Is it true that, these days, people don't just buy a service? They buy a personality?
Especially when it comes to beauty. You can learn the techniques, master the trends, invest in the products. But at the end of the day, people are inviting you into their personal space, often on a day that means something to them.
So how much of what they're paying for is the result in the mirror, and how much is the person standing behind the brush?
I've been thinking about this ever since a conversation I had with a client today.
And, naturally, it got me thinking about money. My favorite uncomfortable topic.
For years, one of my biggest fears as a freelancer was watching someone's face change when I told them my price. That little pause. The surprise. The unspoken Oh, I wasn't expecting that.
I used to dread it.
But over the past two years, I've been in therapy, working through some heartbreaking relationships and learning something that sounds so simple in theory: how to love and appreciate myself.
And somewhere along the way, I realized that my work takes up roughly 70% of my life. If I'm going to spend that much of myself doing something, shouldn't I learn to appreciate myself there, too?
Apparently, self-worth is much easier to talk about over a therapist's couch than it is when someone questions your prices.
I've reached a point in my business where my pricing is listed openly. The same service, the same price, for everyone. If it's outside someone's budget, that's okay. Not everyone has to hire me, and I don't have to be the right choice for everyone.
It took me a while to understand that someone else's budget is not a measurement of my value.
Then came today. I was doing hair for a young woman's eighteenth birthday celebration when her mother asked, that very morning, whether I could also do her hair.
And then came the sentence: "We hope for a discount."
Now, I understand asking questions. I understand budgets. I'm a person living in the real world, not a luxury handbag in a glass boutique.
But something about that request made me pause.
I gave her a quote that was already lower than her daughter's, taking her request into consideration. She was still shocked by the price.
And there I was, standing in the middle of someone else's special day, wondering how we had arrived at a moment where I felt the need to explain the value of something I had already decided was worth charging for.
Should my price depend on whether you're the birthday girl? Is there a different rate for the person celebrating and the person making sure she looks and feels her best?
At some point, I caught myself asking the wrong question.
The question wasn't whether I should charge less.The question was why someone else's surprise still had the power to make me question a decision I'd made with confidence.
Why is it so easy to believe in our own worth until someone else raises an eyebrow?
I'm not a person who believes everyone needs a professional makeup artist or hairstylist. Quite the opposite. We all have hands. We can learn. We can practice, watch tutorials, buy the products, and figure it out ourselves.
You can absolutely do your own makeup.
But you hire me.
And what you're paying for isn't just the makeup or the hairstyle.
You're paying for my skills, my experience, my time, and my responsibility. You're paying for someone who knows what to do when something doesn't go according to plan. Someone who understands that your hair needs to survive the evening, that your makeup needs to look beautiful in photographs, and that you probably have approximately seventeen other things to think about.
Most importantly, you're paying for peace of mind.
Because let's be honest: on the days when we book beauty appointments, there's usually a lot going on. An event to attend. A dress to steam. A gift to wrap. A thousand little details competing for our attention.
And somewhere in the middle of that chaos, I arrive.
I bring my kit, my experience, my hands, and my calm. I take something off your plate. You sit down, and for a little while, someone else takes care of you. You don't have to think about whether your eyeliner is even or whether your curls will last. You can let go of one small responsibility and enjoy the experience of getting ready.
And when you look in the mirror, I want you to see more than a beautiful face. I want you to feel ready. Confident. Excited about the day ahead.
That, to me, is part of the service.
And maybe that's why the conversation today stayed with me.
Not because someone thought my price was high. I'm okay with being expensive for someone. I've worked my way here, invested in my skills, spent years learning, and built a business that reflects the standards I want to maintain.
I'm not interested in making everyone happy with my prices.
But I do find myself wondering about the way women sometimes negotiate with themselves when it comes to being taken care of.
We spend so much time taking care of everyone else. We organize birthdays, remember appointments, plan celebrations, manage households, show up for our partners, our children, our friends. We become very good at making sure everyone else has what they need.
And when it's our turn to receive something, do we immediately start calculating whether we can justify it?
Do we ask for less before we've even allowed ourselves to consider what the experience might mean to us?
Of course, not every woman who declines a beauty service is undervaluing herself. Sometimes it's simply not in the budget. Sometimes it's not a priority. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But I wonder whether we've learned to treat spending money on ourselves as something that always needs an explanation.
And I wonder whether we sometimes confuse being capable of doing everything ourselves with having to do everything ourselves.
You can do your own makeup. You can do your own hair. You can organize your own birthday, cook your own dinner, and probably fix the Wi-Fi if you watch enough tutorials.
But must you?
Must every little pleasure be justified by necessity? Must everything we choose for ourselves be the cheapest possible option to prove that we're sensible women?
Maybe sometimes we can simply decide that we want something. That we want the experience, the convenience, the expertise, the feeling of being looked after for a change.
Not because we're incapable.
Because we don't always have to be the person doing everything.
And if you decide that a professional beauty service isn't worth the money, that's perfectly fine. My business won't be right for everyone, and that's not a problem I need to solve.
I've worked hard to get to a place where I can say that without taking it personally.
I'm still learning, of course. Two years of therapy haven't magically turned me into a woman who never questions herself. I can still feel that familiar discomfort when someone reacts to my prices in a way I didn't expect.
But I'm learning to sit with it without immediately making myself smaller.
To remember that a price is not an apology.
That someone else's surprise is not an instruction.
And that appreciating myself means allowing my work to have a value, even when not everyone agrees with it.
So, is it really about the price?
Or is it about what happens when we finally decide that our time, our skills, and the care we give deserve to be valued?
Perhaps the most important person I need to convince isn't the client standing in front of me.
Perhaps it's the woman I've spent years learning to become.
And if there's one thing I'm taking away from today's little encounter, it's this:
You don't have to convince everyone that you're worth it.
You just have to stop treating their hesitation as proof that you're not.
After all, a beauty service is a luxury.
But learning not to negotiate your own worth?
That might be priceless.