Innovative Hair Curriculum developed to help Black women and hair stylists learn about caring for textured hair

BY PAUL JUNOR

The design of a textured hair curriculum by T’keyah Prentice-Cupid is great news.

Her six years of professional experience has given her insights and knowledge into the techniques, tools, and methodologies of caring for textured hair. As a self-taught hairstylist, she learned how to work with naturally curly and coily hair.

“I would work at salons where there were advertisements of Black women or mixed-race women with texture in their hair, but they were lacking the product that worked well with those textures.” She knows first-hand what it is like for Black women to not be able to access the proper care they need for their hair. She states, “Our hair needs the most love. It needs a certain amount of attention and not everybody is willing to do.”

She states that many salons do not provide the personalized care and attention that is required to manage textured hair. Specifically, she notes, “Most people in the world have textured hair and only 30% of that population is being represented with services.” This is what prompted her to conduct an informal poll on Instagram to obtain information from other hairstylists about their level of comfortability with respect to attending to textured hair. She found out that, “99% said that they did not feel confident in the training that they get in school.” she states,

“Then it was interesting because 37% of them said that they felt confident over time in their career…(which) means that they learnt what they learnt through trial and error. It’s unfortunate because our hair shouldn’t be an experiment – people should have the tools that they need from school to be able to provide the services.” Prentice-Cupid utilized her knowledge, insights and experience to create an innovative and revolutionary curriculum to help ensure that hair salons and hairstylists are able to learn about textured hair education.

“The goal is to build Canada’s first textured hair curriculum. So, not only do we want to provide classes, but we actually want to get in the [Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development]’s face and be like, you need to put curly hair, afro-textured hair education in your schools.”

There has been no response from the Ministry regarding the introduction of her one-of-a-kind curriculum, but this has not stopped Prentice-Cupid from moving forward. She states,” The first class that I had was in the summer. It was a silk press class, where I was teaching anyone that signed up, how to blow-dry, style, wash and straighten afro-textured hair. The next class is going to be a colour class, so that’s more catered to stylists. We’re going to release it as well as our website in the New Year.”

Prentice-Cupid notes that the current curriculum is out-dated and needs to be updated. She states, “The services that are a requirement for stylists to know are relaxers and perms, and that’s the extent of the textured hair education.” She continues, “until we build it, it’s not going to happen because [the Ministry] thinks that the [textured hair] education already exists, and with that belief, it’s perpetuating the stigma and the racism and misrepresentation.”

It won’t be until January 2022 that the curriculum will be changed.