“You’ll be on in roughly 10 minutes.” the Salon Owners Summit A/V team tells me quietly. Here I am; a little over six months of brainstorming, ideation, research and preparation culminating in a keynote on the power of cultivating inclusive spaces for clients and employees alike. As the adrenaline starts rushing through every cell of my body in anticipation, my heart rate reaches what feels like a cardio training zone. I’m seriously considering logging my now incessant pacing as my official workout for the day.
Desperately trying to block out Nina Tulio’s content as to not blank on mine, I count my breaths, waiting for my cue. The irony of it all is that I could very much use some of Nina’s advice for taking steps to move from fear to confidence in this moment. She’s talking about:
- Knowing who you are and what you stand for
- Creating actionable core values to drive motivation and guide your course of action
- Focusing on the things that you can control
Round of applause. Nina exits the stage, leaving an energized, motivated, and uplifted crowd behind her.
“All you.”
Equipped with a synthesized account of my experience as a trans, queer, biracial, neurodivergent person, data, and my hope for a more accountable, inclusive future, I’m ready to turn the room into a space of mutual, kind, compassionate learning. Mutual because I would be learning, too — to let myself be truly perceived.
At the beginning of the session, I invite everyone to get uncomfortable with me, to have a real conversation about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB).I ask, “Can we make this a brave space together?”
What happened next? I’m not quite sure. But it felt like I was on a train that couldn’t stop, dancing between anecdotes from my life, report findings, questions and actionable takeaways. Here are some of them.
Impact vs Intention
When the words we choose and the experiences we create are criticized for their lack of understanding, compassion, or inclusiveness, and we prioritize comfort over learning, it becomes easy to hide our shame behind our intentions.
In his book “This vs That: Better Thinking, Better Choices, Better Leader,”Jay Williams explains that “when we defend and explain, our emotional brain has usually hijacked our rational brain in an attempt to protect us.” He continues to say, “Defending and explaining is about self-preservation and is often motivated by fear, guilt, or self-doubt.”
If, instead of choosing to defend and explain ourselves with our intentions, we decide to meet what has been brought to our attention with curiosity and accountability, we will be better able to defuse negative emotions, find understanding, build connection, show empathy and create a favourable environment for forward-looking and productive conversations.
The Three Learning Zones
I invited the audience to engage in the Learning one (also called Growth Zone).
- Comfort: Boredom and complacency stifle learning and growth
- Learning: Challenge, excitement and engagement create learning & growth
- Danger: High anxiety & stress block learning and growth
A Rich History of Providing Opportunities to Those Otherwise Excluded
Blending personal experiences with compelling statistics and even some historical facts about the industry, the next segment of the keynote touched on how the hair and beauty industry was built on affirming people:
- Elizabeth Arden: her signature salon was founded on the idea of offering makeovers to her clients and giving opportunities to whom society deemed outsiders, such as:
- Martha Mathilda Harper: a domestic servant sent away by her father at age seven, Martha launched modern retail franchising and built an international network of 500 franchised hair salons that emphasized healthy hair care
- Madame CJ Walker: born on a plantation, orphaned at age seven, married at 14, struggling financially, facing hair loss, and feeling the strain of years of physical labour, Madame CJ Walker found a sense of purpose and belonging through the launch her own line of hair products and straighteners for African American women
Remembering and learning about the hair and beauty industry’s long history of welcoming and providing opportunities to those otherwise deemed as outsiders by society can be a powerful guide or north star for salon professionals looking to take more steps within the DEIB space.
All Identity Groups Cover, but Some Cover More
After sharing more stories and personal experiences, I introduced the audience to the concept of “covering.”
Covering: “Ways in which individuals downplay known disfavored identities to blend into the mainstream.”
Individuals will often “cover” regardless of their identity, environment, and sometimes by proxy.
It can be:
- Appearance-based: altering the way you present
- Advocacy-based: not defending or promoting the interests of one’s group
- Affiliation-based: minimizing behaviours associated with one’s identity often to negate common stereotypes
- Association-based: (avoiding contact with other group members)
According to Deloitte’s report Uncovering Culture: A Call to Action for Leaders, “Despite the increased attention paid to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion over the past 10 years, a decade after the release of [Deloitte’s] initial research, 60% of US workers report covering at work in the last 12 months.”
Those with more marginalized identities were more likely to cover at work. However, more than half of those with no discernable marginalized identities still reported covering at work.
Percentage of respondents who cover broken down by the number of marginalized identities reported:
- 5-9: 71%
- 3-4: 57%
- 1-2: 56%
- 0: 51%
“When I say between alienation and belonging, I mean by that: will the hair and/or beauty business I walk into continue to make me anxious, hyperaware and self-conscious, much like many other spaces I walk into in the world? Or will it feel welcoming and safe?”
Pausing before diving into the actionable steps for salons and spas to take in their business to foster a culture of belonging, I invited the audience to pause and reflect on the following question (which you can reflect on too):
What is one way, or one type of pressure that your salon or spa might be unknowingly imposing on your staff or clients to minimize their identities?
Never Just a Haircut or Beauty Service
“You went up on stage as Zoé Bélisle-Springer, and you came off the stage as Alex Bélisle-Springer, which is an incredible moment for anybody in their life. It almost feels like a next-to-being-born moment or something like that. It really felt like that to everybody in the room, and people were deeply, deeply moved.”
– Ronan Perceval, CEO of Phorest Salon Software on the PhorestFM podcast with Alex Bélisle-Springer
We all seek to look on the outside how we feel on the inside, but not everyone receives the same treatment by society for pursuing that. Unfortunately, the thing about anxiety and hyperawareness that comes from having felt othered and marginalized on big and small scales is that it can make it hard to move through the world and show up fully in every space for safety reasons. Because let’s face it: the world is inherently unsafe for many folks.
Navigating a world systematically designed to cause me discomfort or make me question my worth — being enough to be truly understood and appreciated, for my feelings to be considered, to be cared for… or truthfully, even loved — has not been easy.
However, as I mentioned on stage, uncovering was transformative for me. Uncovering, unmasking, coming out as trans and loving the parts of myself I never knew how. But there was still one gap to bridge.
And that meant reintroducing myself.
As Alex.
What if you could, through your beauty business, not only make someone feel good and look great, but also help them feel like they belong, at the very least within the vicinity of your walls?
Key Takeaways, Steps You Can Take & Further Resources
Takeaways
- You cannot build a culture of belonging without psychological safety
- Centering the experiences of marginalized communities in policies, processes and design choices can help salons and spas better approach inclusivity and meet the needs of all their staff and clients
- Building relationships and trust with staff and clients is crucial for creating a supportive and inclusive environment
- Covering, or downplaying disfavored identities, is still prevalent in the workforce, and businesses should strive to create an environment where individuals feel comfortable being their authentic selves
- Workers and inclusive teams compared to those in non-inclusive teams are 7x more likely to report the workplace has positively or very positively impacted their mental health (46% vs 6%). (Diversity Council Australia / “Inclusion and Equity for Workers with Disabilities” by Serena Huang)
- Diverse workplaces generate 19% more innovation revenue than less diverse environments. (Boston Consulting Group)
Some Steps You Can Take Towards Inclusivity:
- Adopt inclusive language as the default in your salon or spa
- Normalise asking about someone’s pronouns and sharing yours
- Use your pronouns in email signatures, social media, and when introducing yourself.
- Don’t assume someone’s gender identity and use “they” when you don’t know what pronouns someone uses.
- Keep to technique (genderless terms) when giving a client a treatment or service.
- Educate yourself on language that refers to disabilities
- Use alternatives to classist and ableist language
- Audit and educate yourself on any perspective you do not have in your circles
- Seek out collaborative work with transgender organizations and advocates, disability advocates, LGBTQIA+ charities and organizations, occupational therapists, sensory integration specialists, ASD professionals, DEIB experts and/or gender specialists
- Commit to moving from passive allyship to active allyship
Audit and make changes to your policies and processes based on equity rather than equality
- Offer gender-neutral prices and services
- Offer a range of skincare/hair care products suited to different skin tones and hair textures
- Add captions to your stories
- Offer online booking
- Record and post to your social media and website a video tour of your salon or spa
- Have a sensory-friendly space
- Offer non-fragranced products
- Put anti-discrimination and anti-racism policies in place
- Audit your workplace dress codes and remove unnecessary appearance-based covering demands
- Offer gender-neutral caregiving leave policies
- Follow up with an email when it comes to aftercare routines for clients
- Be more curious about your first-time clients, ask them about their last salon or spa experience, whether they have any triggers, sensory needs or aversions
- Take a note of clients’ pronouns, sensory needs, aversions and triggers in their client card
- Design your space for inclusion (wheelchair ramps, wider doorways, low reception counters, accessible seating options, gender-neutral bathrooms, etc)
Industry Organisations:
- Become a gender-affirming salon or shop with the Dresscode Project
- Strands for Trans, bringing gays, straights, women, men, anyone, together to create more trans-friendly barbershops and hair salons
- Texture Education Collective, an alliance of professional hair industry leaders working together to influence cosmetology state board licensing requirements and curriculums to be inclusive of all hair textures and all hair types
- Sensory Safe Solution, empowering industry professionals by providing a research-based curriculum which gives them knowledge and skills designed specifically for supporting guests with autism or sensory differences
And of course, Phorest Salon Software, a great partner to have with gender-inclusive features for your software!
Books:
- Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry by Geoffrey Jones
- The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access by David Gissen
- The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice is Justice For All by Shon Faye
- I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya
- People Change by Vivek Shraya
- Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt
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