Black History Month
Braiding through the
Boundaries .
New Muncie Education in Biracial Hair classes aim to bridge cultural gaps through hair experience. Elissa Maudlin Associate Lifestyles Editor In a room attached to the kitchen of Erica Robinson Moody’s home sits two salon chairs. A cabinet is filled with different colored hair dyes, an apron hangs on a hook near a large mirror and products stand in single-file lines on the counters. Her son, Brooklyn Moody, sits in a salon chair where his mom said he often falls asleep, while she takes a comb, twirls it tightly on a small section of his hair and creates a tight, springy curl an inch or two in length. Dozens of these curls lie across his head. Brooklyn’s hairstyle takes 45 minutes to style this way, and the style only stays for about a week — a reality for biracial hair. Erica is a stylist, and, while styling Brooklyn and her daughter Ayreonna’s hair may seem painless now, it hasn’t always been this way. During Brooklyn’s youth, Erica didn’t have as much education on textured hair, with only a chapter of her textbook in beauty school focusing on it. “There’d be times where I’d be like, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’… as I’m yanking on their heads trying to get their hair,” Erica
said. “They’re screaming and crying, and I feel bad.” After learning how to style biracial hair through advice from co-workers and family, educational resources on the internet and experience with her own children, Erica decided to lead a new class at her salon. Her first class of An Education in Biracial Hair Feb. 17 will focus on families and how to style textured hair of biracial family members while future classes will help biracial people style their own hair and teach stylists how to style textured hair. Through their own research, Erica and her business mentor, Heather Roundtree—who Erica met at a Women in Business event— noticed there were typically only white and Black salons in Muncie, but no salon that could do all types of hair. Erica’s husband, Neil Moody, noticed this as well. “You go into a Black barber shop, and you ask [the Black barber] to do a certain style, and [they say, ‘I can’t do that style’] because they’re not good with scissors — they just use clippers,” he said. “You go into a white shop to get your hair done, and they don’t know how to use clippers because they’re just using scissors.”
See HAIR, 10
Erica Robinson Moody laughs while doing her son Brooklyn’s hair Jan. 27. Erica’s mission statement for her classes is “bridging the cultural gaps in the beauty community,” and she is very focused on cultural hair education. MAYA WILKINS, DN
02.02.2022
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