Mariah Forde, or Mariah Celeste as she goes by on YouTube, will tell you just how important appearance is when appearing on the internet.
NEW ORLEANS — For more than twenty years, some black women have been making a shift to protect their hair and their health. The reason behind their decision to move away from chemical relaxers varies from one woman to the next.
Mariah Forde, or Mariah Celeste as she goes by on YouTube, will tell you just how important appearance is when appearing on the internet.
“I’m a girl’s girl,” said Forde. “I love getting all dolled up and doing the hair and doing the full face.”
Forde rarely goes a day without making sure her hair and makeup are intact, especially when she shows up to her day job as the Director of Marketing and Communications for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
“When audiences are coming into the theater,” said Forde. “I’m usually standing at the front door greeting them. So, I’m usually one of those first touch points.”
Priding herself on working smarter she enlists her go-to hairstyle, protective wigs and braids.
“Wigs and braids provide a lot more ease for me,” she said. “So, I can just throw on something and go, it’s quick and convenient.”
She also loves how her style choice is chemical free. Forde, like many women around 2012 stopped getting relaxing treatments on her natural hair.
“It got to the point where it was not helping my hair grow at all,” she said. “So, my hair was getting short, and ends were constantly breaking, and it just wasn’t healthy.”
Similarly, Jessica Harvey stopped getting relaxers after some advice from her stylist Amber Nicole.
“Amber was telling me, ‘You really don’t need to get these relaxes as often’. I think we just preach it so much in the black community,” said Harvey.
Now every few weeks Harvey sits in Amber’s chair for a Sew-In installation
“A sew-in is a weave install,” explained Nicole. “You braid your hair down first and you sew the bundles on top of the braids.”
Nicole has been doing these kinds of installations for more than 15 years. She says during that time she’s noticed a steady decline in her clients requesting relaxers to achieve straight styles.
“In 2012/2014 I was still doing relaxers. Now though, they’ve just been fading out, and I think that’s because girls are moving more into, heatless styles, more natural styles, and we are really just moving away from the chemicals.”
In 2020, the city of New Orleans adopted the Crown Act, which prohibits discrimination against individuals with hairstyles historically associated with race. Eventually, the state passed the act in 2022.
Over at Tone by Janaisia Danielle, you will find natural curls on display in her Uptown Salon Chair.
“As I learned color,” said Janasia Smith. “I realized that it’s easier to color natural hair because there’s no chemicals, no nothing.”
Smith believes the easy accessibility of harmful chemicals has always been a danger to black women who for years treated their own hair at home.
“You can buy bananas and tomatoes and a relaxer in the same store,” she said. “And we’re talking about sodium hydroxide, a chemical that can melt a tin can.”
Smith’s Client, Tori Davis, put away relaxers years ago.
“My hair was very thin,” said Davis. “It was very damaged, and I thought I don’t know what my actual hair looks like coming out of my head. So, I was more curious about that process and that journey.”
According to Davis, the Journey was not easy in the beginning.
“The transition, I think was the hardest part,” she said. “Just having the two different textures. But when I did the big chop, I actually was very excited about the way that my hair looked. I don’t know it kind of opened up a new thing in me, and just embracing me and who I am.”
Smith says there have always been healthier alternatives to the creamy straightener but access to them has been limited.
“Those options may have been a Japanese straightening system or a keratin treatment,” smith suggested. “There are other routes that you can go, but we just knew relaxer, so that’s what we used. And I don’t think that those studies were being done. I don’t think that they care to do a lot of those studies. They gave us what we wanted and left it alone. And now we’re here.”
Smith believes one thing is clear. Hair plays an important role in a black woman’s identity and that identity shouldn’t cost them their health.
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