As Storm Reid grows into her adulthood, the actress is showing that she is not afraid to switch up her hairstyles in movies/shows and in real life. Many have seen Reid rocking styles like box braids, straight hair and her hair in its naturally curly state. She’s recently stepped out of her comfort zone more, and is wearing a short blond pixie cut.
Despite her being comfortable with switching hairstyles, what’s made her uneasy is what she finds to be the lack of hairstylists on set who know how to properly handle her hair with care for her shows and/or movies.
She told People magazine on Jan. 19, “It has been a struggle for me specifically on sets when it comes to the hair disparity and people not just knowing how to deal with Black hair. And, in a way, it feels dehumanizing…when it’s the time for your hair to look nice and there’s nobody on set to be able to help you achieve that.
Reid described her experience with on-set hairstylists as “disheartening and heartbreaking” because “they really just don’t understand Black hair care.” The 18-year-old recalled a time when director Ava Duvernay brought on celebrity hairstylist Kim Kimble to do Reid’s hair for “A Wrinkle In Time.”
Reid said Kimble was the first on-set hairstylist to do her hair correctly and it “changed [her] life.” She explained, saying, “From that point on, unless I have braids and I know how to take care of them myself, I’ve requested on every set to have someone — whether they’re the department head or not — who understands my hair, that cares about Black hair care, that is actually listening to me.”
Meagan Good spoke out last year in a panel about a hairstylist she says claimed to know how to do her hair; she said that stylist burned the side of her face when mishandling the hot comb on her hair. “I had about five or six tooth marks on my face,” said Good. “It was quite frustrating for someone to say that they knew how to do it and to not really do it and to kind of use me as an experiment.”
In a 2019 Associated Press piece, Tia Mowry told her story about an on-set hairstylist not knowing how to do her hair correctly either. She said, “It’s mind-blowing to me that we still have to — meaning black actresses — have to fight to have black hairdressers on set for us. There was one time in particular I was doing this movie and, my God, I was the lead. And after this person did my hair, I cried. I was like ‘I cannot like I cannot go out there looking like this.’ ”
Tiffany Haddish said she struggled to find someone on set who could braid her hair for the film “Keanu.” “So then I had to go outside of the movie to find people in New Orleans to braid my hair,” she said. “And I cried about it because it was a lot of extra time, and I could have been resting or learning my lines or just making sure I was on point.”
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