Chronicles of a curly headed gal.
One of my clients that I see regularly now, found me via social media a little while ago. She booked me for a wash and style. She’s a black girl and has hair similar to mine. Not a problem, as I can work on all hair types. She tells me that before she found me, she was searching other salons that were referred to her in the Nashville area. She found one, called to book an appointment, mentioned that she had “ethnic” hair and the receptionist got a little hesitant. They basically told her that nobody in the salon could service her because nobody was comfortable enough doing that type of hair……I can’t say that I haven’t heard of this scenario before.
This gave me some flash backs. When I was younger, my mom would take me to the salon to get my hair straightened, on special occasions, and I used to really look forward to getting this done. I remember a specific time she took me to a local Hair Cuttery in Columbia, SC, probably my mom’s first mistake. But we came in and I remember when the stylist saw that I was her “wash and style” client she looked like a deer in headlights. Completely frazzled. She proceeded to try and blow dry my hair and it was just getting worse as she continued. It was super frizzy, she wasn’t putting enough tension on my hair as she was round brushing it, and it was just a mess. My mom had to take me somewhere else to get it flat ironed because what she gave me was not the look I was going for. I was probably about 10 years old and can envision that scene so clearly. It wasn’t anything detrimental, but I was pretty annoyed that this lady made me look completely crazy and how uncomfortable she was working with my hair. She DID try though, I could give her that.
My point is that this happened about 15 years ago to me, my client’s experience happened only some weeks ago. We all have our specialties when it comes to any career path we chose but part of being a stylist or even a business in this case, is being able to cater to the public without making people feel left out. To blatantly say that nobody at that salon was able to do her hair was foul. It’s safe to say that even some of these trendy or top salons in Nashville could broaden their horizons.