THE FADER
“WE ALL VALUE THE SPACE OF THE QUEER BARBERSHOP AND HELPING FELLOW QUEER PEOPLE REALIZE THERE ARE SPACES WHERE THEY CAN BE THEMSELVES.”
As a Black woman who was born in the 1980s, I have many intimate childhood memories involving hair. Whether it was sitting on the floor between my mom or older sister’s knees as they wrangled my thick mane into neat ponytails, or settling in for the hours-long process of my mom visiting a neighbor’s house to get box or French braids, I learned early on that Black hair was a sacred labor of love. Sure, that labor was always painful, and I was prone to squeal and squirm my way through every single blow-drying session, but I also craved the intimacy of a space that was just for Black women. And since it’s true that beauty salons are mostly gender-normative spaces, I was a Black woman who didn’t quite fit.
This was the question I grappled with throughout my twenties. I had identified as queer for most of
