More than any other profession the field of aesthetics captures what it is to be beautiful. Being an aesthetician is like living a fantasy in the adult work world. Above all other occupations, it stands alone because it is the only professional arena where if you have the right look, personality, talent and brains you can enter center stage and still be in true character. No illustrious degrees required. All you need is the right fit and the right pathway and you will succeed against all odds.
It is a field that encapsulates all that is stunning and attractive in women and celebrates the joys of femininity and demonstrates affection for the wanna-be, good-looking man. It is an industry that operates on both low and high-frequency and just about every super-charged current in-between.
It is a profession where you can fly without wings. Hope floats in the world of aesthetics. It is both a playground and a platform for those seeking a means to highlight their individuality and emphasize their creativity. We can be counselors, coaches, consultants, and definitive experts. The field allows us to get paid for sharing reams of information on cosmetic treatments and on beautifying behaviors. Our work environments are peaceful and soothing, majestic and healing. The men in the aesthetics field are interpreted as knights coming to the rescue of appearance-challenged damsels in distress. Our mature practitioners are honored as the aesthetic profession’s matriarchs and mentors. It is true. There is no other field where a revolutionary idea on beauty and health can make a wanna-be somebody, a legend practically overnight. Aesthetics is all the work that is done behind the scenes. It is the brains that wait in the shadows to assist the greatest of potential beauties with a world of possibilities. Aesthetics allows for sales people to become champions of strategies to those who desire to look better and brighter. We use our vast knowledge to feed minds, nourish the skin, tone the bodies, and costume the spirits of our clients. We introduce aesthetic principles that anyone can use regardless of their former familiarity with them.
Aestheticians are daring, dramatic, devoted, and decisive. We expand options with our “big picture” mentality and help our clientele to rework their identities. We give relaxing treatments, offer hygienic cleansings, and remove unwanted facial and body hair. We awaken beauty that would otherwise lay dormant by artfully reshaping eyebrows and cosmetically transforming facial features making them more interesting with the aid of cosmetic enhancement techniques. We perform near miracles with our ability to camouflage imperfections and conceal the worst-of-the-worst of traumatic scarring imaginable. We operate apparatuses that tighten and tone, refine and reconfigure. We support both emotional and physical wellness by combining services or aligning ourselves with others who offer dual applications such as massage treatments with aromatherapy. We link energy work to other services connected with holistic healing and nutritional therapy.
In a very real sense, we are special needs advocates that bring forth crucial information and, more often than not, key insights that help resolve serious aesthetic issues (not just short-term but long term as well). Some are naturally gifted, while others possess hard-earned expertise. We are nursing aids, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and instructors. We are psychologists, writers, and professional speakers, as well as IT specialists. We are accountants, lawyers, and legal experts in our field of aesthetic expertise. We are moms and dads who abandoned more prestigious positions with higher pay and greater benefits to control our schedules so we could be more responsible as parents.
We are confidence builders who know how to encourage greater self-esteem. We support self-directed, positive behavioral patterns that ultimately result in more self-assurance. We are both defuelers (of toxic substances) and constant refuelers of (healthy and mentally sound) sensibilities. We offer antidotes and answers to everyday dilemmas in bite-size nuggets that our clients can digest easier to rid themselves of horrific habits that keep them from being their best.
We are entertaining and funny and the most compelling of story-tellers, but we also know the importance of communicating our intellectual acumen in a natural but effective, well-prepared manner. We know how to use body language, voice skills, and gesturing to disarm the most skeptical of clients. Aestheticians spend time reading and consulting reliable sources to improve their credibility. We may make what we do in the beauty sciences look easy, but in truth we are very well-versed and as a group, highly-educated. We plan and research, revise and improve.
We are extremely compassionate and very caring. We are socially-focused and volunteer at the drop-of-a-hat. Our associations are civic-minded and provide numerous avenues for us to lend financial assistance in many different crisis situations. They give scholarships for the deserving and promote all aspects of personal development. Our Regulatory Boards take on challenging tasks such as expanding the minimum requirements for education and introducing legislation for greater consumer protection – taking immediate action to rectify integrity challenges and reverses troublesome situations.
Aestheticians are amazing business professionals. We adapt our imaginations to every aspect of the beauty establishment business model – from entrepreneurial planning to the implementing of sequential strategies to prioritizing our tasks down to the minutest of details. We make phenomenal team leaders and are terrific team members. We are the best when working together as a collective group. Like any occupational body of professionals we fight, argue, and sometimes have the most heated of discussions debating points of preference with regards to treatment applications and therapeutic approaches for hours on end if we feel strongly enough. But we encourage individually by cheering on even those we question if we are convinced their theories will do more good than harm for the profession. In the end we invite diversity. We have every type of medical spa, salon, wellness center, or physician partnered practice situation one can ever dream.
Aestheticians are global. Our profession allows us to travel, relocate and even provides us with reciprocity so we can practice from state-to-state. Those of us who want to work beyond the traditional boundaries of our treatment rooms are invited to be facilitators of products and equipment. The most ambitious aestheticians have embraced many extraordinary opportunities that have lead to powerful, high-level positions with corporate entities both in the States and abroad. Companies that offer not only enormous salaries, but bonuses, and health as well as dental benefits.
When opportunities knock, aestheticians answer. A good majority of the textbooks that aesthetic students study from contain first-hand content contributed and written by treatment providers. Often what we share turns out to be the difference between aesthetics practiced as a hobby that can result in a financial disaster or a career journey that turns into a lucrative financial future. Before any great treatment discoveries in the aesthetic field, there was a period when its innovators pioneered experimental procedures and mistakes were made. Our authors bring to light priceless first-hand knowledge to spare others the frustrations and all with the hope that they will minimize risk in what might otherwise result in costly errors or even litigation. In addition to books, aestheticians develop coursework – writing classroom curriculums and working with computer technicians and software specialists to develop distance education programs and webinars. 
Customer service is also a big component of our work. For a lay person, the world of skin care can be a vast and confusing field. Our job as aestheticians is to help clear away any confusion that might arise pertaining to our goods, services, and our prescribed home care regimens. We do not try to turn our clients into skin care specialists, but there are some issues that are important for them to understand – depending on how much control they want to have over their complexion problems. Advice and information is what the profession is all about; however, not all aestheticians and their approaches are alike. In fact, our treatments vary considerably as they should.
Our training tracks have all been different. Some of us have pursued simple paths and simple ways to be aestheticians and some of us have traveled worldwide to obtain education or get additional certifications. Aesthetics encourages us to be truly ourselves and it celebrates our professional journey reminding us of what we have gained from the feedback of every client we serve. It is filled with anecdotes that complement our therapeutic beliefs and rewards us with every advantage to help our clients feel happier, healthier, and more confident in presenting themselves out in
the world.
Victoria L. Rayner is the author of the textbooks “Clinical Cosmetology,” A Medical Approach to Esthetic Procedures and the book “The Survival Guide For Today’s Career Woman”. For over twenty years, Rayner, who has served on faculty as a Camouflage Therapist and a Dermatology Associate at University of California, has provided career advancement courses to aestheticians and medical professionals. Her courses are legendary because they offer the prestige of medical aesthetic certification and continuing education credits. Rayner’s institutes appropriately named “Center For Appearance & Esteem” offer both on-site training and now are the very first in the industry to offer long distance learning, independent study courses. Victoria Rayner’s institutes are located in San Francisco, California and Washington, D.C. Visit her website at www.victoriarayner.com
