Users as Express Objects

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Greetings everyone.
I’m coming back to C5 after a fairly long hiatus and I’m trying to get some “Zen” with Express in preparation for a big project.
I’ve read all the documentation and watched all of Andrew’s videos on Express (several times) and I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it.

The piece I’m not clear on is what looks like some overlap in functionality between Express and the ‘standard’ Users and Groups features if C5.
It may very well be that I’ve got a gap in my understanding about all this and I’m fully prepared to ask what may be a dumb question, so here goes. 😉

In Andrew’s video about the Salon his wife owns, he creates Express objects for “stylists”. As far as I can tell, these stylists are not “users” in C5.
My question is “could they also be users?”.

The site I’m getting ready to build, will have a large number of users that will belong to many groups and sub-groups that will be used to manage permissions and as a mechanism to determine what gets displayed to the public and to other users. If these users could also be Express objects, it would be very useful (I think) since all the ‘magic’ of Express would be available to me; forms, associations, etc.

Any guidance on this will be very much appreciated.
Please know that I’m fine with responses like “You idiot, you’ve got this all wrong!”
I may be, and I probably do. 🤣

CrewBoss