A Georgia woman was in for a rude surprise when she left a Dominican hair salon and found part of her naturally curly hair was permanently straightened. A Twitter user who attends Spelman College in Atlanta posted a screenshot of the woman’s Facebook post explaining what happened.
The patron recently visited Lizbeth Dominican Hair Salon’s Marietta, Georgia location and warned other natural-haired would-be guests not to visit. After getting a blowout, her results seemed normal. But when she washed and styled her hair a week later, the customer discovered her hair would not curl. She called the salon and the unidentified woman she spoke to told her they usually mix a small amount of relaxer in with shampoo on natural hair to make it easier to work with.
Do y'all wanna know what I would do if someone put a relaxer in my-y'all listen just beware pic.twitter.com/C7b72LFOVz
— Return of the Mec (@holy_emm) May 20, 2016
When Atlanta Black Star reached out to the salon for comment, a stylist named Carmen denied the claim, saying that mixing a relaxer with shampoo would “not take” – the chemical could not straighten the hair if combined with a cleanser.
Those statements are in line with the message the salon posted on their official Facebook page May 20.
Customers who have become aware of the consumer’s bad experience have questioned their practices in comments on the page. Caron Walker wrote “natural hair is not safe here,” to which the salon replied, “that post was written to harm the Dominican Hair Salon businesses.”
ABS reached out to the Twitter user who shared the screenshot of the Lizbeth customer’s experience. She did not respond to a request to confirm the customer’s identity by the time of this posting.
Many Black women have chosen to embrace their naturally kinky, coily and curly textures in the last few years, moving away from European-centric beauty standards. The shift has resulted in a slump in relaxer sales. ABS reports those sales are slated to continue to decline by 45 percent through 2019.
