Is this discrimination?
In a way it is! Lets take a Dominican salon for instance. If one of my Latina friends walked in with her natural hair she would be able to take advantage of the discounted rates. If I walk in with my natural hair being of Afro Caribbean decent I would be charged more.
The next question I would have would be simply “Am I being charged more because I am black”? Any respectful salon would say absolutely not even when the writing is literally on their walls. They have to see how this looks though and why anybody with half a brain would question their intentions.
What is natural hair?
You might wonder why I would even ask such a question, but hear me out. Black people are not the only ones with natural hair. We have adopted the term as our own to make things easier to differentiate between a black woman with relaxed hair and a black woman without relaxed hair.
Natural hair is, however, technically any hair that grows out of the scalp that has not been chemically changed in anyway; it has no race.
This means a white woman with naturally straight hair who has not chemically altered her hair in anyway has natural hair. My Latina friend with loose 3C curls has natural hair and I have natural hair as well with my kinky* coily 4A hair.
If a white woman with loose curls enters a black salon and says give me a blow out, will you also charge her $30.00 more because of her natural hair? What about Hispanic women? Or an Indian woman who wants her thick hair bone straight? What about kids with kinky hair vs kids without?
I believe that there are many salons out there doing things the right way. I have been to salons who have no issues with doing natural hair and they celebrate their natural clients all over social media and through advertising. Black men and women who are professional stylists have taken the time to reacquaint themselves with handling natural hair quickly and safely giving us some of the freshest looks on the planet in less time.
With that said, salons who discriminate have no excuse because things are changing and innovative stylists have pivoted with the times, making way more money and doing the darn thing. I would be embarrassed if I were a black salon touting all black everything, fists in the air, trying to charge a sister more because you have to detangle a few little kinks.
As a customer, I now know that I do not have to pay more because my choices in salons and stylists who know what they are doing is more abundant than it was years ago. My advice is if you experience price hikes because your hair is kinky* curly, take your business elsewhere.
Comment below if you have been charged more because your hair is natural!
Stacey NM says
It is my understanding that salons will charge according to the level of work involved which will take into consideration things like hair length, hair amount, hair texture, and of course the service requested. It makes sense to me that doing a blowout on shoulder length straight hair will take less work than shoulder length kinky hair and the price will reflect that. With that said, I doubt that a salon will have a “natural hair tax” on their price list as that could be quite off-putting. A smart business practice would be to simply tell you for the work involved, this is the cost.
Vedejah Scroggins says
I no lie have put a lot of work myself on my natural hair to the point I’m considering paying someone once a week to take care of it for me like when I had a perm when it was permed it was so so SO much easier to take care of so I mean I would pay more because I know how hard it can be to be gentle with kinky hair and not get frustrated when the piece of hair you just combed out is back tangled lol