BBC Newsbeat documentary ‘Has Black Lives Matter transformed black hair care?’ presented by Roshan Roberts and Leanne Alie, explores what the hair industry has done since 2020 to be more inclusive.
Data from Treasure Tress found that Black adult women in the UK account for 10% of haircare spend, despite only making up 2% of the total UK population. Additionally, the Black Pound Report 2022 found that only 39% of black women say that their hair needs are catered for – an experience echoed in the documentary, with one contributor stating that they didn’t have a regular hairdresser and often encountered issues when it came to finding a stylist.
In 2021, the National Occupational Standards were updated to include the cutting and styling of afro and textured hair as a requirement. The documentary explores whether, following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the hair industry has become more inclusive and acted on the commitments made by various brands and businesses in the past few years, as well as what this means for the black community.
As part of the documentary, Leanne Alie returned to her hometown of Reading to see whether the salon landscape in the area had changed. After visiting the salons in the area, Leanne commented, “I was quite surprised with the response from some of these salons, a lot more of them [salons] knew about these new training standards than I expected, even though not everyone is trained yet, they’ll have at least one or two stylists that are specialised in afro hair.” However, there were still a number of salons in the town which didn’t yet cater for afro and textured hair, but did say they intended to complete training in order for this to change.
The full BBC Newsbeat documentary is available to watch here.