Join the Fight
Add your name to the petitions demanding that textured hairstyling become standard beauty school ed.
NANCY FALAISE, MONTREAL
With a goal of 10,000 petition signatures, salon owner Nancy Falaise aims to present a completed curly-hair program to the Ministry of Education and Higher Education of Quebec that would introduce all curl patterns (wavy, curly and coily) into beauty school curriculum, beginning with the fall 2021 semester. “I’d like them to either use my program or have me help them create one,” she says. “A good hairdresser, even if they specialize in one thing, should know the basics of everything. Hair is hair.”
SOLANGE ASHOORI, TORONTO
Owner of Toronto’s Ziba Style Bar, an inclusive salon that caters to all hair types, Solange Ashoori started a petition, addressed to Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, that calls for a major overhaul of all post-secondary hair programs in the province in order to tackle insufficient instruction when it comes to curls, especially 3C to 4C curl patterns. For Ashoori, the public response to her petition asking for 10,000 signatures has been fascinating. “We weren’t even expecting the petition to get as much buzz as it did,” she comments. “That reiterates that there is an imperative need for this change. I hope that the ministry will accept our help and listen to the demands of thousands of stylists and people who are hopeful that this change will be implemented.”
CHLOE STREIT, CALGARY
Grade 12 student Chloe Streit’s petition, which is pushing for 15,000 signatures, is demanding that secondary-school cosmetology courses in Alberta include modules on Black hair. The young hairstylist-in-training was inspired to spark change after her employer, modelling agency Mode Models, released a new booking policy in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests: The agency now charges clients if one of its Black models shows up on-set and their hairstylists are ill-equipped to style natural hair. “As a white woman in society, I started thinking about the ways my race has given me an unfair advantage in life,” says Streit. “I immediately thought of my cosmetology class and the ways in which our curriculum only caters to Caucasian hair. There’s very little representation of BIPOC cultures or trends, which I think is utterly ridiculous and upsetting.”
To sign the petitions, visit FASHIONMAGAZINE.COM/PETITIONS.