Going to a salon can be quite the experience. It’s meant to be fun, exciting, relaxing. To relinquish the task of doing our hair for one day and to have someone else do it is a relief. At the same time we are literally giving others the chance to treat, cut, and style our hair – what can happen in the chair can be a nightmare. Recently, what one woman thought would be a casual natural hair salon appointment turned into a real-life horror story.
Last week, a Georgia woman made news when she claimed that a stylist at Lucy’s Dominican Hair Salon in Marietta snuck a relaxer into her hair. The woman had scheduled an appointment for a routine wash and style (blowout”>. However, after three days the woman looked at her hair and noticed something was off. Her once natural hair now did not maintain the same texture and did not revert back to its natural curl pattern. Instead it was thin, frail and straight.
Suspicious about what had been done to her hair, the woman called the salon only to find out that it was a “routine procedure”–in the salon’s words–to add a small amount of a chemical relaxer or lye to naturally kinky, coily hair. For the stylist, this would make the client’s style easier to achieve for better blowout results.
Since the woman’s Facebook post, Lucy’s Dominican Hair Salon has released a post denying the claims:
Just want to inform my customers and future customers that we do not mix any type of relaxing product with our shampoo we have been in business for over 10 years with well satisfied customers. And any salon business Owner knows that mixing relaxer with shampoo would damage the hair and irritate as soon as it would be applied. So any comments or reviews against my business with this context is not educated in beauty salon products or practicing. And we only have this one location @ 550 Franklin rd Marietta Ga. A Special Thank you to all my current customers who trust us with all their hair needs.
Other naturals took to social media to share their thoughts on the allegations.
One post stated, “I’ve been natural my whole life, and if someone told me they used a relaxer in my hair without my consent, I’d be looking to start a war.” Another commentator mentioned that it is a common practice for stylists to use relaxers to make natural hair more manageable, saying “I’m not surprised. I’ve read Yelp reviews complaining that a lot of Dominican salons in DC also put relaxer in shampoos to ‘manage’ hair.”
We often hear natural hair horror stories, but nothing quite like this one in a long time.
What would you have done if your hair lost its natural curl pattern after a visit to the salon? Do you have a salon horror story?
