From now on, every morning, Léa Ruiz puts on a whole outfit. Place an FFP2 mask on your face, put on a pair of latex gloves. On your personal calendar, always have an appointment with the physiotherapist scheduled in the short or medium term. At 32, she has no choice if she wants to alleviate the physical problems that weigh on her after nine years as a hairdresser.
The first pains occurred very early, during his training periods. In the salons of large chains where the young apprentice hairdresser worked – standing all day and subject to a “frantic pace” –, his back started to hurt. Then his wrists and shoulders, from the constant blow-drying with elbows raised and hairdryer in hand, and finally his legs, from the continuous trampling. “At the beginning, it went away, with sport or physiotherapy sessions. And then it set in, and it became constant pain”, says Léa Ruiz. At the start of his thirties, eczema invaded his hands, damaged by shampoos, followed by violent headaches, linked to the daily inhalation of bleaching products.
As of 2020, she left the hair salon industry ” the chain ” and set up a cooperative with other colleagues, determined to think of a more respectful organization of work: Radical fringe, in Paris, where hairdressers try to take more time for each cut. But the young woman still suffers from these physical after-effects, which worsen from year to year. “I don’t really see how much longer I’ll be able to hold on like this”she confides.
“Premature wear”
In many sectors, particularly low-skilled ones, young workers, even before their thirties, experience the early impacts of their professional activity. Fields such as logistics, construction, sales, catering, aesthetics – often essentially either feminine or masculine – are marked by the same turnover, symptomatic of environments which drain bodies in record time.
If the professions in question are characterized by intrinsic arduousness, young entrants are particularly exposed to what researchers call “premature attrition” due to the nature of the jobs assigned to them. Often on a temporary or fixed-term contract, they move in and out, discovering with each contract a new working environment, to which they cannot fully adapt. And where they are often entrusted with the most exhausting tasks, including the heaviest and most restrictive handling, as highlighted in a 2023 report from the Center for Employment and Labor Studies.
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