Black People Return to Salons for more than just Haircuts
Shané Davis and Shayne Williams have only been friends for six months, but they are grateful that the pandemic could bring them together. Davis and Williams did not meet at a local bar or a Manhattan coffee shop — Williams is Davis’s nail technician in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Wanting to put more money into Black businesses, Davis started booking appointments with Williams in June and from then on they bonded.
In November, Davis went in for a new full set of nails: almond shaped, skinny on the side, with matte black polish. Separated by masks and a plexiglass “sneeze screen,” Davis and Williams talked about politics, the revolution, music, children, COVID-19, and their love lives.
According to our survey, 9 out of 10 barbershops and salons with mainly white customers are reporting a slow reopening, while 7 out of 10 barbershops and salons serving predominately Black clients report their clients returning immediately upon reopening when asked about client numbers since salons and barbershops were permitted to reopen in June. Little Tony and Igor be Good Barbers of Midtown Manhattan say their clients are still reluctant to return, with only 2 or 3 customers a day.
Black people have returned to barbershops and salons much faster than those of other races even though, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black people are 2.8 times more likely than white people to die from COVID-19 and 3.7 times more likely than white people to be hospitalized. Other than needing a haircut or a nail fill-in, the environment created in Black salons is what keeps them coming back for these services, even during a global pandemic according to both the customer and the service provider.
The environment in Black salons and barbershops is unlike any other. Quentin Paschall lives in Brooklyn, but says he and his New York City barber do not have the same relationship as the one he has with his barber in his hometown, Washington, D.C.
“I go back home to D.C. because I want to feel a lot more comfortable in the chair, I’m getting a cut to look nice, knowing my barber knows exactly how to cut my hair, talking to him about how the neighborhood is changing,” said Paschall.
The environment in Black salons and barbershops is something essential to Black culture. So much so, its importance has made it into popular culture: the Barbershop series with Cedric the Entertainer, Beauty Shop starring Queen Latifah, and more recently, The Shop: Uninterrupted starring Lebron James and Disney Pixar’s Soul.
“It’s more or less just identifying and creating that unique space, making someone feel uniquely beautiful, making them comfortable, and creating that bond where they sit down and they say, ‘Oh, I’m not just talking to my nail tech, I’m talking to a friend,’” said Williams. Williams is a nail technician in Brooklyn who had to stop taking appointments in March when New York City first shut down. She says that while nail salons across the city’s 5 boroughs were all shut down, some of her clients were trying to get her to break the stay-at-home rules to get a full-set. She reopened the second week of June and said her clients returned “immediately.”
“Salons and barbershops are spaces where Black folks can congregate and not feel criminalized, they can just talk,” said Asia Reese of the role the salon plays in the Black community. She says the way Blackness is criminalized in the United Sates is directly related to Black people feeling unsafe while congregating in white spaces.
Asia Reese, a United Negro College Fund Andrew Mellon Mays Fellow conducting research on Black spaces, is researching how space is connected to Black people’s sense of belonging in the United States.
“The spaces Black folks create have often served as a means for their survival,” says Reese. She says the spaces created by Black people become “nations within a nation that has a history of erasing them.”
“When me and her get together to create these nail designs and come up with these concepts for my nails, it’s always like we’re making art, like we’re in the lab making something up. It’s so cool,” said Davis.
On June 22nd, New York City entered Phase 2 of its reopening plan, allowing salons and barbershops to reopen. Although salons and barbershops were permitted to reopen, it was not business as usual. Per New York State guidelines, barbershops and salons are required to limit employee and customer presence to no more than 50%, limit staff meetings as much as possible, close waiting rooms, and guarantee 6 feet of distance between all customers.
According to the CDC, some factors that increase risk of getting COVID-19 are crowded spaces, close and physical contact, enclosed spaces, and the duration of exposure. In a field like the cosmetology industry, these risk factors are hard to avoid.
“Yes, [it’s worth the health risk], we gotta survive and we all have responsibilities that need to be taken care of, but we have families we have to protect as well. We have to think about why we’re doing this,” said Williams. She has taken several precautions to protect both herself and he clients. At the salon she works at, there are plexiglass dividers, masks are required for everyone, and she and her co-workers much sanitize each station “as soon as the client gets up.” In addition to the mask requirement, clients must get a temperature check, wash their hands as soon as they enter the salon, and answer a COVID-19 questionnaire.
“I do feel like it’s worth the health risk, but I think if you’re taking the necessary precautions, I don’t think it should be something that’s scary or too, too uncomfortable,” said Christina Walters, a 22 year-old eyelash technician working at LePink Studios in The Bronx.
“It’s like therapy, I felt like my clients were missing their therapy,” said Walters. LePink Studios also closed in March under Governor Cuomo’s New York State on PAUSE order.
Like Williams, Walters has taken precautions to protect herself and her clients as well. Masks are required at all of her appointments, she replaces the exam table paper after each client, sanitizes the bed, uses disposable tools, and soaks her tweezers in Barbicide, a disinfectant effective against Coronavirus.
Sheronda Hooper is one of Walter’s repeat clients. Hooper works in healthcare, had COVID-19, and lost her father to COVID-19 earlier this year, but has chosen to keep getting her eyelashes done.
“It’s the social part. You go get your lashes done, you’re talking, you’re vibing. You go get your hair done, you’re sharing an experience,” said Hooper. She says even though she has been directly affected by COVID-19, she thinks of the pandemic differently because she has already been exposed to so much during her career in healthcare.
“There is a community-oriented aspect of these spaces that separates Black salons and barbershops from those that serve other races,” said Reese. She says Black salons and barbershops give Black people the opportunity to experience community even with complete strangers.
While Reese is researching the importance of Black spaces, she says she has also experienced the magic of the Black salon first-hand. Each time she has gone to the salon, she says it has served as a local source of knowledge, “whether we’re debating something we’re seeing on TV or talking about something that’s happened recently in the neighborhood.”
For Black people, the beauty industry has played an important role for generations.
“It’s necessary because growing up as a Black girl, we were made to think that we weren’t pretty, we weren’t beautiful, we weren’t deserving,” said Williams.
“It’s an experience. For a long time, a lot of us [Black women] were expected to conform, with our hair, the way we dress, and the way we acted,” said Walters. She says having your eyelashes done is part of that and it allows Black women to express themselves outside of European beauty standards.
