00:00Some people may call your kitchen beautician or your at-home cosmetologist.
00:06They might be unlicensed, but they're still skilled at what they do.
00:09Hi, my name is Candace Hokett.
00:11I'm Brittany Johnson.
00:12My name is Rachel Edwards.
00:14I'm Laris McMillian.
00:15And I'm going to tell you a story about my first salon experience.
00:19My first salon experience is when I was about like seven or eight years old.
00:23I used to go with my mom and my sister, and it usually took all day.
00:28It was on a Saturday, around six years old.
00:30My mother gave me a hot comb treatment every single two weeks, natural.
00:35The first time I can remember going to the hair salon was around the age of 10.
00:40And my mother took me because she could finally afford two heads instead of one.
00:45My earliest salon experience was for picture day.
00:49My aunt was a hairdresser.
00:53And we always used to go to the salon to visit her and get our hair done.
00:57And engage in salon gossip.
01:00I had this photo in my mind of Adrienne Bailon.
01:06She has these like beautiful curly like ringlets.
01:09Think cheetah girls.
01:10I'm black and my hair is black as .
01:13My hair is black as hell.
01:15Back in the day, the style was flat twist.
01:17They would just flat twist the hair, slack a bunch of gel on your edges, and curl the back.
01:23It would last about five to six hours depending on how crowded it was in the salon that morning.
01:30The first style I got was micro braids.
01:32And I remember sitting in the salon chair all day.
01:36And I just remember getting home and I had the worst headache I'd ever had in my entire life.
01:42You talk about what style you want.
01:44Normally it's the classic, a doobie wrap where you leave with the pins still in your hair.
01:49And I remember being in the chair all day and I got out and I had this short little curly
01:56fro
01:56because that's what my freaking hair looks like, duh.
01:59Fifth grade me was like, what's going on?
02:01That's not what I ordered.
02:02And I'm like pissed.
02:04I went to school the next day and all the kids were like, how did your hair get so long?
02:08But I just kind of like shook my braids from side to side.
02:12I remember actually leaving the braids in for about a month.
02:15And when I took them out, I felt like I could breathe again.
02:19If it was that time and your new growth was kind of itching, you would get a relaxer.
02:23I would be able to sit with my mom and be able to look at different styles together.
02:27And a couple of times we got some matching styles and I can remember that as a kid and
02:32I thought that that was cool.
02:33It sort of turned out to be like self-care, you know, girls bonding time between my mother
02:39and my sister, my mom.
02:41She never cared how much it cost or how much time it took.
02:45She always wanted, she made sure that we went to the hair salon so that we could feel,
02:48you know, really good about ourselves.
02:50I remember just like hating that whole experience and having my hairstylist not be so nice to me.
02:56Oh, your hair is hard to manage and oh, I'm going to be doing this one for a long time.
03:01That's not appropriate and it's just mean.
03:03I believe that getting your hair done as a black child or a black girl is a rites of passage.
03:10Our hair is so much part of our identity and who we are and shapes and frames so many of
03:15our experiences as black people.
