A discussion around 'Hair Power': Me and My Afro' Ch4 documentary
We're on a journey to learn how we can better support our models within the industry with regards to the inequality experienced around representation, expectation and treatment towards black hair. Our Diversity and Inclusion committee are reading, learning, listening and asking questions and our whole team have engaged in webinars to understand more about where we've previously gone wrong in our support and where we can do better.
Our Wellbeing Fest was an amazing opportunity for us to invite expert speakers from Spring Hair Salon and Robert Eaton in to discuss hair care for all hair types and from this we're producing training videos to further support our talent. Our eyes are wide open to the stigma faced and we're passionate in championing natural, beautiful hair of all types - but we know we've more still to learn.
As just one small strand of our work around this, our D&I committee set the team some prep work from our to watch Channel 4 documentary Hair Power: My Afro and Me and discuss in our full staff meeting, how we can improve and learn more around stronger representation, the true meaning behind microaggressions and cultural appropriation. Our whole team engaged fully in this discussion and having set safe boundaries for everyone to talk openly, it was clear from responses that everyone took a lot away from watching this powerful documentary.
The film share stories of oppression: from hiding their natural hair; to endlessly using potent chemical relaxants; to constant comparisons with Eurocentric views of 'good hair'. It teaches around the roots of hair styles and the incredible stories behind braids in history. There are moments of anger, frustration and deep sadness around cultural appropriation and microaggressions faced 'can I touch your hair' 'is it real?' and moments of joy when speakers talked about no longer conforming to societal expectations referring to 'the big chop'.
For us, this is an ongoing conversation and learning process. We want to support our models and be clear that we only want them to be themselves, nothing else.
We want to continually build reassurance that we're always doing our duty of care.
As model agents that's making sure schedules are not too demanding on hair, avoiding unnecessary heat wherever possible, considering the talent in charge of hair on set, checking call times are fair across the board for all models, ensuring that models are comfortable in all styles on set and shoots.
We're aware not everyone will get it right all the time, us included, and we want our models to trust that they can talk to us about the jobs they've done without it ever going against them for future work.
We found this documentary incredibly informative and our biggest takeaway was listening and communicating openly and honestly is key to making further progress together with our talent.