Curtis Perez
Hairdresser, Legends Salon
Garden City, Kansas
22 years in career

Career satisfaction:
I enjoy the people, my clients and the people that I work with. It’s a people job.

Advice to other men:
There’s a great amount of personal freedom with a career in cosmetology, and you can also count on the immediate gratification of seeing your finished work at the end of a session.

Career inspiration:
I was teaching school and quite a few of the mothers of my students were hairdressers.  One of them owned a salon and several of them worked there.  “Those people seem to make a lot of money,” I thought, “and they don’t work very hard.”  It turns out that you do work hard, but you also make a lot of money.

Rewards:
I’m earning more than I ever expected.

Challenges in role:
It has really been more of an asset being male. A lot of women prefer men to do their hair -- they think men do a better job.  The challenge has sometimes been the women I work with, who may see me as a threat.

Working with women:
When I went to beauty school I knew absolutely nothing about hair, so my challenge was to catch up.  It took me longer to learn everything than the females, since I had never cut hair, curled hair, worked with hair in any way.

Experience and education:
I went through a 1,500-hour program and found some of my courses to be quite difficult.  We did a lot of chemical stuff, and a lot of sanitation and client safety.  There was also a lot of physiology, which surprised me.  I found the bookwork not as difficult as the hands-on learning -- the actual doing of the hair.

Key skills:
You must have the gift of gab.  You don’t have to be an excellent hairdresser, but you have to have the gift of gab and be able to get along with people.  Communication with your client is critical.

Gender barriers:
I feel I was treated the same as everyone else.  I received no special treatment, and I think that is important.

Most valuable lesson:
If a man wants to enter this career, it’s worth it both financially and personally.  The advantage for men is that they have the ability to see a client’s potential -- at least in a different way than a female.

Other thoughts:
I would be a lot easier for a man in cosmetology today, and men can earn more.