‘Until Black women are seen as beautiful we won’t get the beauty counter we deserve’

Like many Black women, Helen Bazuaye has faced a lifetime of hair discrimination, but there is finally a new guard trying to sweep through change. Here she talks to Jamelia Donaldson, founder of TreasureTress, about revolutionising a beauty game that is worth millions and putting Black founders in control

‘It’s as though Black women have been backed into a corner with haircare, trained to accept whatever is given to us and to be glad that someone is finally catering for us,’ says Jamelia Donaldson (JKG Photography)

It was my first day at my first-ever Saturday job. I was going to sell lighting at BHS, the long-gone high-street retailer. My hair was braided in shoulder-length single plaits. They’d taken hours, cost a fortune and made me look so grown-up – I LOVED them! I stood in my uniform – a blue pinafore and paisley shirt with wings for collars – thinking that my hair was the one thing about me that looked good. The supervisor running my induction thought differently. My hair, she told me, was a mess. It was a disgrace to the uniform. Was there nothing, she wondered, that I could do about it? She said it all very calmly, like passing a comment on the weather... no emotional outburst or obvious bad behaviour for me to grab onto and feel assured that I had been wronged. Instead, a 15-year-old, adult-pleasing me was struck mute as she sent me off to the shop floor. I no longer felt so good about the way I looked.

Most Black women I know will have a similar tale, and it’s why there was such an outpouring of similar stories after the recent Peckham hair shop incident that laid bare some harsh truths about Black women’s identity and the daily interactions connected to it. The sight of the owner of Peckham Hair and Cosmetics on Rye Lane with his hands wrapped around a Black woman’s neck after she was accused of shoplifting having been refused a refund went viral. It sparked a passionate wider discussion among influencers, social commentators and friendship groups about how Black women are treated as consumers.

Growing up, Helen Bazuaye was often teased for how she wore her hair (Provided by author)