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State sued over eyebrow threading

To talk to her, you wouldn't think that Juana Gutierrez poses all that big of a threat to the residents of Arizona.

She's 24, a new mother who returned to work earlier this month, just a week after giving birth to her son, Martin.

Armed with a spool of thread, however, Gutierrez becomes a menace, according to the state of Arizona. One of a group of outlaws who apparently pose a threat to all mankind -- or at least to mankind's eyebrows.

Fortunately, we have bureaucrats to shield us from these lawless sorts, courageous protectors of the public who have vowed to disarm Gutierrez of the thread that poses such a peril to our health, our safety, indeed our very welfare.

That's right, Arizona Board of Cosmetology is at it again.

The folks who a few years ago tried to protect us from hair braiders are now on the job again. This time, to save us from the dreaded eyebrow threader.

The Institute for Justice on Wednesday plans to sue the Cosmetology Board on behalf of Gutierrez and four other threaders, contending the state has no business regulating threaders.

Eyebrow threading is an ancient grooming technique that originated in India and the Middle East. In recent years, it's become popular in western cultures. So popular, in fact, that kiosks offering eyebrow shaping services have popped up in malls.

The technique involves maneuvering a piece of twisted cotton thread over the skin to remove unwanted hair. It's a booming business because it's a cheaper, quicker and some say less painful alternative to waxing your eyebrows.

Which perhaps explains the interest of the Board of Cosmetology. The industry-dominated board declared in August 2009 that the practice of threading falls under its purview and thus can be performed only by a licensed aesthetician.

Since then, it's been mailing out cease-and desist-orders, with threats of criminal prosecution.

“By performing threading in an unlicensed establishment by unlicensed and untrained individuals you are putting the public at risk for infections and/or injuries,” says the letter, from Donna Aune, executive director of the Cosmetology Board. “YOU MUST CEASE THE PRACTICE OF THREADING IN AN UNLICENSED ESTABLISHMENT BY UNLICENSED INDIVIDUALS IMMEDIATELY.”

Sounds dire, doesn't it?

I asked Aune to explain the nature of the danger inherent in pulling out hair using a piece of thread – besides the possibility of uneven eyebrows, that is.

“Some of the inspectors have seen people actually draw blood by the strings rubbing together,” she told me. “They could catch a piece of the skin and they would draw blood without knowing the blood procedures.”

Aune says the agency is focused on consumer protection and that the law gives it clear authority over hair removal by any means other than electrolysis.

Gutierrez says there's no safety issue. She grew up in Chicago, watching her mother have her eyebrows shaped by a threader. At 16, she learned the technique and has been doing it ever since. She now manages six mall kiosks that offer the service.

“Really there's nothing bad about it,” she says. “It's just thread we're running over your skin and it's a new piece of thread every time we have a new customer.”

Hands are washed before and after each customer, she says. The only product used is a bit of witch hazel and that's only if the customer wants it.

The ones in real danger of feeling actual pain, it seems to me, are the people holding the thread.

To get a license, Gutierrez would have to take 600 hours of state-approved classes at a state-approved private beauty school. She would have to pay around $10,000 to learn everything from laser safety to Botox theory, from how to apply chemical peels to how to tint eyelashes.

Everything, that is, but how to remove hair with a thread.

Then she'd have to take a test to prove that she's learned all the stuff she doesn't need to know in order to make a living doing the stuff she already knows how to do.

Enter the Institute for Justice's Tim Keller. This is the guy who battled the Board of Cosmetology a few years ago when it tried to regulate African hair braiders.

Now he's hoping to spare eyebrow threaders from over-the-top regulations, “especially regulations that really serve no purpose other than to fence out the competition from a regulated industry,” he said.

Keller believes that Arizona should follow the lead of California, Utah, Colorado and Nevada which don't license threaders. Texas, however, does and IOJ lost a lawsuit to stop it. That case is on appeal.

Look for Keller to have a fight on his hands unless the Legislature rides to the rescue of the threaders, as it did for hair braiders.

The board is dominated by cosmetologists and people who train cosmetologists. In fact, the chairman of the Board of Costmetology runs a school in Scottsdale – the sort of place that offers the very classes that the board says Gutierrez must take, assuming she could come up with the $11,500 fee.

His 600-hour curriculum doesn't even mention threading.