Badlands Barber Pens Piece On Helping White Park Slope Men Look Less Fascist
PARK SLOPE – “Helping straight white men look less fascist was the last thing I thought I’d be doing when I started cutting hair at a queer-owned salon in Park Slope, Brooklyn, back in 2014,” Patty Suarez writes in a piece that was published on Buzzfeed last week. That changed after last year’s election when a client she calls Connor came in asking to make the cut she’d given him a couple of weeks earlier a little less like “one of the Breitbart guys.”
The salon she works at? Badlands on 5th Avenue, that was opened by Diedre Novella back in 2012.
“The transitions that take place in a hair salon can be very powerful. In Connor’s case, the election made him want to distance himself from what he saw as a fascist alliance. I also saw it as a shifting perspective for Connor — from what he is seeing to how he is seen, both personally and politically. Changing your hair for political or even religious purposes is not new. Many communities and individuals have changed their hair when their community, identity, or values has come under attack. Shaved heads, natural hair, and short hair have all been used as a language to express politics and values.”