Hurricane Harvey has not only left people without homes. It also left people without many resources to tend to their personal hygiene and appearance. Though many shelters have popped up for the displaced residents of Houston, a group of hairstylists is going above and beyond to help the people of Houston feel a little better.
These hairstylists and barbers have gotten together to go out to the shelters in Houston to help by doing the hair of the many people who are now without homes according to Buzzfeed.
“If you make people look good on the outside, they feel good on the inside,” said [Christal] Mercier, who runs a hair salon in Missouri City, Texas, and a not-for-profit called Hair Dreams by Christal, helping those who’ve lost hair due to chemotherapy or other issues.
With sinks not available for washing hair, stylists had dry shampoo and conditioning spray on hand to clean hair as best they could. Some evacuees were coming in with hair matted from the storm.
The most popular request at the pop-up salon was braids, though box braids (a great protective style for relaxed and natural black hair but can take hours to create) and sew-ins (a weave sewn in to braided hair, another process that takes a couple of hours) were no longer allowed due to limited time.
But cornrows and feed-in braids were encouraged, specifically because they are relatively quick and can protect relaxed and natural black hair for eight or more weeks, said Mercier.
“We’re trying to give styles that last,” she said.
It’s amazing to see the goodness of the human spirit when tragic disasters such as Hurricane Harvey occur. So many people have banded together to help the people of Houston in any way that they can. As we see now, even hairstylists are needed when a natural disaster occurs.