Simon Scott, the founder of Scott Consulting, which offers business training for the beauty industry, is a born guest speaker. He makes jokes about his “Austin Powers accent,” wears a shiny pin-stripe suit, and says “hello” whenever he thinks he’s made a particularly great point. He also insists we give a round of applause whenever a student answers a question.

“Fact,” says Simon, giving us a faux-stern look over his horn-rimmed glasses. “80 percent of students who graduate beauty school leave the industry after five years.”

“Fact!” says Simon, warming to his theme. “Beauty salons have the second highest failure rate of any business.”

We’ve been restless and chatting — about Simon’s accent, where to order dinner during break, Miss Susan’s oddly vertical updo — but that shuts us up quick. He asks us to volunteer ideas as to why so many beauty school graduates drop out, and some of them (“no money,” “bad hours,” “no one is hiring”) sound like they might hit pretty close to the mark. But Simon shakes his head mournfully at all of these.

The reason (say it with me now) is No. Business. Skills.

And we’re in luck because Scott Consulting has just what we need to fix that.

“Fact.” Simon is conspiratorial now. “Customers don’t care about your life. They’re paying for your full attention while they’re in the salon and they don’t want to hear you yammering on about your kids or your dog.”

Over the next 75 minutes, Simon does his level best to pack in this and as many other Business Skills as he can teach us. Some, like “stop tipping waiters,” are supposed to improve our personal lives as well. “If you tip everyone all the time, even if they just give you mediocre service, how can you reward someone who gives you really great service?” Simon asks, faux-socratic now, apparently having never waited a table in his life.

Hairdressers, Simon wants us to know, make 42 percent of their annual salary from tips. That’s enough to take you from $14 to $24 per hour or $48,000 per year (his numbers, note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates your median hourly wage as $11.13).

“So you see how important it is to give really great service,” Simon sums up, since in his world, one only tips on merit, and never, say, a moral imperative to do your part for an unfairly compensated workforce. “It truly accounts for almost half your income. Hello.”

Then he asks us how much we think we can earn, provided we develop our Business Skills, and are still in the industry five years after graduating.

“Maybe $100,000?” asks Rachel, a cosmetology student with freshly henna-ed hair. At Simon’s urging, we give Rachel a dutiful round of applause, I guess for using her words.

“One Hundred Thousand Dollars,” says Simon, pausing for dramatic effect. “Yes. That is what top stylists can make — that is what you can make! — in this industry. With the right business skills.”

At that, everyone breaks into applause.

Dear Environmental Movement,

A naked Playboy centerfold being ogled by dogs as an obvious rip-off on Victoria Secret Angels does not make me more responsive to the countless “give us money” emails, calendars and address labels you keep sending me this time of year.

It does make me wonder why I bother to keep on recycling for you, if we’re just saving the planet so guys can get porn. We vote on your issues, volunteer more time, and give you more money than men do. Please stop hating on women to make your point.

Thanks,

Virginia

[Via: Sirens.]

• No, your razor does not need to be pink to work on your legs. But Consumer Reports research shows that drugstore products aimed at women cost 50 percent more than equal-but-cheaper goods marketed for men. (Via Bitch.)

• That New Baby Smell shouldn’t be due to the fact that a new Environmental Working Group study found fragrance chemicals (and over 200 other synthetics like Bisphenol-A and flame retardant) in the cord blood of minority newborns.

• Primer road-test over at Double X concludes that yes, you do need something between you and your foundation. You know. If you want to wear foundation.

• The Tokyo Nail Show is completely insane, via Beauty Counter. Goodness, I do enjoy nail art. And looking is free.

• In other beauty pageant news, a former Miss Argentina died last Sunday due to complications following butt implant surgery. (Via: The Punch.)

• And we’ve still got nothing on women in Iran, where makeup is illegal. (Along with most other personal freedoms.)

PS. Best Day! You can also follow me on Twitter now, where I’ll be checking the price of pretty all week long.

[Photo: Psychology Today]

I soap my hands up with cleanser and hover over Stephanie’s face. “Go on, get in there!” says Miss Jenny. “You won’t hurt her.” We’re spending a lot more time talking about how to touch your client now that we’re done with makeup and starting skin care. “Always let them know you’re coming,” says Miss Lisa. She cups a dollop of cleanser in each palm, then presses the tops of her curved fingers into Sue’s shoulders before proceeding up her neck and face. That shoulder move is key. “If you touch their face right off the bat, they’ll jump out of the bed,” Miss Lisa explains.

I press on Stephanie’s shoulders and then start stroking up her neck and over her chin and cheeks, circling into the folds around the nose and then around her forehead, until she’s covered in a thin layer of foam. Even though she’s lying on a facial bed wearing only a Velcro towel while I sit at her head and look down, it’s somehow less intimate than applying makeup. I think because her eyes are closed.

After spending four weeks with Stephanie, I know an assortment of random “getting to know you” facts: She has a 1-year-old nephew, she curses her oily skin, she just had two dates with a guy but there wasn’t any spark.

But suddenly she stops being Stephanie, aunt, skin-obsesser, dater of spark-less dudes, and just becomes A Face — an upside down series of planes and curves that I need to cover in cleanser and then wipe clean with a wet cotton pad. It’s like when you say a word too many times in a row and suddenly can’t remember what it means. Stare at the photo above for a minute too long and you’ll see what I mean.

I repeat the cleansing, per Miss Jenny’s instructions, and then apply toner. Then I stop, because we haven’t learned to do anything else yet. Stephanie opens her eyes and is Stephanie again. We laugh.

“Remember, we’re promoting relaxation,” says Miss Jenny. That means you want your client to totally unwind and let their guard down (“they become the bed,” Miss Lisa likes to say). But there aren’t many other scenarios where you see someone at their most relaxed — but also most vulnerable. If Stephanie and I were training for any other profession, I wouldn’t have much reason to scrub the underside of her nose. It’s a weird thing to be responsible for someone else’s relaxation when you’re feeling anything but that yourself.

If beauty blogging was high school, Nadine Jolie would pretty much be head cheerleader and student council president rolled into one. She’s the author of Confessions of a Beauty Addict and Beauty Confidential, all-star blogger, and now co-founder of her own skin line, JolieMD — and she still has time to always look fantastic in every picture you’ll find.

So if you want product reviews, Nadine is your go-to girl — she’s even road-testing Latisse right now, on the premise that “if anybody’s eyes are going to change color and then fall out, it should be mine, not yours, right?” I mean. Girl’s got guts. (Y’all remember how I freaked out over eyelash extensions, right?)

And, Nadine is probably single-handedly responsible for educating the wider world about the shameless swag-hogging and advertiser-courting rituals of magazine beauty editors, so again, guts. And honesty. We like her. But on the chemical front, she tends to be a little more… laid-back. So I was very intrigued to see this on her blog today:

I long ago accepted that chemicals in my beauty products were probably going to get the best of me – sure, natural products are nice, but isn’t the chemically, tough, super-duty effective stuff just so muchbetter?!  My new London Correspondent Katherine McKenney disagrees with me, and has been passionately educating me about natural and organic beauty these past few weeks.  She will be writing a series here on Jolie about natural beauty and also poking around London for the best beauty finds.  Enjoy!

And then lovely Katherine has so much to tell you about the best organic shampoos. I mean, even if Nadine is still Latisse-ing it up (it’s a free country, though I really hope her eyelids don’t change color), it’s nice to see her mixing it up with the green perspective as well. It’s like when the alpha girl finally gives Michael Cera the time of day because hello, he’s been adorable all along. Michael Cera representing the green movement in that metaphor. Of course.

Don’t hate Cheryl Cole because she’s beautiful. You could have her hair too, if you’re willing to shell out for extensions. Alas, this photo isn’t from an ad for extensions — it’s from an ad for L’Oreal Elvive Full Restore 5 shampoo and conditioner, as in shampoo and conditioner that you’re supposed to use to wash the hair that grows naturally out of your own head, reports Times of London (via Jezebel).

Well now. That’s just awkward.

Why yes, those are some delicious eco-friendly product samples, which just arrived from indie beauty line sumbody (tag lines: “Handmade. Pure. Earth-friendly Skin Care for the Eco-Minded Consumer.”)

And they are all packed up in lovely, landfill-clogging, styrofoam peanuts.

Oops.

This seems like a good time to outline my plan for beauty product coverage here on Beauty Schooled, and I hope I won’t break hearts left and right when I say: You won’t get much in the way of all that.

I’ve been mulling it over the past few days since the above box arrived (Hence the radio silence. Well, that and Thanksgiving — happy belated, by the way!) and this is how things shook out.

On the one hand: I do love beauty products. Um, obviously — I’m dedicating 600 hours of my life to learning as much about them as Beauty U can teach me. In fact, while in the midst of said mull, I made a point to try out most of the sumbody goodies, and I am quite enamored of both the teensy little makeup kit (Helloooo, smoky eyes that stay put!) and the Lucky Lips balm, which you can’t even see in the picture above because it’s all buried in styrofoam peanuts, but trust me, it’s cute. Plus, there’s a general expectation when you tell people you’ve signed up for beauty school and are writing a blog about it that you’ll be sharing a lot of your acquired know-how.

On the other hand: In case you haven’t already figured it out, this isn’t a “how to” beauty blog. We’re not yet suffering a dearth of blogs or magazines dedicated to reviewing new products and teaching you how to get perfectly smoky eyes or Blake Lively hair, so I’m not stressing about how to fill a void there. There are lots of people who do that well. There are also lots of people who love getting free product samples and writing up breathless reviews of them, borrowing liberally from the marketing copy on the enclosed press release, so as to keep the free products flowing. And it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. You might be very good at reviewing beauty products and love getting free products all at the same time. Who wouldn’t? They are free, first of all, plus generally pretty, sweet-smelling and covered with promises to make you pretty and sweet-smelling too.

I’m not saying you’re a (major) sell-out if you get excited over scoring a free hand cream sample at Sephora. I’m saying that almost everyone — myself firmly included, cue the image of me trying out my new free lip balm while worrying about the ethical implications of my new free lip balm — gets excited about that. And the purpose of Beauty Schooled is to ask why we get so excited. To explore our sometimes awfully complicated relationship with the Beauty Industrial Complex and our ideal of beauty itself. That means, whenever relevant, putting my own beauty addictions under the same microscope we’re using to consider placenta facials or skin lightening.

So we’ll dissect marketing claims and ingredient lists, and we’ll scrutinize Big Beauty (Revlon, Benefit and friends) and indie/eco beauty brands alike. But until I’m more convinced of my ability to be an impartial, Consumer Reports-style judge, it means keeping product test drives (and their not-always-distant cousin, product advertising) off the blog.

PS. Thanks to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics for adding me to their list of recommended blogs.

[Photo: Me]