With her hair pulled back in a slick ponytail, 24-year-old Rachel Maroun can’t help but repeat her daily work mantra.
“I just keep telling myself: ‘Don’t touch my hair or I will get lice’,” she tells 7Life.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: The Lice Lady removes hundreds of parasites from clients’ hair.
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Rachel, who calls herself The Lice Lady, is a professional head lice removalist, charging $150 an hour.
“The moment I walk into work my head is on fire,” she says, adding: “(The mantra) works but I still get itchy seeing them.”
And this young Sydney local is trying to remove the stigma behind the head-scratching parasite.
Working on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Rachel has been in the unique field since she was just 15.
In fact, it was her first part-time job at a local chemist which inspired her career as a head-lice removal specialist.
“I remember my first day at the pharmacy,” she recalls.
“A lady (colleague) popped me in the back of the store where the lice clinic was, and I was too scared to say no.
“I did my first shift and absolutely loved it, and then asked to work in the lice clinic every shift.”
The instant her fingers wrapped around the nit comb, her alter ego — The Lice Lady — was born.
The Lice Lady
Loving how she was able to transform her clients, Rachel launched her own mobile lice clinic, through which she could treat clients at their homes.
Hoping to open mobile clinics all over the country, she is working on debunking some of the myths surrounding the tiny insect.
Head lice are a highly contagious parasite that live on the scalp and survive off blood.
The insects are easily spread by sharing hair brushes, hats, playing with or touching hair, or even hugging an individual who is infected.
“Everyone thinks they can jump, but they can’t. They are extremely fast crawlers, though,” Rachel explains.
“It’s not just children (who get them).
“Anyone with hair can have them really.”
She says lice don’t prefer dirty or clean hair, and will pick any full head of locks on which to set up camp.
“I think people assume that lice live in dirty hair and often associate them with lower socioeconomic (situations),” she adds.
“It’s not true.”
Her busiest time of year is usually at school holidays, where one child has often picked up head lice from school and spreads it to the rest of the family during the break.
Treating clients at their homes, Rachel laughs when people assume she rocks a full hazmat suit — hair net included — for work.
The only precaution she takes is wearing a tight, slick ponytail to protect her own long brown locks from the pesky parasite.
And, in nearly a decade of lice removal, she boasts she has had lice only once.
When it comes to removing the creepy crawlers, Rachel urges parents to steer clear of harsh over-the-counter chemicals and invest in a good quality metal comb and a jar of coconut oil (which is said to be able to kill lice).
She says always keeping your child’s hair pulled back at school — and encouraging them to not share hats and hair ties, and to not touch their hair — will also help prevent a potential lice infestation.
“In Australia, we have super lice,” she says.
“Basically it is a type of lice that are immune to those over-the-counter solutions which, to be honest, just leave your scalp itchy and aggravated.”
Laughing about her own experience with lice in primary school, where her mum would accidentally “rip out” half her hair in a frantic attempt to remove the creatures, Rachel says times have changed.
For her clients, she uses a special heat machine that works to dehydrate the insects and their eggs.
Afterwards, she applies a solution to help lubricate the hair and painstakingly combs through small sections of hair, removing any sign of lice.
It’s a pain free and fairly quick solution, guaranteed to leave your locks louse free.
Rachel sees a wide variety of clients, from school kids who have had lice for a week to others who are riddled with the parasite and at their wits end.
One of the worst cases she has seen resulted in the young girl needing her head shaved — under local anaesthetic at hospital.
“I once had this adorable young girl who walked in wearing a scarf wrapped around her head,” Rachel says.
“The mother slowly peeled back the scarf and lice started falling to the ground.
“I couldn’t even see her hair, it was just a helmet of lice, all over her jacket and her back was covered in bites.”
Posting about her work on social media, the 24-year-old is working hard to remove the stigma behind lice.
She hopes people will seek the treatment they need rather than hide behind a box of over-promising chemical remedies.
Her videos have had millions of views, with followers begging for more before-and-after content.
“It’s so great, I love it,” Rachel smiles at her online presence.
“I would love to make having head lice almost a fun thing, like: ‘I have head lice, let’s call The Lice Lady for a treatment’.”
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