While black men have Chop Shop and a few other options, black female students are left without many hair care options in Athens.
For more than 18,000 white students on Ohio University’s campus, the constant hassle of hair care is one less problem they face while moving away to college.
But, for Monique Biggers and roughly 1,100 other black students on campus, the struggle to find options could mean having to go back home.
“I go home to Cleveland, which is a two- to three-hour drive depending on who's driving or if I’m taking the bus,” Biggers, a sophomore studying sociology, said. “I wouldn’t expect someone in this area to be able to do black people hair.”
Biggers said because most of the town and campus demographic doesn’t contain a large population of people of color, there isn’t often a “need” to provide possible options for black students around here, but black students often find ways to fit their needs.
“We literally have four tanning salons on Court (Street). … Then there’s places for white students to go get their hair done,” Biggers said. “But then there’s a lot of people that do hair on campus. … Three girls (that do hair) live in my building … so if I didn’t want to go home, I could get my hair done here.”
Kanece Williams, a sophomore studying restaurant, hotel and tourism, often offers help and does hair in her dorm room for black students on campus. Williams said she usually charges between $40 to $55 depending on what the person wants.
“I probably get close to three people a month,” Williams said. “It’s sporadic. … I just do it whenever somebody ask me and I do it. It usually depends on whatever they want as well … but I usually do whatever they want though.”
If a black hair store or salon opens on Court Street, Williams said it could make a lot of money because black students on campus would buy products and go there.
“I feel like if they had a black salon that did black people’s hair, (the salon) would be jumping,” Williams said. “They would make a lot of money. … People would get their perms done, their hair braided. … I would go, at least to get my ends clipped or something.”
For most students, the salons and barber shops Uptown don’t always seem to fit their comfort level, Toi Cummings, a sophomore studying broadcast journalism, said.
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“I look through the (salon) window and see all white people and that throws me off,” Cummings said. “How would they know what to do with my thick, curly, nappy hair?”
Along with the traditional styling and washing of hair, there’s a lot of diversity when it comes to maintaining and working with black hair, Jalen Perkins, a sophomore studying chemical engineering, said.
“There’s relaxed hair, there’s natural hair and all of them require different intentions,” Perkins said. “So even if you did go to a salon, relaxed hair might need less heat than natural hair or natural hair might need more moisture, and they don’t know how to do that. … (A person’s hair) could get messed up … so it’s a little different than white people’s hair and (they) probably don’t know (how to do it) because it’s completely different.”
While there are not any salons in Athens for female black hair care, black men have a few options, including Chop Shop, 20 S. Court St.
Brandon Swanston and Nolan Jackson-Daniel said they didn’t have trouble finding places to cut their hair around town.
“Before I got to campus … I asked around and asked who cuts hair on campus. People kept referring me to the Chop Shop so I just went in,” Jackson-Daniel, a sophomore studying communication, said. “They didn’t mess me up so I just kept going back.”
Swanston, a sophomore studying music production, said what appealed to him about Chop Shop was seeing a black man in the shop.
“I was just walking up Court Street one day looking for barber shops and I looked in (Chop Shop) and saw a black dude,” Swanston said. “That’s what originally brought me in (Chop Shop) and everyone was nice so I kept coming back.”
Williams said she appreciates that stores on Court Street try to provide different options for black students on campus. The lack of options, she said, shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“I think it’s great that (places) like CVS and Walmart have, like, little ethnic hair sections,” Williams said. “I think it’s good that they at least try to have something … but I wouldn’t expect it because it’s a bunch of white people here, so why would they have it.”
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