Fernanda Macedo
TCCS ’19
Have you ever wanted to help your community and been slapped in the face with bureaucracy when you attempted to do so? I have, to the point that I am getting a Master’s degree to help me research about the government red tape in my industry as well as to shed light on whom this bureaucracy is marginalizing in my community.
I am a cosmetologist by profession and would like to teach cosmetology to others who could benefit from learning this trade. I am also a Brazilian immigrant who understands the lack of workforce development that the Brazilian community faces in Massachusetts. I can make a difference and close the gap that my profession has provided me by teaching the profession to other Brazilian immigrants, some of the people in most need of workforce development. Along the process, I am finding out how and why the Brazilian community specifically is being marginalized by the current difficult access to enter the cosmetology industry in this state.
Along the process, I am finding out how and why the Brazilian community specifically is being marginalized by the current difficult access to enter the cosmetology industry in this state.
The beauty industry, much like any other field to which someone dedicates fully over many years, has the ability to provide financial stability for its professionals, benefiting that individual, their household, and also community. Therefore, I am using the TCCS program to best research the needs of my community with a long term goal of using that research to open a low-cost cosmetology school that meets those specific needs.
However, I have spent the first third of my master’s research facing the board of cosmetology’s bureaucratic and unresponsive structure. Many of the requirements to open a new cosmetology school in the state of Massachusetts, like square footage per student and minimum station numbers, are excessive and add to large overhead costs, making student tuition unnecessarily high. I am using all the tools I am learning in TCCS to put together my research findings to the board of cosmetology, to reveal to their policymakers that these excessively-high costs serve to marginalize the most at risk in the community, including those with the lowest opportunities for workforce development, like Brazilian immigrants, in Massachusetts.
I am using all the tools I am learning in TCCS to put together my research findings to the board of cosmetology, to reveal to their policymakers that these excessively-high costs serve to marginalize the most at risk in the community…
Since the Division of Professional Licensure of Massachusetts requires that anyone interested in becoming a cosmetologist must obtain a minimum of 1,000 cosmetology school hours and pass a written and practical state board exam, and also that no individual licensed cosmetologists can teach students outside of an accredited cosmetology school, I argue that access to affordable cosmetology schools is an important first step in improving workforce development for vulnerable members of the community, like Brazilian immigrants, who reside in this state.
Lastly, I hope to use my TCCS research to learn about policy change and how legislation is approved as well as changed. It was not until the early 2000s that the written Massachusetts state board exam required to obtain a cosmetology license became offered in Vietnamese and Spanish. Prior to that, cosmetologists like my grandmother paid and took the board exam every 6 months to maintain a legal permit to work at a beauty salon until her next attempt at an exam in a language she did not know, regardless of being the best cosmetologist I know.
Sometimes the need for change is obvious, but the red tape to make change happen is long and tangled. TCCS is helping me take it apart to improve Massachusetts’s cosmetology workforce development and to decrease institutionalized marginalization of vulnerable communities like my own Brazilian immigrant population residing all around the state.