By Hugh Schofield
BBC News, Paris
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French beauticians have launched street protests to demand the right to update their techniques from wax and tweezers.
They are angry that the law does not allow them to use more modern hair-removal techniques on their clients.
It follows a series of prosecutions for professional misconduct against beauticians for using laser and "intense pulsed light" treatments.
Under a 1962 decree these more sophisticated methods are the preserve of qualified dermatologists.
But France's National Confederation of Beauty Institutes (CNAIB) protests that customers nowadays expect the latest epilation technology, like "flash lamps".
On Monday hundreds of beauty workers - estheticiennes - demonstrated outside the health ministry in Paris to demand that the industry's governing regulations be brought up to date.
They accuse dermatologists and other professional groups of waging a turf war to keep out new competition.
"French beauticians are the only ones in Europe not to have the right to use light treatments - even though we are by far the most qualified," said CNAIB president Michele Lamoureux.
"We are forced to use techniques that date from the time of Cleopatra," she says.
Priscilla, a 28 year-old beauty shop owner from Moulins in central France, told Liberation newspaper that hair removal makes up 80% of her revenue.
"Hairs are our business - not the dermatologists'. And yet they're the ones allowed to use the only truly effective epilation machines. Me, I've got to make do with wax and tweezers," she said.
"Legally I cannot modernise."
Fears of misuse
Beauty is a fast-growing business in France, and the CNAIB has 15,000 registered members. A "flash lamp" costs 20,000 euros (Ј15,700), but the money can be quickly recouped.
Beauty workers have also been taken to court for using a popular massage machine called the Cellu M6 which helps reduce cellulite.
Physiotherapists complained that they alone had the right to practise therapeutic massage, and the courts agreed.
Many doctors also defend the ban on lasers and light-based epilators in beauty parlours, arguing that they need to be handled by medical professionals.
"Some beauticians use flash lights to treat moles or blotchy skin - but these can be cancerous and should be seen by specialists," said Luc Sulimovic of the Union of Dermato-Venereologists.
But the CNAIB is not convinced.
"They say it is all about public health. Really it is about defending their interests," said Michele Lamoureux.
The organisation has been promised a meeting with health ministry officials in November.
(BBC)
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