1 mins
“I FELT AS A MAN I AM AT TIMES IN A PRIVILEGED POSITION”
On International Women’s Day 2022, BLACC + BLOND, based in Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter, took the huge leap of becoming a Gender-Neutral salon. Owner Anil Salhan explains why
After launching their sustainability initiative, ‘GREEN is the new BLACC’ on World Earth Day 2021, with the aim to become the most sustainable hair salon in the UK, owner Anil Salhan, decided that gender inequality is the latest battle he is willing to fight for.
At BLACC + BLOND equality is in the DNA of who we are and we pride ourselves on being an inclusive space, whereby BLACC + BLOND itself stands for balance and is the salons very own yin and yang through the medium of hair. The salon mantra is “length doesn’t matter, time does” and we wanted to incorporate this into our new gender-neutral campaign. Since opening the shop, we have always priced shorter women’s haircuts as the same price as men’s, but with the new pricing structure, we wanted to take this to the next level.
Although I was aware that many salons out there are already gender neutral, I knew that making BLACC + BLOND’s pricing gender neutral would be a huge step for the salon, and more challenging. Most salons that are gender neutral have a higher percentage of female clients, whereas BLACC + BLOND have a 50/50 split, and to change the pricing structure so drastically has rarely been seen before.
With that in mind, we decided to increase men’s prices and decrease women’s prices to show the level of dedication the team have towards the cause.
I also decided to take the leap of making the shop gender neutral as I felt that as a man, I am at times in a privileged position, and although I will never be able to completely understand women’s experiences regarding inequality, this is my way of showing that there are men out there who support them. I also hope that by sharing the story of my salon doing our bit in regards to gender inequality, more barbershop owners will do the same and hopefully it can stem out to the wider reach of society.