1,000 Hours to Dry Hair?

April 3, 2019

In many states, it can take hundreds, even thousands of hours just to blow-dry hair. How is that even possible?

As Goldwater Institute Director of Government Affairs Jenna Bentley explained this week on The Jeff Oravits Show, nearly every state—every single one except for Virginia—requires many hours of costly and time-consuming training just to obtain the occupational license needed to work in a blow-dry bar. Blow-dry bars are salons where stylists wash, dry, and style hair—and that’s it. There’s no cutting, no dyeing, no activity that permanently alters the structure of hair.

Bentley, who’s the co-author of a brand-new Goldwater Institute paper on the overregulation of blow-dry stylists, said that in Arizona, the lowest-level license needed to work in a blow-dry salon takes 1,000 hours of training. And that training includes many lessons that blow-dry salon employees don’t need—for example, lessons in how to cut and perm hair. As hard as it is to believe, this training requirement for blow-dry stylists is more stringent than the requirements it takes to become a police officer or a firefighter—that just doesn’t make sense. And on top of that, blow-drying someone’s hair without that license is a crime punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

You can listen to the full interview with Bentley here.