When Brianna Heath walked into a salon in her New York City neighbourhood last year, she figured she’d be in and out for a routine trim.
Heath typically gets her hair done in braiding salons in Brooklyn’s predominately Black neighbourhoods, but on that day she wanted a quick cut of her split ends somewhere near her apartment.
But the haircut resulted in several inches of Heath’s curly tresses being chopped off. “It was a bad, bad, bad curly cut,” she said. “The stylist was really rough with my hair and cut way more off than I wanted.”
The encounter left a sour taste in Heath’s mouth and made her feel inferior, she added.
For beauty consumers with textured hair like Heath — including wavy, curly and coily hair types — it’s an experience that’s all too common. Despite the fact that people with textured hair make up an estimated 65 percent of the world’s population, according to beauty research firm Pivot Point, the US hair services industry is highly segregated, with licensed professionals typically trained on only straight hair types. The industry has a long history of discrediting Black hairstyles such as braids, locs and twists as unprofessional and unworthy of study. This means professionals and salons looking to fill this gap and service clients with textured hair, who are commonly people of colour, have to seek additional training. Many are unlicensed; these businesses are disproportionately Black-owned and serve as pillars for their communities.
But change is finally afoot. Last month, Connecticut became the fourth US state to mandate cosmetology and barber schools to include textured hair care in their curriculum, joining Louisiana, New York and Minnesota, which enacted similar laws in the past three years.
The laws promise to radically change the beauty landscape, allowing textured hair consumers to enter into any hair salon and have access to qualified personnel. New required training also means when salons hire future licensed employees, they could create potential new revenue streams by acquiring a new set of diverse customers.
These laws hope to show that the styling and treatment of textured hair is “a legitimate and long lasting career field,” said Myra Reddy, director of government affairs at Professional Beauty Association, a non-profit trade organisation.
“Everyone is deserving of going to a licensed establishment and receiving hair care services from a licensed, trained individual,” she added.
What does the new legislation require?
The Louisiana, New York, Minnesota and now Connecticut laws all aim to expand access to licensed hair professionals for people with textured hair, arguing that when hair salons and barber shops fail to provide certain services, even if it’s out of a lack of experience, they are engaging in a form of race-based hair discrimination.
These new policies expand on the Crown Act, the first state-wide law prohibiting race-based hair discrimination enacted in California five years ago. Since then, 26 states have adopted their own versions.
The four new laws go a step further by requiring all new cosmetology school graduates to take a course on the styling, cutting and treatment of curly, coily and tight textured hair. Students will be tested on these skills by their state’s cosmetology boards.
“[The] knowledge gap disproportionately impacts women and girls of colour with textured and diverse hair who face challenges in seeking out services that meet their needs,” New York Senator Jamaal Bailey, who sponsored the legislation in his state, said in a statement.
On a national level, Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat from New York, has introduced the Texture Positive Act into the House of Representatives which, if passed, will incentivise textured hair education across cosmetology schools in the US. The bill has 16 co-sponsors across 10 states.
Does the beauty industry support these laws?
Some beauty organisations have been advocating for the closure of the textured hair knowledge gap for decades.
The New York and Connecticut laws have been championed by the Professional Beauty Association, which lobbies legislators on issues affecting the beauty industry, as well as the Textured Hair Collective, an alliance of hair industry leaders with a goal of making hair education more inclusive. The Textured Hair Collective has corporate members including hair care brands Deva Curl, Aveda and beauty conglomerate L’Oréal.
The professional beauty services industry does not have a national standard for occupational licensing, which means cosmetology schools in different states could have drastically different curricula. This is in stark contrast with markets such as the UK which has mandated textured hair education through its National Occupational Standards. This has meant that the two lobbying groups must approach lawmakers in all 50 US states in order to get these bills passed across the country.
Consumer brands who have historically influenced the textured hair education space, such as Deva Curl, which owned and operated a hair academy training stylists on the treatment of textured hair, will likely benefit from cosmetology schools seeking their expertise when developing their new curricula, said Malek Varano, Deva Curl’s senior director of global brand and digital marketing.
Penetrating the school system would be a way for brands like Deva Curl to increase consumer awareness, she added.
How will they be enforced?
Cosmetology schools will be responsible for updating their own curricula. In New York, the schools were given six months from the law’s passing in November to its adoption in April to develop a new textured hair course. Cosmetology schools that fail to adopt new curricula or expand their textured hair courses will face civil penalties such as fines.
Licensing exams in Louisiana, New York, Minnesota and Connecticut will include textured-hair specific questions that students will be expected to answer correctly for them to receive an operating licence. The laws will only affect new graduates from cosmetology schools and will not impact stylists who were licensed in previous years.
Reddy said the adoption of the new curricula should not be a heavy lift for schools as the two major textbooks cosmetology students use, Milady and Pivot Point, already include sections on styling textured hair.
“We’re asking that they use the information in the books, and that they integrate that information every day, not just for a small segment of the student’s training,” she said.
What about existing salons that don’t yet provide textured hair services?
While the laws don’t go as far as offering additional training for existing hair care professionals, salons that opt to hire new cosmetology graduates will benefit from their mandated textured hair training. If they choose to embrace this new required expertise, they have the opportunity to garner a new set of diverse clientele and boost revenues, according to Reddy.
Still, these businesses would have to build trust with a set of consumers that have historically been excluded, and winning them over may be an uphill battle.
