As some states reopen with new social distancing guidelines and public safety precautions, Black-owned personal care establishments are struggling to adapt.
While many states continue to enforce the necessary, life-saving stay-at-home restrictions that have had the unfortunate impact of shuttering countless businesses, the grooming industry faces the predicament of being essential to some, but still unsafe for most.
“For a lot of people right now, it’s a lot of shock. That just shows what we do is important: We play a role in people’s confidence,” beautician Rochelle Magno told the Undefeated.
Many report that clients have reached out, begging for preferential treatment. For out-of-work stylists, the offer is tempting. The Small Business Administration’s now-notorious Paycheck Protection Program made headlines for leaving certain business owners out in the cold for failing to qualify based on technicalities.
"If you're a barber and you're not a large enough priority for a major bank or financial institution, you're going to be at a disadvantage getting your application in," Damon Dorsey, president of the American Barber Association, expressed to CNN Business. "We're going to see a certain level of disadvantage for Black-owned business because of the nature of systemic racism that exists in the financing industry."
With rent and bills to pay and relief hard to come by, some shop owners took the fatal risk and remained open or moved operations to a home.
Eugene Thompson, a beloved Mississippi barber, served as a cautionary tale for many barbers and beauticians to reconsider such an approach.
“Eugene Thompson continued [cutting hair] after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11. Mississippi’s stay-at-home regulations weren’t issued until weeks later on April 3. Thompson announced his symptoms and the closing of his shop in a March 17 Facebook post. Eighteen days later, he was dead,” reports The Undefeated.
A Missouri hair salon, cleared to re-open by the state, exposed hundreds of clients to COVID-19, illustrating how risky reopening can be for the entire community as well.
Shop owners are following a laundry list of public health official-advised safety precautions in states that have controversially reopened.
Measures such as wearing face masks, capacity limits, appointment-only service, and extra hand and surface washing are all good ways to prevent the spread of communicable diseases like the coronavirus (COVID-19) but will be profoundly costly to the overall experience.
Those familiar with shop and salon culture can expect a halt to physical contact such as hugs and handshakes, and more expensive services to cover the cost of extra disinfecting supplies. Appointment setting and space limits are expected to cut into walk-in client volume and business revenue.
And in an industry where many service providers prefer to pay in germ-friendly cash, moving to an exclusively cashless payment system could make long time clients feel suddenly unwelcomed.
“If I’m wearing protection gear and giving my clients protection gear, how do we do it where we both feel safe, and at the same time don’t feel like we’re insulting each other?” Magno asked. “And how do I react when I hear a cough from a customer who’s calling to make an appointment? There’s a lot of questions.”