This is the beginning of a series of posts originally posted on a wonderful and lovely website called Dangerous Minds which is now a thing of the past. Please enjoy them as I truly enjoyed writing them and didn’t think they should have dwindled away into the ether of the Internet.

This is one of my all-time favorite photographs. I have no idea who took it, where it was taken, dunno who the hell these ladies are. But goddamn. I adore them all.

I’ve seen tons of people look at this photo and mock these women for unconventional hairstyles, awkward facial expressions, and what is likely a highly Texan aesthetic (my geographic guess). Fine, laugh. But there’s something so charming, so uniquely pleasurable about the way these women (probably family) are enjoying each other’s company, standing out in that ratty backyard. That yard of dead grass laid out in front of a patio overhang that seems to be one short storm away from crashing to the ground. And our youngest girl- the one with the flowing hippie hair and glasses- she’s wearing pink slippers! There’s this weird strength reflected here in this cadre of creatively-coiffed chicks. I bet they made great cocktails and killer cookies.

Women’s hair and beauty dynamics are intensely personal. Since the beginning of time women have invested spaces like beauty parlours/salons with the power of the personal in order to have a location to freely access aesthetic self-care practices. Generally, we do this for our own benefit, to impress someone else or both. These spaces have also traditionally served another equally important function: they are community social zones and “safe spaces” for women to gossip, exchange intimacies that they would never do around male friends/family. Beauty parlours have always served a critical function for women.

The cosmetology world made huge advances in the 1920s. Thanks to the invention of the hair salon (and hair salon franchise) by Canadian-American business woman Martha Matilda Harper, women’s beauty centers shifted from “home visits” to the communal environment we are now familiar with. Harper sold many of the franchise models to lower income women and ended up profiting greatly as a result, even though it could have failed. 

With these advances, there are some unfortunate facts. These sacred communal spaces were structured for Straight White Women and they have never quite lost that flavor, even today. What’s most unfortunate (but not surprising) is that there are women of color who helped establish this space and should be far more famous than they are. Women like Sarah Breedlove Walker aka Madame CJ Walker was born to freed slaves and was an extraordinary businessperson. Employing some of the highest numbers of black women in the United States, Walker developed her own line of beauty products and became one of the first self-made millionaires in the United States.

Looking through what has been visually documented on this topic, it is very rare to see women of color getting their nails done or sitting under a dryer. One of the most unfortunately things salons have done has been to reinforce the “Whiteness is the ideal beauty standard” concept. 

The photographs of beauty parlours and women sharing moments are great. There are outstanding and surreal bouffants and curls, brilliant beehives and up-dos galore. And who knows what they’re chatting about? They could be sharing recipes or gossip about their horribly abusive husband because it is under that dryer that they feel safe. We’ll never know. 

I do know one thing, however. The privilege in those shots gives me pause. I treasure these photographic connections between women during “hair moments” and that helps me examine intense pictures like this one deeper. It is from a Japanese internment camp in Colorado, and this is a beauty salon that they created because there was a need.

These spaces are precious.