It was 2020, the depths of the pandemic, when I decided to try doing box braids on myself. New York City was under lock down, salons were closed, and all the braiders I knew weren’t doing home appointments. After watching a few tutorials on YouTube and ordering some hair off Amazon, I was overly confident that I would be able to give myself clean knotless braids.
I was very, very wrong.
After more than an hour of struggling, I didn’t have a single braid done. I realized just how much I had taken for granted the skill and labor it takes to do braids once I was forced to do it myself. I eventually gave up and settled on giving myself some crude Senegalese twists. But, I wouldn’t make doing my braids myself a habit; I quickly booked a braider once I was able to.
Recently, a debate has erupted on social media about the cost of box braids. Braids have suddenly become a “a class issue,” with one woman blaming influencers who have “become detached from reality” for why some braiders are now charging $400 and up for their services.
Being from New York, I remember my mom paying around $150 to get by hair braided in Queens in the 1990s. These low prices were thanks in part to the increase of African immigrants to the United States, who would then open up braiding salons. A New York Times article from 2001 reported on how the proliferation of braiders was driving the cost down to as low as $80. These are the times the girls are waxing poetic about.
Braids take an average of six hours to do and even longer if you’re getting them small. That’s six plus hours of physical labor and extreme skill. The same New York Times article I referenced above mentioned one shop owner who paid her immigrant braiders just $200 a week for 40 hours. Some weeks, if it was slow, she couldn’t pay them at all. While I hope labor conditions for braiding shops that employ immigrant women have gotten better, I can imagine many braiders are still getting paid extremely little for a lot of hard work.
This is my issue with the “bring back cheap braids” crowd. First of all, cheap braids have not gone away. Last summer, I went to Harlem and got knotless braids done for $200. Second of all, I believe us consumers have gotten so disconnected from the labor that goes into providing services and the creation of goods, that we automatically expect the cheapest price possible for everything all the time. Cheap goods and services are usually cheap for a reason — because someone’s labor is being exploited and devalued.
“I’ve always found it ironic that a people, who are so synonymous with the exploitation that our ancestors dealt with before us, feel so comfortable exploiting each other,” Jaxcee Challenger, owner of The Coily Collective in New York City, told me. “While it’s fantastic for your own wallets to pay a grown woman only $100 for 10 hours of work, perhaps think of the fact that not only is that women not even making the whole entire $100, but you have taxed her energy and her body well beyond the limits that those funds could ever take her.”
The issue of “Instagram hairstylists” — unprofessional hairstylists with outrageous rules, extreme prices, and questionable skills — is separate from braiders who are finally starting to charge what their work is worth. I’ve gladly paid $400 for knotless braids. Not only do I always get a beautiful result, but my braids are done in a serene relaxing environment, at the time I booked, and without delays.
So, I do agree with the woman who called the price of box braids a class issue. Not between rich influencers and regular people, though, but between oftentimes immigrant women not being paid a living wage for grueling work, all so those of us with more disposable income can get an extremely intricate hairstyle for bargain prices.
If you can’t afford someone’s prices, find someone within your budget. When natural hair and styles are being celebrated, let’s remember to also celebrate and fairly compensate the labor and artistry that goes into them.
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