these hairstylists..

The video discusses the high prices and additional fees charged by hairstylists, as well as their unprofessionalism and lack of included services. The narrator also mentions the trend of specializing in specific styles and the need for customers to do parts of their own hair styling. The video reflects on the decline of the beauty salon as a place for community and sisterhood among black women. The narrator encourages support for black businesses but understands why many people choose the DIY route. Hello and welcome back to my channel. Today we are trying something very different. Initially, this was supposed to be a video of me talking while doing my hair, but my mic was acting wonky, I was in the bathroom so the echo was actual garbage, and I also could not concentrate on doing my hair and speaking at the same time. So the visuals are me doing my hair, which is a regular twist out, and then the audio is just of me speaking over, and today we are going to be talking about how hairstylists have lost their mind. So just to start off with a bit of a disclaimer, I just want to go ahead and say I am fully aware that not every stylist is like this, and I'm also aware that I am very biased because I don't go to stylists in the first place, I'm sure that is very clear considering the fact that I'm literally doing my own hair in this video. So don't go for me, okay? I know I look a little cray in the next following clips, but I'm doing my hair, this is just my opinion. So these are all based on my observations that I've seen. So the first and the most obvious complaint about hairstylists nowadays are the insane prices that they have begun to charge for. $350 to $400 has become relatively pretty standard for a lot of these very simple knotless braids. Soapbrushes have gone all the way up to hundreds of dollars after being relatively pretty cheap in the past, closer to $60, $70 are the prices that most people are used to. And these insane prices do not... Oh, okay. So, and you would think that with these higher prices, customers would be getting more included with their service, but that is not the case either. There's other fees outside of these very, very high prices. If you have long hair, expect to be charged. If you have... Hold on. Let me actually get the animation. Okay. So just to illustrate these fees a little bit easier, I'm going to go through all of the fees that you could experience within one booking. So first, obviously you have to book the style. When you want to book the style, you have to pay a deposit to secure your spot to book. Otherwise that time slot is going to be available for anybody else to pick. Okay. This might be somewhat reasonable. Sometimes these deposits can go up to a hundred dollars though. So they do vary depending on the stylist. Next, right? You have your... What day are you actually planning to book? If you're planning to book within the same day, expect to pay a same day fee. So this includes whether or not the stylist already had the space open. Some stylists are more generous and don't charge the same day fee. Others do, especially if you need to be squeezed in. Outside of this, let's say you booked it, you paid your deposit, you paid the same day fee. Let's say the day comes around and you get a, hey girly, hey boo, hey queen text. This means, this is a telltale sign that your appointment is about to be canceled. Now, if you don't cancel your fee, there's a good chance that your deposit... If you don't cancel your appointment, there's a good chance that your deposit and the price might get returned to you. Some people have a very strict non-refundable deposit. So that is really up to your stylist. But the cancellation fee, if you have any type of emergency or any type of situation that would prevent you from coming to your hair appointment, that is irrelevant to the stylist because you still have to pay a cancellation fee. Now, let's say for some, you know, you get to the day peacefully, but you're over 15 minutes late. Most stylists will also charge you a late fee on top of that. Now, let's say you get there, you're on time, you get there, no cancellations, everything is perfect. If you come in there with long worth of care, you may also get charged extra. So it's just a lot of things to keep in mind along with the extremely high prices. So all of these add up together for some people paying up to $400, $500 for some pretty regular braids. Now, you also have the general unprofessionalism. Like I said before, you would expect with these insanely high prices that there's some adding to the service. So maybe it's not actually like some things are included or fees are all included in the price, but maybe that there's better customer service and you would be mistaken because that's not true either. There is an air of a general unprofessionalism amongst modern stylists. You have stylists complaining about customers online. You have very petty TikToks being made complaining about said clients. You have hairstylists posting clients without really asking for their consent if they even want to model in the first place. You have a stylist refusing to do very basic styles. So what's often been occurring is like, let's say a stylist does knotless braids or if they do faux locs, right? You would assume that this stylist would just be a general protective hairstylist. But no, oftentimes what stylists are starting to do is have a specialization. So if they do knotless braids, expect to go them only for knotless braids. If they do faux locs, then expect to only go to them for faux locs. Some stylists don't like boring quote unquote styles, so they might refuse to do that too. Other stylists are refusing to do certain styles because it's too much work. So it's just a lot of, it's a very small margin of styles that are available to be done. And you will also find, right, hairstylists complaining about being a hairstylist online and they get mad when they're critiqued. So this is a lot of unprofessionalism that you wouldn't have seen in past years as previous stylists. With a lot of old school stylists who love what they did, opened up a shop, you know, chit chatted with their clients or friends with their clients. You don't really see that as much anymore. And last but not least, nothing is included. So you deal with the unprofessionalism, you deal with the crazy high prices, you deal with the insane booking policies, and at the very end, you still end up doing half of the style by yourself. So normally, when the normal steps to doing a black protective style would be washing the hair, blow drying, set hair, detangling, set hair, and then actually braiding it and do the finishing up. Now, those first two steps, two or three steps that I mentioned, you are expected to do yourself by like 85% of stylists online nowadays. If you're doing a wig install, you can also expect to do your own cornrows or pay upwards of like $100-$150 for some straight bags to go under your wig. This also includes buying your own hair. This includes not having any product in your hair. Yeah, doing the upkeep by yourself. So it's just a lot of extra steps for also a lot of extra money. These are all the things that I could think about as a hairstylist. Unfortunately, the unfortunate part about all of this is that there was once a time where hairstylists and hairstyling, the beauty salon shop, was seen as a place for black women to come together, to practice sisterhood, friendship, community, all that great, all that general stuff. And you're not really seeing that anymore because there's more people doing their hair at home like you can see me doing in this video. There's more people just learning to do their own skills because they just simply cannot afford going to a hairstylist. So it's kind of unfortunate to see the amount of shifts that there is within the new generation and how much we don't have that. This also puts aside because hair is so important for black womanhood. So to see it be restricted so much mostly by other black women is unfortunate. Now this isn't to say not to go to black hairstylists or not to support local black businesses. I'm all for small businesses and all for advocating for them and going to them. But you know, it's not always just on the consumer end. I really obviously understand why people would just go the DIY route. Needless to say, that is the end of this video. You can see the finished product of what my hair looks like, how the twists out came out. Pretty true to what I normally do honestly. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope the audio comes out great. And I will catch y'all in the next one. Bye!