November 1, 2017 • 31 mins
If you’ve listened to our episode on "feminist hair," you already know hair is a sensitive issue, particularly for Black women, who are often policed for hair choices. Today B&E unpack a legal battle over braid shop licensing that you won't believe.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget, and this is Emily, and this
is stuff Mom never told you. And today I'm pretty
thrilled to talk about a topic that if you know
me or have ever listened to an episode of this show,
(00:26):
you know it's very important to me, and that is hair.
We've actually done a whole episode unpacking the feminist ramifications
of hair. Many folks might just think it's the stuff
that grows on your head that doesn't really have much
to do about anything, but actually hair is a pretty
sensitive and thorny topic, particularly for women of color. And
I was really impressed and amazed by how many of
(00:47):
our listeners Bridget wrote in telling us about their hair journeys,
and a lot of you even made the big chop
after listening to our podcast about hair. So we've been
diving in to lots of other tangents and conversations around hair,
and hopefully we can continue this conversation even further on
social media and through email with all of y'all. But
(01:09):
today's story it sort of combines policing women's speech and
the episode we did around hair, because it hammers on
this idea that women of colors hair is much more
heavily policed than what is considered traditionally white hair. Isn't
that right? That's completely right. In doing research for this episode,
I was really shocked by some of the stories that
(01:29):
I came across. I've always heard colloquially of stories of women,
you know, getting in trouble at work or a certain
kind of hairstyle, but really, when you look at how
young this starts for a lot of women of color,
it's pretty troubling. There have been so many stories of
young women getting kicked out of sports teams or getting
suspended just because of how they've chosen to wear their hair. Yeah.
I mean, this is an issue that is not just
(01:51):
about how you like to wear your hair. It's about
what other people consider appropriate, and that is what bothers
me the most. In the Malden Charter School in the
Boston area, they actually served up detention slips to two
students for wearing box braids. According to The Boston Globe,
the fifteen year old twins Dianna and Maya Scott were
pulled from their sports teams and told they were not
(02:14):
allowed to go to prom. What. Yeah, and again, it
kind of goes back to the episode we did around
dress codes, where something so seemingly arbitrary and not important
is impacting your ability to just have a normal day
to day as a student or gain an education. Exactly.
It's and it's not white girl braids, it's box braids
(02:35):
on black girls heads exactly. Another story I found really
interesting was out of Praetoria High School for Girls, where
girls were told to quote unquote fix their hair if
they were wearing it in a natural state. Things like dreadlocks,
loose braids, and corn rows had diameter restrictions. And again,
if you have thick hair like I do, course hair,
someone can't arbitrarrily tell you, oh, your dreadlock or your
(02:56):
twist or your braid needs to be x in diameter.
Your hair kind of makes that choice on its own.
You don't really have a lot of control over it
if you're if you're wearing your hair natural. And these
girls actually didn't take this sitting down. They held protests
in order to be able to fight to have their
natural hair. And this is the part that bothers me
the most, that the way your hair is a young
black woman naturally comes out of your skull is deemed
(03:20):
inappropriate here and at the same time, you know, on
the other side of the country, there are girls who
are adapting their hair and trying to tame their hair
in an attempt to be more appropriate, to fix their
hair with box braids, and they're told also, that's not appropriate.
It's infuriating to think that, you know, this arbitrary condemnation
(03:43):
on the way that your hair is naturally presenting itself.
Isn't even there's not even a case here for oh,
you're distracting the boys. It's not about sexualizing. It's about saying,
here's what's appropriate for your presentation physically that will be
deemed somehow tolerable by the masses. I just it seems arbitrary,
and it seems disproportionately condemning young black women, oh, no doubt.
(04:06):
And I also think you know, when you're if you're
a young black woman and you get braids, braids is
a style that I used to wear my hair in
for summer camp. Right, Like, if you make the choice
to get braids, that's clearly a style that you're you know,
it's a style that can get you through a summer
or a few months without a lot of upkeep. And
so it's not like when you wear braids. It's not
necessarily a fashion statement. A lot of times it's the
(04:27):
style where your mom is just like, we'll get you braids.
Let's not have to deal with it for a while.
And telling telling people that they can't use the style
that has been in our in our cultural identity for
so long, I think is is maddening. And this is
not an anomaly. Unfortunately, loss in Brown High School told
black girls with natural hair that they needed to tie
their afroze up to make them more beautiful, according to
(04:50):
a South African news outlet, So this is by no
means uniquely American problem. This is happening across the globe
in a way that has to cause us some pause.
And it is kind of interesting how this topic in
today's story really intersects between policing women's speech, schul dress codes,
(05:10):
and the feminist politics of hair, all centered around one
woman's sort of symbolic fight with the law on just
how real this issue can get. So when we use
words like police, you might be thinking, oh, policing hair,
that seems a little bit extreme. Bridget I don't think
anyone's getting arrested over hair, over braids. You would be
(05:33):
wrong if you thought that because Isis Brantley of Dallas,
Texas was actually arrested after a twenty year legal battle
where she fought for the right to braid hair and
teach others to braid hair in Texas. We're gonna dig
into her incredible, incredible story after this quick break and
(05:57):
we're back, and I want to talk about Isis Brantley
because her story, I think is one that people don't
really know about and it's wild. So basically, Isis is
a hairdresser in Dallas, Texas. She's been doing braids and
braiding hair since nineteen seventy nine, so she has this
long legacy of braiding hair showing others how to braid hair,
and really, it seems like for Isis it's a big
(06:18):
part of how she expresses her cultural heritage. She calls
it healing through hair. It's a big part of who
she is. But unfortunately, in Dallas, Texas, because of really
really kind of over the top regulation, Isis was not
able to legally braid hair in Texas. So she was
doing so in kind of this undercover, off the books
(06:40):
kind of I don't know if you want to call it.
I don't want to say black market. But no, it's
like it's basically like being a Facebook entrepreneur, which is
what I see more often. Like, you know, it's funny
to talk about Texas as an overregulated, liberal state full
of too much government. You know, that makes me crack
up from an entrepreneur's persect. And also the fact that
(07:00):
I am like railing against government? Who am I? What is?
This topic has put us on weird sides of issues.
But yeah, no, So what's interesting is she wasn't licensed
as a cosmetologist. And basically because the law thinks of
cosmetology and hair styling as something that inherently involves dangerous
(07:23):
chemicals and pollutants and toxic ingredients, because a lot of
hair treatments involving white women's hair were just dying hair
and cutting hair definitely fall into that category. There's no
space in the licensing code, in the business code in
Texas for a business owner like Isis, because for Isis,
(07:45):
she doesn't use chemicals or dies or any coloring agents.
It's all natural, and there was no way for her
to get a cosmetology license to fully and legally operate
her business without some really intensive accrediting. Basically, what it
comes down to is that if she wanted to be
able to legally braid hair, she had to take a course,
(08:08):
our cosmetology class where she would have to master skills
like trimming and shaving mustaches and shampooing and using chemical
straighteners and chemical bleaches, things that she doesn't do in
her shop, things that are really more geared toward white
men and people who are not there to get their
hair braided. And so it didn't make any sense that
if she wanted to be able to legally practice this
crap that she's been practicing for twenty years, she'd have
(08:30):
to spend lots and lots of time and money demonstrating
her efficiency with these skills that had nothing to do
with her trade, right, and she would have to of
course pay for that schooling, and she would have to
I mean, that's like at forty hours a week. That's
like thirty seven and a half weeks of training. And
very rarely are women going to cosmetology programs full time
because you've got to work on the side most of
(08:51):
the time. So this is more like a two year
initiative or a two year investment that she would have
to make. Now we're gonna talk a little bit more
about all the regulatory deets in a second. But here's
where this comes to a head. So she's been braiding
since nineteen seventy nine, and two decades later, after a
long drawn out fight in seven uniformed and undercover officers
(09:18):
handcuffed Isis in front of her customers and dragged her
out of her salon in Dallas. Dragging and handcuffing this
woman like a violent criminal because she had been found
guilty of the offense of braiding hair without a cosmetology license.
Are you kidding me? I mean, I can't even imagine
being put in handcuffs and dragged out of your own
(09:41):
salon because you're trying to braid hair, something you've been
doing your whole life and probably your mom did to you,
and you know her mom did to hurt. It makes
no sense. It's government run amuck. I mean, I never
thought I would used the phrase of government regulation run
them up, government regulation run up, y'all right. And at
the same time, you know that like the hedge fund
bankers who tanged her economy, who are like committing fraud
(10:01):
in the billions of dollars, wouldn't get dragged down handcuffs.
But really, let's crack down and like physically remove the
small business owner craftswoman who's been using no pollutants to
naturally braid hair for a living. Yeah, that's a good
use of our tax paya dollars. Yeah, it makes it
makes no sense and it's infuriating. Um. But I think
it's really interesting is that when Isis was asked by
(10:23):
Cosmo magazine, you know, did you ever just think about
getting your cosmetology license and just, you know, braiding hair
that way? Here's what she said, Absolutely not, because I'm
not a cosmetologist. I don't use chemicals or any type
of unhealthy or costic chemicals or anything that would hurt
the client. No sharp instruments or anything like that. They
did shut my business down. Me and my five kids
(10:43):
became homeless, and one of the community leaders gave me
his house and from there I just tried to put
my pieces together and not fall apart. I just started
braiding in that particular house. And so again from this quote,
you really see a few things. One, she doesn't feel
like it's fair to regulate her as a cosmetolog just
when she's not doing these things. She specifically says, I
don't use chemicals. I'm ideologically opposed to using chemicals and
(11:06):
things like that. So why force her to, you know,
get get a certification saying that she can use them.
Where are the Libertarians on this? Shouldn't they be rallying behind?
I actually did really later in the story. It's actually
the Libertarians who would have come to her crusade. Um.
So again, kind of strange Bedfellow in this hairbrating. Well,
(11:26):
when you think about it, she's she says that she
pretty much only uses her hands for her craft, and
this is a craft that she's also professionally training other
people in, and she's basically pointing out the fact that
the government code does not account for a business like hers. Yeah,
and even going further, I think something that you said
earlier about braiding and hairstyling being this sort of underground
(11:48):
economy that really operates on Instagram and Facebook. I mean
full disclosure when I wear braids. I found my hair
braider on Instagram and she's amazing, and uh, I don't
know the ins and outs of her whatever, but she's great.
This regulation does not allow for these braiders to have
on the book's economies. They they're forced to do things
like set up on Instagram and braid out of their
(12:09):
kitchen and have it be not really on the books,
not totally legit. I mean, yeah, and it's a problem
that needs to be solved. And maybe if we had
more black women making laws in our country, we would
have accounted for these kinds of businesses already. I think
this is such a great example how a lack of
diversity and leadership can actually have ramifications that just completely
does not account for the realities of so many people's
(12:31):
lives and businesses. And that's one of the reasons I'm
so happy that natural hair and braiding advocates have been
steadily making noise about this issue for quite some time.
Braiding advocates have been, you know, lobbying lawmakers and politicians
and really ask them to do something about this regulation.
And back in the Congressional Black Caucus actually held a
forum all about discussing regulation in the braiding and natural
(12:54):
black hair community. And after a decade of fighting for reform,
in two thousand and seven, Texas acquiesced and created a
separate thirty five hour hair braiding certificate, which is much
more reasonable than fifteen hundred you know, hours of training
and certification for how to use sharp objects that are
never going to be relevant to a hair braiding business exactly.
(13:16):
And I think furthermore, as someone who wears braids a lot,
I'm not saying that hair braiding should not be regulated
at all. Right, I'm not saying that there aren't risks
involved when you're braiding somebody's hair. You could braid it
too tight, or things could be you know, you can
have problems with stitation, just like just like you could
have with any other you know, hairstyling, whatever. But I
think thirty five hours of course is dedicated solely to
(13:38):
the thing that you are doing, as opposed to fis
of course, is dedicated to stuff that you'll never do,
or perhaps you are ideologically opposed to doing, and that's
why you got into hair braiding in the first place.
The course just makes a lot more sense, right, And
it feels like they finally have filled that gap in
that blind spot in the legal code. I love to
learn that the state grand fathered, although I would say
(14:01):
grandmother isis in and that even one as far as
to honor her as the first natural hair care expert
in the state. So now she could finally practice hair
braiding for a living without operating in the shadows. So
certainly a huge victory for a hair braiding of the
natural hair community. But unfortunately it doesn't in there. And
(14:23):
we'll talk about why that is after this quick break
and we're back and we were just talking about isis
Brantley's quest to braid hair in Texas. So after Isis
Brantley was successful in terms of getting Texas to change
their regulation and let hair braiders braid hair with just
(14:46):
a thirty five hour course, her fight didn't end there.
One of the things that Brantley did in her shop
in addition to braiding hair was teaching others to braid hair,
and unfortunately, in Texas, this was still not allowed. Once
again under the existing state laws. Shops that teach braiding
need to meet the requirements again that have little to
(15:06):
do with braiding itself, like setting up a two thousand
square foot barber college equipped with ten sinks, short haired mannequins,
and reclining barber chairs. So if you've ever, like me,
been a very cheap hair cut seeker, or get your
hair cut and colored so often that the only way
it's affordable is to go to a beauty school to
(15:27):
get those services done with you, that is to my secret,
and to like tak myself how to bleach my own
hair without it falling off all the time sometimes. But
if you're like me, you've been to a school like this,
you've seen what they look like. The idea that Isis
would be barred from having any functional space to legally
teach her craft of hair braiding once again, falls into
(15:51):
this gray area, falls into this sort of no man's
land or no woman's land when it comes to the
legal requirements being far greater than what would apply had
these laws been centered around black hair as opposed to
white hair being the basis of all of these exactly. So,
if Isis legally wanted to be able to teach others
just to braid hair in Texas, she would have to
(16:12):
spend two thousand, two hundred fifty hours in barber school
learning things like shaving beards and mustaches and chemically straightened
hair past four exams, spend thousands of dollars on tuition,
and a fully equipped barber college that she doesn't need
all to just teach others to do a thirty or
five hour hair braiding curriculum that pretty much just uses
your fingers and braiding hair. Right, So, even though they
(16:33):
had changed the regulation for what's required to be a
professional hair braider to thirty five hours, they didn't go
ahead and while they're at it, update the law on
teaching certification and being able to teach others that thirty
five hour curriculum. Oh politics, it's maddening. It's maddening. And again,
can you imagine investing in things like barber shares that
(16:55):
you just will never use, spending thousands of dollars just
to do this, just to teach this one specific thing.
You mean, you don't need a barber chair to get
your hair braid in and a washball. All you need
to get your hair braided is a stool and like
your mom, and like a kitchen, maybe your aunt some
good stories. You don't need to wrap your face with
(17:16):
a hot towel for some reason. That scene from The
Little Mermaid is coming up. Do you remember that when
he like makes a hot towel like pile on some
the prince's face or somebody, and then the seagull like
nests in it. You mean, you don't need to sit
like that hair hairbraid. If no seagulls are required, what
(17:37):
the hell was with that scene? I don't know, a
weird scene. It is a worry. I'm gonna have to
go rewatch my favorite saying there was always an area.
Me too. Oh my god. We have to do we
have to do an episode on the Disney Princess. We
do like situation to be determined or to be continued rather,
So let's talk about these libertarians for a second. I
(17:59):
predicted this earlier because really, what isis is doing is
railing against out of date over regulation and big government
in a state like Texas. I'm thinking there's gonna be
so many red blooded American patriots who agree with her
and think you're right, government is too big and too early.
And as it turned out, Brantley teamed up with a
(18:21):
nonprofit legal firm, Institute for Justice, which is the nation's
only libertarian civil liberties public interest law firm. I don't
know how all of those things combine into one law firm,
but apparently they do, according to their website. And they've
filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas to
fight the requirements, which I think is the appropriate way
(18:42):
to do this, But isn't it funny to think about
this woman has just been trying to braid and teach
hair braiding like since nineteen seventy nine. Now she's taken
it to core. I find you would never think that
this is going to be the kind of thing that
would set off this libertarian civil liberties regulation firestorm. I
love it. And I know I talk a lot about
how I am not cool with deregulation in our country,
(19:05):
but this is one of those times where I think
the libertarians are onto something because clearly this is something
that's being overregulated and the regulations are not keeping up
with what actually is the reality of how hairbrading is
being practiced in the United States. Right, So bridgetad libertarian
you heard of your first guys don't want to get
out Just kidding. So to bring it back to the
(19:30):
lawsuit that they filed together, what I find so interesting
is the case that they were making when filing a
lawsuit against Texas is that braiding, the issue of regulating
braiding wasn't just an issue related to cultural expression and
I would argue a lack of intersectionality in our legal code,
but it was also about economic empowerment. Because the cosmetology
(19:55):
and barber licensing laws in all fifty states really we're
really based off of white hair techniques. They had a
virtual monopoly over all forms of hairstyling and licensing, which
basically disproportionately forced hair braiders and other practitioners that focused
on black women's cosmetics and hair to operate underground, and
(20:20):
many would be business owners and entrepreneurs were discouraged from
pursuing their business enterprise altogether. So as a result, they argued, quote,
natural hair care providers are consigned to the status of
an outsider, still fighting for their right to economic liberty.
What I love so much about that quote is that
it really hammers home how this is not just a
(20:42):
cultural or racial issue. It's an economic empowerment issue. If
these women who have been practicing this skill that their
mom or grandma taught them forever could actually make a
legitimate on the books living, that would really empower them economically.
But because of this regulation, basically it's forcing these women
to stay in the shadows and not declare their money
to the I R S and sort of keep it
all off the books, and it really prevents them from
(21:03):
fully contributing to their local economic communities. And this is
an important thing to consider when you look at the
bigger picture, which is that black women business owners have
been outpacing all other startups six times the national average.
So the number of businesses open by minority women have
increased from one to six to one in three in
(21:26):
two thousand fifteen, according to the State of Women Owned
Businesses report by American Express Open. So we're losing economic
opportunity from the small business community when we disproportionately regulate
and basically squeeze out all these would be entrepreneurs based
on implicit racism in our legal code. So it's just
(21:49):
a good reminder that we're also missing out on tax
dollars and on you know, creating more opportunity and jobs,
which is why I love that this black woman in
hair braider has teamed up with the Libertarians to make
a case that's about economic empowerment and cultural competency. It's
just such a fascinating spin on this issue, and there's
(22:11):
so many interesting intersections here. Again, it's race issues, gender issues,
economic issues, political issues, regulation issues, local ordinances. Hair it's
it's a lot. There's a lot going on here, and
one thing I wanted to highlight from what you just said, Emily,
is that because she teaches other women how to braid hair,
she's really giving that economic empowerment to others. So she's
(22:31):
not just saying I don't want to braid hair and
leave it at that. She's saying, no, I want to
empower other women who can learn this skill, learn this trade,
and build up their build up their businesses. I want
to give them the tools to do that and make
sure that we create a self sustaining economy of black women.
When the skill is software engineering and the audience is
white dudes, we call this a startup accelerator. Just something
(22:56):
to think about, Like, she has a startup accelerator for
the craft to hair braiding. I love the idea of
a black hair startup accelerator. So if that's not already
a thing, someone make that a thing. So to wrap
up what really happened with Isis's story, she teamed up
with the Libertarians and sued Texas for And I love
this quote a rational application of laws and regulations, which
(23:18):
I just think is so such a good That was
actually a lot the first line from her official lawsuit,
which I love and she won. She was successful. She
successfully changed Texas laws. In January, a federal judge struck
down the Texas laws on hair braiding. Basically, they said
that it was unconstitutional for the state of Texas to
regulate an ancestral art form, and it's unconstitutional for them
(23:41):
to require Isis to become a full fledged barbaran college
before they'll give her permission to run a natural hair
school in her own community. Snaps for that. That is
amazing And I do think in this case we can
look to Texas for inspiring stories of regulation gone right on.
Shout out to all our Texas listeners. What I think
(24:04):
is really interesting is the use of the word ancestral
art which adds that sort of aspect of cultural identity.
Here and Brantley herself talked about how the crackdown on
hair braiding was really an attack on black identity when
speaking to NPR, African hair was enslaved in this country.
(24:25):
It was removed from American social systems. We weren't allowed
to be seen in public with afros and twists and
locks and braids. You could not go anywhere. And if
you look at the industry today and look at them,
the workforce, people cannot go to work look in a
certain kind of way if it's too ethnic. Children are
being forced not to wear afropuffs to schools and coin
(24:47):
roads to schools, So it's an attack on African identity.
That's what I see. The cosmetology industry wasn't designed hundreds
of years ago. It wasn't created with African hair in
my you know, it was created for the people who
enjoy the industry. Now we don't have a place in
that industry. So it's all about culture. That's what I'm
(25:10):
saying this, our culture. African hair is the last thing
that's enslaved on African people. African people with African hair
who know more about African hair ship govern their own industry.
Hell yeah, I could not agree more. You know, hair
braiding has been in my family forever. If you look
(25:31):
at pictures of me when I was a kid, my
hair was pretty much always in brain. Can we have
those in the shadows please? Bridget, I want to see
a baby bridget. You can see some baby bridget. Well,
we'll show you some baby braided bridget where I look
like I look like an extra from the show Moesia.
But yeah, I mean I love that she talks about
the way that this is inherent to African American and
(25:53):
African cultural expression and that a crackdown on that is
not just a crackdown on on the economic aspect of that,
which it certainly is, but it's also cracked down on
the cultural aspect of it. And she goes on to
also make the case that her victory, beyond the cultural significance,
is a win for black economic liberty. It's a win
for entrepreneurship and a chance for Braids to come out
(26:16):
of the shadows and develop their full potential as business owners.
When speaking with Cosmopolitan, Brantley talked about the fact that
this victory brings those entrepreneurs out of the shadows. She says,
many women instead of hiding and having to practice their
craft and run their business and their kitchen or at
home or risk having their doors kicked in by police
(26:39):
who have come to those apartments to arrest them for
violating the law. Now those women have a vehicle through
which to legally pursue their enterprise. So this is a
huge victory for those entrepreneurs. This is definitely progress, but
also is this is a businesswoman who has been cra
(27:00):
down on for the better part of the last twenty
plus years. Having won this long drawn out legal battle
must feel great. But it also is like this woman
has five children who she's supported somehow by scraping her
way through running uh pseudo legal not so legal business
to fight to make this regulation better. Now she's there,
(27:23):
how does she stiring it all together? How does she
bounce back from that? And of course this is a
victory for her and other hairbraiders, but it's not like
she's starting out at an equal place after having been
cracked down on and pushed out of business for twenty years,
spending a lot of her money on lawyers and legal
peas and all of that. I mean, I bet it's
almost like a bittersweet victory for her. Yeah, because now
(27:46):
she has the opportunity to go be a successful business center.
That's it. I think what she really won here is
equal opportunity to pursue her enterprise. But that does not
mean that running a business or any business really is
an easy thing. And I can attest to that exactly.
And one other thing I just wanted to say while
we're talking about this is I don't want to make
it seem like if you are braiding hair or doing
(28:08):
hair in your kitchen and taking money under the table
that you're somehow not doing like that. I don't want
to sound judgmental around that, because that's certainly the situation
with the person who does my hair. But I think
that if you want to be able to come out
of the shadows and be a full member of the
your local economic community, you should be able to have
that right. And so it's definitely something to look into
with your Chamber of Commerce or your I guess in
(28:31):
d C is the d c R a like regulatory
affairs and go talk to the small business resources like
the Small Business Association and enquire about how your state
measures up to Texas. Or Texas has now made it
much more appealing I think for hairbraiders to open their
business there. Yeah, so if you're a hair braider, maybe
go to Texas. So what's been happening with I believe
(28:54):
she her website is naturally isis dot com. What's been
happening with ices Brandley? Well, as much as we just
this entire episode talking about how great she is and
how courageous she is, I would be remissed and not
mentioned that she did get in a little bit of
hot Water. Last year, she was putting together a natural
hair rally and she booked Rachel Dolezel to headline this
rally to a lot of outcry. And y'all already know
(29:17):
if you listen to our other episode around hair, you
already know I have very strong feelings about miss dolls
l but I have to say her hair always looked great.
Point after the whole thing happened with her getting losing
her job and losing her teaching job, she said that
she was sustaining herself by braiding hair out of her apartment,
which I gotta say, I mean, she knew what she
(29:38):
was doing, right, I mean, is problematic, but yes, it's
part of the contention. That is everything about Rachel Dolls
All which all of our listeners really had some mixed
feelings and feedback on. For us, I remember it was
an interesting debate. So I'm excited to hear what you'll
think about how she fits into this picture. And so
it's it's clear that I teaching other people to braid
(30:01):
has definitely been a big part of how she's moved
forward with her business. And you can check her out
and naturally dot com um where I'm looking at her website.
Right now, she's got classes. You can book yourself to
go get that natural hair certification. UM. It's a big
part of how she's empowering others economically, which I think
she's lifting as what is lift she's lifting as she climbs,
(30:24):
which is one of our one of our little mottos
here at stuff Told you So, sminty listeners, we want
to hear from you. What do you think of this
braiding saga? Is this news to you? Do you braid
hair out of your apartment? Who does your hair? Have
you ever thought about how these things are regulated? Whatever
it is you want to hear from you, You can
tag us and all your hair Instagram photos on Instagram
at stuff mom ever told you? You can teat at
(30:45):
us at mom Stuff podcast, or send us an email
at mom stuff at how stuff works dot com
Hey, this is Bridget, and this is Emily, and this
is stuff Mom never told you. And today I'm pretty
thrilled to talk about a topic that if you know
me or have ever listened to an episode of this show,
(00:26):
you know it's very important to me, and that is hair.
We've actually done a whole episode unpacking the feminist ramifications
of hair. Many folks might just think it's the stuff
that grows on your head that doesn't really have much
to do about anything, but actually hair is a pretty
sensitive and thorny topic, particularly for women of color. And
I was really impressed and amazed by how many of
(00:47):
our listeners Bridget wrote in telling us about their hair journeys,
and a lot of you even made the big chop
after listening to our podcast about hair. So we've been
diving in to lots of other tangents and conversations around hair,
and hopefully we can continue this conversation even further on
social media and through email with all of y'all. But
(01:09):
today's story it sort of combines policing women's speech and
the episode we did around hair, because it hammers on
this idea that women of colors hair is much more
heavily policed than what is considered traditionally white hair. Isn't
that right? That's completely right. In doing research for this episode,
I was really shocked by some of the stories that
(01:29):
I came across. I've always heard colloquially of stories of women,
you know, getting in trouble at work or a certain
kind of hairstyle, but really, when you look at how
young this starts for a lot of women of color,
it's pretty troubling. There have been so many stories of
young women getting kicked out of sports teams or getting
suspended just because of how they've chosen to wear their hair. Yeah.
I mean, this is an issue that is not just
(01:51):
about how you like to wear your hair. It's about
what other people consider appropriate, and that is what bothers
me the most. In the Malden Charter School in the
Boston area, they actually served up detention slips to two
students for wearing box braids. According to The Boston Globe,
the fifteen year old twins Dianna and Maya Scott were
pulled from their sports teams and told they were not
(02:14):
allowed to go to prom. What. Yeah, and again, it
kind of goes back to the episode we did around
dress codes, where something so seemingly arbitrary and not important
is impacting your ability to just have a normal day
to day as a student or gain an education. Exactly.
It's and it's not white girl braids, it's box braids
(02:35):
on black girls heads exactly. Another story I found really
interesting was out of Praetoria High School for Girls, where
girls were told to quote unquote fix their hair if
they were wearing it in a natural state. Things like dreadlocks,
loose braids, and corn rows had diameter restrictions. And again,
if you have thick hair like I do, course hair,
someone can't arbitrarrily tell you, oh, your dreadlock or your
(02:56):
twist or your braid needs to be x in diameter.
Your hair kind of makes that choice on its own.
You don't really have a lot of control over it
if you're if you're wearing your hair natural. And these
girls actually didn't take this sitting down. They held protests
in order to be able to fight to have their
natural hair. And this is the part that bothers me
the most, that the way your hair is a young
black woman naturally comes out of your skull is deemed
(03:20):
inappropriate here and at the same time, you know, on
the other side of the country, there are girls who
are adapting their hair and trying to tame their hair
in an attempt to be more appropriate, to fix their
hair with box braids, and they're told also, that's not appropriate.
It's infuriating to think that, you know, this arbitrary condemnation
(03:43):
on the way that your hair is naturally presenting itself.
Isn't even there's not even a case here for oh,
you're distracting the boys. It's not about sexualizing. It's about saying,
here's what's appropriate for your presentation physically that will be
deemed somehow tolerable by the masses. I just it seems arbitrary,
and it seems disproportionately condemning young black women, oh, no doubt.
(04:06):
And I also think you know, when you're if you're
a young black woman and you get braids, braids is
a style that I used to wear my hair in
for summer camp. Right, Like, if you make the choice
to get braids, that's clearly a style that you're you know,
it's a style that can get you through a summer
or a few months without a lot of upkeep. And
so it's not like when you wear braids. It's not
necessarily a fashion statement. A lot of times it's the
(04:27):
style where your mom is just like, we'll get you braids.
Let's not have to deal with it for a while.
And telling telling people that they can't use the style
that has been in our in our cultural identity for
so long, I think is is maddening. And this is
not an anomaly. Unfortunately, loss in Brown High School told
black girls with natural hair that they needed to tie
their afroze up to make them more beautiful, according to
(04:50):
a South African news outlet, So this is by no
means uniquely American problem. This is happening across the globe
in a way that has to cause us some pause.
And it is kind of interesting how this topic in
today's story really intersects between policing women's speech, schul dress codes,
(05:10):
and the feminist politics of hair, all centered around one
woman's sort of symbolic fight with the law on just
how real this issue can get. So when we use
words like police, you might be thinking, oh, policing hair,
that seems a little bit extreme. Bridget I don't think
anyone's getting arrested over hair, over braids. You would be
(05:33):
wrong if you thought that because Isis Brantley of Dallas,
Texas was actually arrested after a twenty year legal battle
where she fought for the right to braid hair and
teach others to braid hair in Texas. We're gonna dig
into her incredible, incredible story after this quick break and
(05:57):
we're back, and I want to talk about Isis Brantley
because her story, I think is one that people don't
really know about and it's wild. So basically, Isis is
a hairdresser in Dallas, Texas. She's been doing braids and
braiding hair since nineteen seventy nine, so she has this
long legacy of braiding hair showing others how to braid hair,
and really, it seems like for Isis it's a big
(06:18):
part of how she expresses her cultural heritage. She calls
it healing through hair. It's a big part of who
she is. But unfortunately, in Dallas, Texas, because of really
really kind of over the top regulation, Isis was not
able to legally braid hair in Texas. So she was
doing so in kind of this undercover, off the books
(06:40):
kind of I don't know if you want to call it.
I don't want to say black market. But no, it's
like it's basically like being a Facebook entrepreneur, which is
what I see more often. Like, you know, it's funny
to talk about Texas as an overregulated, liberal state full
of too much government. You know, that makes me crack
up from an entrepreneur's persect. And also the fact that
(07:00):
I am like railing against government? Who am I? What is?
This topic has put us on weird sides of issues.
But yeah, no, So what's interesting is she wasn't licensed
as a cosmetologist. And basically because the law thinks of
cosmetology and hair styling as something that inherently involves dangerous
(07:23):
chemicals and pollutants and toxic ingredients, because a lot of
hair treatments involving white women's hair were just dying hair
and cutting hair definitely fall into that category. There's no
space in the licensing code, in the business code in
Texas for a business owner like Isis, because for Isis,
(07:45):
she doesn't use chemicals or dies or any coloring agents.
It's all natural, and there was no way for her
to get a cosmetology license to fully and legally operate
her business without some really intensive accrediting. Basically, what it
comes down to is that if she wanted to be
able to legally braid hair, she had to take a course,
(08:08):
our cosmetology class where she would have to master skills
like trimming and shaving mustaches and shampooing and using chemical
straighteners and chemical bleaches, things that she doesn't do in
her shop, things that are really more geared toward white
men and people who are not there to get their
hair braided. And so it didn't make any sense that
if she wanted to be able to legally practice this
crap that she's been practicing for twenty years, she'd have
(08:30):
to spend lots and lots of time and money demonstrating
her efficiency with these skills that had nothing to do
with her trade, right, and she would have to of
course pay for that schooling, and she would have to
I mean, that's like at forty hours a week. That's
like thirty seven and a half weeks of training. And
very rarely are women going to cosmetology programs full time
because you've got to work on the side most of
(08:51):
the time. So this is more like a two year
initiative or a two year investment that she would have
to make. Now we're gonna talk a little bit more
about all the regulatory deets in a second. But here's
where this comes to a head. So she's been braiding
since nineteen seventy nine, and two decades later, after a
long drawn out fight in seven uniformed and undercover officers
(09:18):
handcuffed Isis in front of her customers and dragged her
out of her salon in Dallas. Dragging and handcuffing this
woman like a violent criminal because she had been found
guilty of the offense of braiding hair without a cosmetology license.
Are you kidding me? I mean, I can't even imagine
being put in handcuffs and dragged out of your own
(09:41):
salon because you're trying to braid hair, something you've been
doing your whole life and probably your mom did to you,
and you know her mom did to hurt. It makes
no sense. It's government run amuck. I mean, I never
thought I would used the phrase of government regulation run
them up, government regulation run up, y'all right. And at
the same time, you know that like the hedge fund
bankers who tanged her economy, who are like committing fraud
(10:01):
in the billions of dollars, wouldn't get dragged down handcuffs.
But really, let's crack down and like physically remove the
small business owner craftswoman who's been using no pollutants to
naturally braid hair for a living. Yeah, that's a good
use of our tax paya dollars. Yeah, it makes it
makes no sense and it's infuriating. Um. But I think
it's really interesting is that when Isis was asked by
(10:23):
Cosmo magazine, you know, did you ever just think about
getting your cosmetology license and just, you know, braiding hair
that way? Here's what she said, Absolutely not, because I'm
not a cosmetologist. I don't use chemicals or any type
of unhealthy or costic chemicals or anything that would hurt
the client. No sharp instruments or anything like that. They
did shut my business down. Me and my five kids
(10:43):
became homeless, and one of the community leaders gave me
his house and from there I just tried to put
my pieces together and not fall apart. I just started
braiding in that particular house. And so again from this quote,
you really see a few things. One, she doesn't feel
like it's fair to regulate her as a cosmetolog just
when she's not doing these things. She specifically says, I
don't use chemicals. I'm ideologically opposed to using chemicals and
(11:06):
things like that. So why force her to, you know,
get get a certification saying that she can use them.
Where are the Libertarians on this? Shouldn't they be rallying behind?
I actually did really later in the story. It's actually
the Libertarians who would have come to her crusade. Um.
So again, kind of strange Bedfellow in this hairbrating. Well,
(11:26):
when you think about it, she's she says that she
pretty much only uses her hands for her craft, and
this is a craft that she's also professionally training other
people in, and she's basically pointing out the fact that
the government code does not account for a business like hers. Yeah,
and even going further, I think something that you said
earlier about braiding and hairstyling being this sort of underground
(11:48):
economy that really operates on Instagram and Facebook. I mean
full disclosure when I wear braids. I found my hair
braider on Instagram and she's amazing, and uh, I don't
know the ins and outs of her whatever, but she's great.
This regulation does not allow for these braiders to have
on the book's economies. They they're forced to do things
like set up on Instagram and braid out of their
(12:09):
kitchen and have it be not really on the books,
not totally legit. I mean, yeah, and it's a problem
that needs to be solved. And maybe if we had
more black women making laws in our country, we would
have accounted for these kinds of businesses already. I think
this is such a great example how a lack of
diversity and leadership can actually have ramifications that just completely
does not account for the realities of so many people's
(12:31):
lives and businesses. And that's one of the reasons I'm
so happy that natural hair and braiding advocates have been
steadily making noise about this issue for quite some time.
Braiding advocates have been, you know, lobbying lawmakers and politicians
and really ask them to do something about this regulation.
And back in the Congressional Black Caucus actually held a
forum all about discussing regulation in the braiding and natural
(12:54):
black hair community. And after a decade of fighting for reform,
in two thousand and seven, Texas acquiesced and created a
separate thirty five hour hair braiding certificate, which is much
more reasonable than fifteen hundred you know, hours of training
and certification for how to use sharp objects that are
never going to be relevant to a hair braiding business exactly.
(13:16):
And I think furthermore, as someone who wears braids a lot,
I'm not saying that hair braiding should not be regulated
at all. Right, I'm not saying that there aren't risks
involved when you're braiding somebody's hair. You could braid it
too tight, or things could be you know, you can
have problems with stitation, just like just like you could
have with any other you know, hairstyling, whatever. But I
think thirty five hours of course is dedicated solely to
(13:38):
the thing that you are doing, as opposed to fis
of course, is dedicated to stuff that you'll never do,
or perhaps you are ideologically opposed to doing, and that's
why you got into hair braiding in the first place.
The course just makes a lot more sense, right, And
it feels like they finally have filled that gap in
that blind spot in the legal code. I love to
learn that the state grand fathered, although I would say
(14:01):
grandmother isis in and that even one as far as
to honor her as the first natural hair care expert
in the state. So now she could finally practice hair
braiding for a living without operating in the shadows. So
certainly a huge victory for a hair braiding of the
natural hair community. But unfortunately it doesn't in there. And
(14:23):
we'll talk about why that is after this quick break
and we're back and we were just talking about isis
Brantley's quest to braid hair in Texas. So after Isis
Brantley was successful in terms of getting Texas to change
their regulation and let hair braiders braid hair with just
(14:46):
a thirty five hour course, her fight didn't end there.
One of the things that Brantley did in her shop
in addition to braiding hair was teaching others to braid hair,
and unfortunately, in Texas, this was still not allowed. Once
again under the existing state laws. Shops that teach braiding
need to meet the requirements again that have little to
(15:06):
do with braiding itself, like setting up a two thousand
square foot barber college equipped with ten sinks, short haired mannequins,
and reclining barber chairs. So if you've ever, like me,
been a very cheap hair cut seeker, or get your
hair cut and colored so often that the only way
it's affordable is to go to a beauty school to
(15:27):
get those services done with you, that is to my secret,
and to like tak myself how to bleach my own
hair without it falling off all the time sometimes. But
if you're like me, you've been to a school like this,
you've seen what they look like. The idea that Isis
would be barred from having any functional space to legally
teach her craft of hair braiding once again, falls into
(15:51):
this gray area, falls into this sort of no man's
land or no woman's land when it comes to the
legal requirements being far greater than what would apply had
these laws been centered around black hair as opposed to
white hair being the basis of all of these exactly. So,
if Isis legally wanted to be able to teach others
just to braid hair in Texas, she would have to
(16:12):
spend two thousand, two hundred fifty hours in barber school
learning things like shaving beards and mustaches and chemically straightened
hair past four exams, spend thousands of dollars on tuition,
and a fully equipped barber college that she doesn't need
all to just teach others to do a thirty or
five hour hair braiding curriculum that pretty much just uses
your fingers and braiding hair. Right, So, even though they
(16:33):
had changed the regulation for what's required to be a
professional hair braider to thirty five hours, they didn't go
ahead and while they're at it, update the law on
teaching certification and being able to teach others that thirty
five hour curriculum. Oh politics, it's maddening. It's maddening. And again,
can you imagine investing in things like barber shares that
(16:55):
you just will never use, spending thousands of dollars just
to do this, just to teach this one specific thing.
You mean, you don't need a barber chair to get
your hair braid in and a washball. All you need
to get your hair braided is a stool and like
your mom, and like a kitchen, maybe your aunt some
good stories. You don't need to wrap your face with
(17:16):
a hot towel for some reason. That scene from The
Little Mermaid is coming up. Do you remember that when
he like makes a hot towel like pile on some
the prince's face or somebody, and then the seagull like
nests in it. You mean, you don't need to sit
like that hair hairbraid. If no seagulls are required, what
(17:37):
the hell was with that scene? I don't know, a
weird scene. It is a worry. I'm gonna have to
go rewatch my favorite saying there was always an area.
Me too. Oh my god. We have to do we
have to do an episode on the Disney Princess. We
do like situation to be determined or to be continued rather,
So let's talk about these libertarians for a second. I
(17:59):
predicted this earlier because really, what isis is doing is
railing against out of date over regulation and big government
in a state like Texas. I'm thinking there's gonna be
so many red blooded American patriots who agree with her
and think you're right, government is too big and too early.
And as it turned out, Brantley teamed up with a
(18:21):
nonprofit legal firm, Institute for Justice, which is the nation's
only libertarian civil liberties public interest law firm. I don't
know how all of those things combine into one law firm,
but apparently they do, according to their website. And they've
filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas to
fight the requirements, which I think is the appropriate way
(18:42):
to do this, But isn't it funny to think about
this woman has just been trying to braid and teach
hair braiding like since nineteen seventy nine. Now she's taken
it to core. I find you would never think that
this is going to be the kind of thing that
would set off this libertarian civil liberties regulation firestorm. I
love it. And I know I talk a lot about
how I am not cool with deregulation in our country,
(19:05):
but this is one of those times where I think
the libertarians are onto something because clearly this is something
that's being overregulated and the regulations are not keeping up
with what actually is the reality of how hairbrading is
being practiced in the United States. Right, So bridgetad libertarian
you heard of your first guys don't want to get
out Just kidding. So to bring it back to the
(19:30):
lawsuit that they filed together, what I find so interesting
is the case that they were making when filing a
lawsuit against Texas is that braiding, the issue of regulating
braiding wasn't just an issue related to cultural expression and
I would argue a lack of intersectionality in our legal code,
but it was also about economic empowerment. Because the cosmetology
(19:55):
and barber licensing laws in all fifty states really we're
really based off of white hair techniques. They had a
virtual monopoly over all forms of hairstyling and licensing, which
basically disproportionately forced hair braiders and other practitioners that focused
on black women's cosmetics and hair to operate underground, and
(20:20):
many would be business owners and entrepreneurs were discouraged from
pursuing their business enterprise altogether. So as a result, they argued, quote,
natural hair care providers are consigned to the status of
an outsider, still fighting for their right to economic liberty.
What I love so much about that quote is that
it really hammers home how this is not just a
(20:42):
cultural or racial issue. It's an economic empowerment issue. If
these women who have been practicing this skill that their
mom or grandma taught them forever could actually make a
legitimate on the books living, that would really empower them economically.
But because of this regulation, basically it's forcing these women
to stay in the shadows and not declare their money
to the I R S and sort of keep it
all off the books, and it really prevents them from
(21:03):
fully contributing to their local economic communities. And this is
an important thing to consider when you look at the
bigger picture, which is that black women business owners have
been outpacing all other startups six times the national average.
So the number of businesses open by minority women have
increased from one to six to one in three in
(21:26):
two thousand fifteen, according to the State of Women Owned
Businesses report by American Express Open. So we're losing economic
opportunity from the small business community when we disproportionately regulate
and basically squeeze out all these would be entrepreneurs based
on implicit racism in our legal code. So it's just
(21:49):
a good reminder that we're also missing out on tax
dollars and on you know, creating more opportunity and jobs,
which is why I love that this black woman in
hair braider has teamed up with the Libertarians to make
a case that's about economic empowerment and cultural competency. It's
just such a fascinating spin on this issue, and there's
(22:11):
so many interesting intersections here. Again, it's race issues, gender issues,
economic issues, political issues, regulation issues, local ordinances. Hair it's
it's a lot. There's a lot going on here, and
one thing I wanted to highlight from what you just said, Emily,
is that because she teaches other women how to braid hair,
she's really giving that economic empowerment to others. So she's
(22:31):
not just saying I don't want to braid hair and
leave it at that. She's saying, no, I want to
empower other women who can learn this skill, learn this trade,
and build up their build up their businesses. I want
to give them the tools to do that and make
sure that we create a self sustaining economy of black women.
When the skill is software engineering and the audience is
white dudes, we call this a startup accelerator. Just something
(22:56):
to think about, Like, she has a startup accelerator for
the craft to hair braiding. I love the idea of
a black hair startup accelerator. So if that's not already
a thing, someone make that a thing. So to wrap
up what really happened with Isis's story, she teamed up
with the Libertarians and sued Texas for And I love
this quote a rational application of laws and regulations, which
(23:18):
I just think is so such a good That was
actually a lot the first line from her official lawsuit,
which I love and she won. She was successful. She
successfully changed Texas laws. In January, a federal judge struck
down the Texas laws on hair braiding. Basically, they said
that it was unconstitutional for the state of Texas to
regulate an ancestral art form, and it's unconstitutional for them
(23:41):
to require Isis to become a full fledged barbaran college
before they'll give her permission to run a natural hair
school in her own community. Snaps for that. That is
amazing And I do think in this case we can
look to Texas for inspiring stories of regulation gone right on.
Shout out to all our Texas listeners. What I think
(24:04):
is really interesting is the use of the word ancestral
art which adds that sort of aspect of cultural identity.
Here and Brantley herself talked about how the crackdown on
hair braiding was really an attack on black identity when
speaking to NPR, African hair was enslaved in this country.
(24:25):
It was removed from American social systems. We weren't allowed
to be seen in public with afros and twists and
locks and braids. You could not go anywhere. And if
you look at the industry today and look at them,
the workforce, people cannot go to work look in a
certain kind of way if it's too ethnic. Children are
being forced not to wear afropuffs to schools and coin
(24:47):
roads to schools, So it's an attack on African identity.
That's what I see. The cosmetology industry wasn't designed hundreds
of years ago. It wasn't created with African hair in
my you know, it was created for the people who
enjoy the industry. Now we don't have a place in
that industry. So it's all about culture. That's what I'm
(25:10):
saying this, our culture. African hair is the last thing
that's enslaved on African people. African people with African hair
who know more about African hair ship govern their own industry.
Hell yeah, I could not agree more. You know, hair
braiding has been in my family forever. If you look
(25:31):
at pictures of me when I was a kid, my
hair was pretty much always in brain. Can we have
those in the shadows please? Bridget, I want to see
a baby bridget. You can see some baby bridget. Well,
we'll show you some baby braided bridget where I look
like I look like an extra from the show Moesia.
But yeah, I mean I love that she talks about
the way that this is inherent to African American and
(25:53):
African cultural expression and that a crackdown on that is
not just a crackdown on on the economic aspect of that,
which it certainly is, but it's also cracked down on
the cultural aspect of it. And she goes on to
also make the case that her victory, beyond the cultural significance,
is a win for black economic liberty. It's a win
for entrepreneurship and a chance for Braids to come out
(26:16):
of the shadows and develop their full potential as business owners.
When speaking with Cosmopolitan, Brantley talked about the fact that
this victory brings those entrepreneurs out of the shadows. She says,
many women instead of hiding and having to practice their
craft and run their business and their kitchen or at
home or risk having their doors kicked in by police
(26:39):
who have come to those apartments to arrest them for
violating the law. Now those women have a vehicle through
which to legally pursue their enterprise. So this is a
huge victory for those entrepreneurs. This is definitely progress, but
also is this is a businesswoman who has been cra
(27:00):
down on for the better part of the last twenty
plus years. Having won this long drawn out legal battle
must feel great. But it also is like this woman
has five children who she's supported somehow by scraping her
way through running uh pseudo legal not so legal business
to fight to make this regulation better. Now she's there,
(27:23):
how does she stiring it all together? How does she
bounce back from that? And of course this is a
victory for her and other hairbraiders, but it's not like
she's starting out at an equal place after having been
cracked down on and pushed out of business for twenty years,
spending a lot of her money on lawyers and legal
peas and all of that. I mean, I bet it's
almost like a bittersweet victory for her. Yeah, because now
(27:46):
she has the opportunity to go be a successful business center.
That's it. I think what she really won here is
equal opportunity to pursue her enterprise. But that does not
mean that running a business or any business really is
an easy thing. And I can attest to that exactly.
And one other thing I just wanted to say while
we're talking about this is I don't want to make
it seem like if you are braiding hair or doing
(28:08):
hair in your kitchen and taking money under the table
that you're somehow not doing like that. I don't want
to sound judgmental around that, because that's certainly the situation
with the person who does my hair. But I think
that if you want to be able to come out
of the shadows and be a full member of the
your local economic community, you should be able to have
that right. And so it's definitely something to look into
with your Chamber of Commerce or your I guess in
(28:31):
d C is the d c R a like regulatory
affairs and go talk to the small business resources like
the Small Business Association and enquire about how your state
measures up to Texas. Or Texas has now made it
much more appealing I think for hairbraiders to open their
business there. Yeah, so if you're a hair braider, maybe
go to Texas. So what's been happening with I believe
(28:54):
she her website is naturally isis dot com. What's been
happening with ices Brandley? Well, as much as we just
this entire episode talking about how great she is and
how courageous she is, I would be remissed and not
mentioned that she did get in a little bit of
hot Water. Last year, she was putting together a natural
hair rally and she booked Rachel Dolezel to headline this
rally to a lot of outcry. And y'all already know
(29:17):
if you listen to our other episode around hair, you
already know I have very strong feelings about miss dolls
l but I have to say her hair always looked great.
Point after the whole thing happened with her getting losing
her job and losing her teaching job, she said that
she was sustaining herself by braiding hair out of her apartment,
which I gotta say, I mean, she knew what she
(29:38):
was doing, right, I mean, is problematic, but yes, it's
part of the contention. That is everything about Rachel Dolls
All which all of our listeners really had some mixed
feelings and feedback on. For us, I remember it was
an interesting debate. So I'm excited to hear what you'll
think about how she fits into this picture. And so
it's it's clear that I teaching other people to braid
(30:01):
has definitely been a big part of how she's moved
forward with her business. And you can check her out
and naturally dot com um where I'm looking at her website.
Right now, she's got classes. You can book yourself to
go get that natural hair certification. UM. It's a big
part of how she's empowering others economically, which I think
she's lifting as what is lift she's lifting as she climbs,
(30:24):
which is one of our one of our little mottos
here at stuff Told you So, sminty listeners, we want
to hear from you. What do you think of this
braiding saga? Is this news to you? Do you braid
hair out of your apartment? Who does your hair? Have
you ever thought about how these things are regulated? Whatever
it is you want to hear from you, You can
tag us and all your hair Instagram photos on Instagram
at stuff mom ever told you? You can teat at
(30:45):
us at mom Stuff podcast, or send us an email
at mom stuff at how stuff works dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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