Virginia:

In Virginia, a professional who braids hair, does body waxing or polishes nails must have a license.

But a person can pierce a client’s skin with an extraction tool, remove dead skin with a suction machine or apply acids to someone’s face after doing little more than hanging a sign over a door.

Virginia has never regulated aestheticians or required them to hold licenses, whether they perform a seaweed facial or the sophisticated processes of microdermabrasion and chemical peels. It is one of just two states ââ?¬â?? the other is Connecticut, according to aestheticians ââ?¬â?? without oversight of the profession.

That’s going to change with a bill that passed the General Assembly this year. If Gov. Mark R. Warner signs the legislation, as expected, the state Board for Barbers and Cosmetology will add two members to represent aestheticians and develop standards and training criteria that aestheticians will have to meet to practice in the state as of July 2007.

Of course, the proper thing to advocate here would be to undo the requirements that hair-braiders and comsmotologists be required to get costly licenses that keep many start-ups from ever being able to compete. Predictably, the bill’s being pushed by established aestheticians who can afford licensure expenses. And as you might guess with someone who calls herself an “aesthetician,” the motivating factor is vanity:

Saphonia Gee owns an aesthetics school in Portsmouth and plans to open a skin-care center in Virginia Beach this spring with her partner, Kim Thumel.

She said that they were motivated to push for the bill because the lack of licensing is an insult to those who take the profession seriously.

“It just makes the industry itself look bad,” Gee said.

You can license astrologists, too (indeed, some states do). Doesn’t make the “industry” look any better.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 20th, 2005 at 10:40 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under There Oughtta Be a Law, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.