Many states have shut down non-essential businesses in an effort stop the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, but many beauty industry workers said they can’t afford to comply. Some of them are risking their health to make it through this crisis.
Barbers, beauticians, nail techs and personal trainers detailed how they’ve had to adjust to the world’s new normal in an article published by The Washington Post.
From placing ads on Craigslist and making house calls to having to clients and themselves wear protective N95 face masks, these workers are doing what they can to stay afloat. Some are motivated by a desire to help their clients attain some level of sanity as America’s coronavirus cases continue to escalate.
“With nails, of course it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have it,” Raleigh nail tech Stephanie Mooij told the Post. Mooij started doing house calls after her salon was shut down. “But if they don’t look good and they’re not kept up, it’s kind of like mental health status, you know? You look down and it’s like, ‘Everything’s falling apart, and my nails are falling apart.’”
Barber Rene Guemps was a travel barber before the pandemic. But now he said he can see the fear his clients have when he shows up. He takes extra precautions to try and keep them both safe.
“Some of them, they panic and stay away,” Guemps told the Post. “It’s almost like, ‘Doesn’t this guy know he’s going to have to get close to me at some point?’ I had one guy a couple days ago … I’m standing at the door and he’s all the way across the living room, talking and telling me what to do.”
After reading the struggles of the beauty workers highlighted in the Post, Moguldom asked a beauty industry worker in Miami how they were surviving amid the pandemic.
Shalawn Brownlee is the owner and CEO of Manicure Bar in Miami’s Cutler Bay neighborhood. In contrast to some of her aforementioned counterparts, she decided to obey Miami-Dade’s stay-at-home order once her salon was ordered closed.
“I’m just trusting in God. That’s how I’m surviving through coronavirus,” Brownlee told Moguldom. “I’m not worrying about trying to go out there to get sick and die. Life over money. That’s what I believe in.
This article was written by written by Isheka N. Harrison for The Moguldom Nation.
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/2RSk4Gy
