being insensitive or blind to the devastating extended consequences for many individuals. Before I move on, let me say that this is serious. I’m not at all making light of the situations misclassified workers are finding themselves in right now. However, I’m considering this a net positive outcome in the long run, as many of our industry professionals would have only discovered their misclassification after years (sometimes full decades) of wage theft. They would have had to handle their cases alone, without financial assistance of any kind.

Now that everyone understands exactly what the consequences of misclassification are, they’re likely not going to accept it. Salon owners who refuse to change their practices will have a real hard time finding professionals willing to work for “commission-only” as so-called “independent contractors” in the post-COVID economy.

Salon owners who act as legitimate employers stand to gain tremendously.

For years, I wondered what could possibly bring our industry back together. What could balance the scales so less than 85% of the industry was considered self-employed? What could drive wages up and eliminate the tradition of unlawful employment practices? What could get professionals to see the value of steady, legitimate employment over the freedom of rental?

This. This is that thing.

As salons that were already weak start to close and renters begin to crave predictable paychecks, salon owners who comply with wage and labor laws will reap the benefits of a massive talent pool, full of professionals desperate to get back to work doing what they love. The return of large employers to the non-corporate salon sector (“big” small business owners) will make it easier for us to organize and ensure the legitimacy of our profession—if we can get it together before legislators start calling for employment barriers for broad swaths of industries to be lowered, or for them to be deregulated entirely.

These are the fires that forge outliers.

On days that I spend consulting with my clients, helping them weigh a variety of non-ideal options, I like to think about the outliers this historic tragedy will inevitably produce. Somewhere, a quarantined person who would have spent their life doing something ordinary is discovering something extraordinary—whether that’s a talent, a passion, or an interest—that will change the world. An entire generation of kids will have the course of their lives completely altered by this and a handful of them will become exceptionally remarkable in some way for it.

Outliers are spectacular people. The child refugee who becomes a billionaire, the impoverished immigrant who builds an empire, the Black girl who goes through hell only to become one of the most beloved (and wealthiest) women in the world. (I’m finding a lot of comfort these days watching Oprah interviews. Don’t judge me.)

Diamonds are created under extreme pressure. Do I like that a ton of normal people—who were perfectly fine being normal people and want nothing more than to be average again—are going to be crushed under that same pressure? No, because I am also a normal person (and intend to continue being mediocre at best, thanks) but thinking of the potential this quarantine holds for the people who will be triggered to shine after this makes things feel less bleak.

…somewhere, a fed up nail tech is hunched over her stove developing a magical liquid that removes hard gel instantly. That’s all I’m saying.

Honestly, I’m not mentally in a place to paint rosy pictures of the future and prefer to devote my time to finding solutions to our immediate problems. Entertaining these possibilities feels counterproductive and unhelpful when so many people are struggling.

Whatever good comes of this, the ends don’t justify the means. They never will.

That said, I’m allowing myself to be hopeful that when all this is said and done, we’ll emerge a much stronger industry overall.

A Quick Note about PPP Loan Forgiveness

Before I wrap up today, I want to share these links I found. While I refuse to write anything about the PPP until my clients who have applied are approved and the terms are made clearer, this article from the legal news website, JD Supra, explains the forgiveness conditions in plain English. This overview from Forbes is also helpful. If you’re considering a PPP loan, read those first.

While (so far) the PPP looks like a good option for some salon owners, it is still a loan. Treat it as such. It only becomes a grant if you can meet the requirements for forgiveness, and many salon owners won’t be able to.

I have long advised against signing contracts you haven’t read or don’t agree with, so it should go without saying that I advise against committing to a “forgivable” loan whose forgiveness terms haven’t yet been written in stone by the SBA. After all, you can’t win a game if you don’t know the rules.

This free download contains a ton of information for the parents who have suddenly become reluctant homeschoolers, including the websites, apps, activities, movies, shows, books, games, and podcasts I personally recommend. I’ve also included links to a few legitimate work-from-home sites that my husband and I have vetted ourselves.

The truth is, the topic is extremely personal to me and I rarely speak about it. It was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever had to experience, so I hate thinking about it, let alone sharing it with others. However, if someone had warned me about HPV and cervical cancer I likely would have made getting screened a priority before mine progressed almost to the point of no return.

Here’s the post I wish I would have read.

1.) Closing your eyes and ignoring it will not make it disappear. I knew something was wrong. Random bleeding and spotting wasn’t unusual for me, but the dull, persistent ache that would radiate from my lower back, down my hips, and to my knees definitely was new, and something I certainly should have had checked.

Cervical cancer usually does not have symptoms until it is quite advanced and hard to treat.

2.) HPV is extremely common. Extremely. HPV is so common that nearly all sexually active men and women get it at some point in their lives. Most will never know it because they won’t develop any symptoms. In most cases, HPV goes away on its own, but when HPV does not go away, it can cause health problems like genital warts and cancer.

If you’re really unlucky, like I was, you’ll have absolutely no warning signs until you’re already very, very sick. Mine had already progressed to Stage II before I made it a priority to get an exam.

Women may find out they have HPV when they get an abnormal Pap test result (during cervical cancer screening). Others may only find out once they’ve developed more serious problems from HPV, such as cancers.

3.) The types of HPV that cause cancer are not the kind that cause genital warts. Never in my life did I think I’d ever consider myself unlucky because I didn’t get genital warts, but that was my reality in 2008.

There are more than 100 types of HPV, 30-40 of which are sexually transmitted. Of these, at least 15 are high-risk HPV strains that can cause cervical cancer. The others cause no symptoms or genital warts.

4.) Monogamy only serves as adequate protection from HPV if the person you’re sleeping with is also monogamous. Since there’s virtually no way to know for certain your partner isn’t partnering up with someone else behind your back, play it safe and use condoms. If you’re unwilling to do that, make vaccination and annual screening a top priority. Trusting someone who didn’t deserve it nearly killed me.

Prevention is always better than treatment.

The most terrifying moment in my entire life was being told by my doctor that I had cancer. I was sitting on the exam table in a pale blue room with bright white overhead lights. When he told me, I felt my throat close up and my chest cave in. It was like the entire world stopped moving. The following year was a nightmare. Punch biopsies hurt. The cauterization with silver nitrate stings for days afterwards. I shook uncontrollably during my appointments because I was so scared the doctor would give me more bad news. I still get tremendous anxiety whenever I have to get screened (which is every six months now).

The entire process is stressful, scary, and often pretty painful. Treatment made me so sick. I lost about twenty pounds I couldn’t really afford to lose at the time, dropping down to barely 100 pounds by the time I was ready for my last surgery.

I would not wish a single day of what I went through on my worst enemy.

5.) Abnormal Pap tests need to be taken seriously. Insist on a DNA test. HPV types 16 and 18 account for 70% of all cervical cancers.

Persistent HPV infection can cause cervical and other cancers including:

• Vulvar cancer: About 69% are linked to HPV.
• Vaginal cancer: About 75% are linked to HPV.
• Penile cancer: About 63% are linked to HPV.
• Anal cancer: About 91% are linked to HPV.
• Cancer of the back of the throat: About 72% are linked to HPV. [Note: Many of these cancers may be related to tobacco and alcohol use]

ALMOST ALL CERVICAL CANCER IS CAUSED BY HPV.

6.) Cervical cancer can kill you. Joey Feek is haunting me. Stories about her appear on my Facebook feed every week. In case you didn’t know, she’s a country music singer who is dying of cervical cancer right now. Her husband’s blog about their experience is heartbreaking. Every time her name shows up in my feed, I worry that it’ll be to announce her death. If you aren’t moved yet to get screened, read Rory’s blog and look at what cervical cancer did to this beautiful, talented mother who will never get to see her infant daughter grow up. (Bring tissues. You will cry.)

I’m begging you to get screened. I know a lot of us are uninsured or severely underinsured, but please, please plan to have routine gynecological exams. You can’t afford not to. If even one of you reads this and takes it seriously, it’ll have been well worth the discomfort I’m enduring right now, writing about it.

More than 11,000 women in the US get cervical cancer each year. Please, don’t be one of them.

1.) “Acrylics ruin your natural nails. Gels are much gentler and better for you.” I hear this one the most. No matter what kind of nail enhancement product you choose, your natural nail will experience some degree of damage.

Regardless of the product used, the natural nail has to be dehydrated before enhancements are applied, causing the natural nails to become dry and brittle (at least until the enhancements are soaked off and the natural nail is oiled up). Damage is also caused during the etching process. The degree of the damage is determined by the procedure and the pressure your nail technician uses when etching your natural nail in preparation for the enhancement.

Whether or not the nails need to be etched is a big debate topic in the nail community. One school of thought believes that the products on the market currently adhere just fine and don’t require etching. My school of thought has tried skipping etching and has realized that nails do need to be etched a bit before the product goes on unless you want to have to deal with nails popping off and lifting like crazy. Etching creates shallow dips and grooves in your natural nail. The enhancement product flows into these grooves. Then, the enhancement product hardens. The dips help the product adhere to your natural nails.

If the nails are soaked off gently, no damage will be done at all. However, if the nails are ripped off, chances are that several layers of the natural nail will come off with it. If you experience damage to your natural nail after wearing enhancements, it most likely has to do with one of four things: a nail tech who wields a drill like a jackhammer, MMA-based product, improper enhancement removal (ripping the nails off instead of soaking them, for example), or simple delusion. What do I mean by delusion?

Sometimes clients wear acrylic nails for a long time and then forget why they got them in the first place.

If your nails were perfectly strong and hard, you wouldn’t have gotten enhancements now, would you? A lot of clients get used to the strength of the enhancements. By the time they’re removed, the client has forgotten just how shitty their natural nails were, so they assume that the enhancement product caused it. (It is for this reason that I perform a thorough consultation and document the condition of the natural nails prior to applying the set. I also insist that my clients take vitamins specifically formulated for hair, skin, and nails.)

2.) “If I don’t get my hair cut, it will stop growing.” This is so ridiculous. Your hair will not stop growing if you skip a few haircuts. Your hair may seem like it’s not growing, depending on the amount of mechanical or chemical damage it’s experienced. If you’ve wrecked your hair and torn it up, the hair shafts will split (causing “split ends”). If you don’t get the hair cut, each time you brush your hair, that split shaft will split even higher. It might seem like your hair isn’t getting any longer, but it’s still growing.

3.) “Shaving makes your hair grow in thicker. Waxing makes it grow slower.” Wrong. Waxing works by pulling the hairs out from the root. The body then has to form new hair. When the new hair breaks the surface of the skin, it grows with a soft, tapered end. The shaft by the root is wider. When the hair is cut with a razor blade, it is cut at the shaft, at skin level. This wide part grows out, making the hair appear thicker.

Neither shaving or waxing change the thickness, density, or rate of hair growth.

However, waxing does traumatize the hair follicle and can cause the hair to quit growing after years of waxing.

4.) “Nail polish causes your nails to turn yellow.” No. Wearing cheap nail polish without basecoat will cause your nails to turn yellow. Putting on polish that has recently been applied to someone with a contagious nail fungus can also cause your nails to turn yellow. (Yellow, white, and brown are fungus colors.) To avoid this issue, use your own polish bottles and don’t share with anyone. Be sure to apply a nice layer of basecoat to protect them as well.

5.) “Plucking one grey hair causes ten to grow in its place.” This is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.

Plucking hair will not cause follicles to magically appear out of nowhere.

If that were true, I’d have plucked every one of the 1,500 hairs on my head in a desperate attempt to increase the density.

6.) “The inner wrist is the best place to test the color of foundation creams.” Why would you want to test a foundation on any part of your body other than the part it is going to be worn on? The best place to test the color of foundation is on your face, dummies.

7.) “Split ends can be repaired with conditioning treatments.” Split ends can not be repaired. They can be moisturized and their appearance can be smoothed out, but broken hair is broken hair. Period.

The only way to “repair” split ends is to cut them off.

8.) “Greasy foods cause acne.” Rubbing greasy foods on your face may cause acne, but no food you consume will cause acne. That includes candy, chocolate, and fast food. My husband and I eat this garbage regularly and we both have gorgeous skin.

9.) “My nail technician can treat my nail disorder.”

Nail technicians are prohibited from treating any client with a skin or nail abnormality.

This is way outside of their scope of practice. If you ever see a nail technician servicing a client with a skin or nail disorder, report them to your state’s health department and board of cosmetology. They’re putting you and everyone who walks into that business at risk for contracting whatever disorder the person has.

10.) “When I put my nail polish into cold water, it dries faster.” No, it doesn’t. If that worked, I’d be dropping ice water on your fingertips after every service instead of using very expensive solvent evaporating chemicals like OPI’s Drip Dry. (Which costs me $20 or so an ounce.)

11.) “Topical treatments will cure my nail infection.” No, they won’t. They’ll return moisture to the nail plate and allow the nail itself to grow healthy, but it will not treat the disorder. See a dermatologist or podiatrist. Nothing your salon or supermarket carries is strong enough to treat fungi. Typically, oral medications are prescribed.

12.) “My nail technician gave me a fungus. The nails under my acrylics are green!” If you’re seeing green, you’re likely not looking at a fungus, but pseudomonia, a bacterial infestation. Chances are, your nail technician didn’t give it to you; you gave it to yourself. If you skipped fills, chose to garden without gloves, or went swimming in a pond, beach, or questionable hot tub, you put yourself at risk. Pseudomonia is a bacteria that exists in up to 80% of soil and water. They love dark places and eating the oils on your nail plate. Their favorite place to live and breed is the space between your nail enhancement and your natural nail. If you had any lifted product, whether it lifted because you neglected your fills or your nail technician didn’t properly remove it during your last appointment, that bacteria can wedge itself in there. Once under your enhancement, they multiply rapidly. The green discoloration you see on your nail plate is their excrement. It is simply a stain. It is not going to kill you and you’re not going to lose your finger. Killing the bacteria is as easy as removing the enhancements and wiping the nail plate clean with alcohol. If you catch it early, the stain can be buffed out. If you don’t catch it for a while, you’ll have to wait until the discoloration grows out.

What other crazy beauty myths have your clients brought to your attention? Tell us in the comments!