Unruly Curly Hair: The Role of Latina Hair Stylists in Disrupting Beauty Hierarchies

Introduction

Although Afro-Latinas and Latinas ¹ have straightened their hair using heat and chemical relaxers in service of white and Eurocentric beauty standards for decades (Candelario 2007), contemporary beauty trends have encouraged people from the Black diaspora to embrace their natural hair texture (Duarte 2025; Norwood 2018)—kinky or coily, curly, and wavy hair—which has been historically labeled as supposedly unkempt, wild, or unruly (Banks 2000; Wingfield 2008). To accommodate the growing demand for curly and natural hair aesthetics, a niche is emerging in the beauty industry: specialized hair stylists for curly and natural hair (Johnson 2024). This article utilizes a transnational case study in the United States and the Dominican Republic (DR) to examine how curly and natural hair stylists in Latina-owned salons engage in labor practices that promote self-love and acceptance for their clients. Through their work primarily with Afro-Latina and Latina clients, stylists facilitate beauty practices that challenge Eurocentric beauty norms and promote more inclusive beauty aesthetics for women of color across the United States and Latin America.

Previous literature on Black and Latina women’s racialized aesthetics and beauty politics has demonstrated how they challenge and reproduce racialized, classed, or gendered marginalization (Parra 2025; Robinson 2021; Rubin, Fitts, and Rubin 2003). For example, Ginetta E. B. Candelario (2007) argues that Dominican beauty salons serve as racialized spaces that reinforce anti-Blackness but does not focus on salon workers’ roles and agency. Jillian Hernandez (2020) illustrates how Black and Latina women use their own fashion and beauty aesthetics, deemed excessive by white middle-class narratives, to express their creativity and self-expression. ² However, scholarship rarely examines women of color beauty workers, such as hair stylists, as agents who negotiate, reproduce, and resist racialized beauty norms for their clients (see Kang 2010; McMillan Cottom 2020).

This paper argues that stylists in Latina-owned curly and natural hair salons engage in “specialized body labor” to promote more inclusive beauty standards broadly, specifically the acceptance of curly and natural hair. Curly and natural hair stylists employ specialized body labor by integrating their specialized skills in cutting and styling textured hair and their emotional labor to develop and sustain a satisfied clientele. Although hair stylists perform “body labor” (Kang 2010) in beauty salons, this paper proposes “specialized body labor” to extend the definition of body labor for beauty specialists who must undergo additional training and accreditation beyond the licensure requirements for their beauty service work. Within specialized body labor, through emotional labor, stylists serve as “therapists” to help clients both look and feel better (Cohen 2010; Sharma and Black 2001). In this study, stylists strive to address clients’ past “hair traumas”—or past experiences with gendered racism in the context of their hair—to help them accept their natural hair. By examining how curly and natural hair stylists leverage specialized body labor to support clients’ natural and curly hair acceptance, this article positions stylists as agents who disrupt Eurocentric beauty standards that devalue women of color aesthetics.

Data for this article were collected through participant observations in a curly hair beauty school program in Santo Domingo, DR, and ethnographic fieldwork in four Latina-owned curly and natural hair salons (three in New York City and one in Santo Domingo) between 2022 and 2023 to examine how stylists’ specialized body labor challenges beauty standards that devalue women of color aesthetics. After contextualizing transnational beauty norms across Latin America, particularly the DR, and reviewing emotional and body labor in gender sociology, the findings section analyzes stylists’ credentialing with their deployment of specialized body labor—encompassing both technical beauty skills and emotional labor—in Latine salons. Finally, the conclusion demonstrates how service work performed by women of color for women of color in the United States and Latin America requires attending to specialized body labor as a distinct form of embodied care work.

Natural Hair Globally

There has been a rise in the popularity of curly and natural hair around the world, known as the global natural hair movement (Johnson 2024). For many women who wear their curly or natural hair, it is an embodied symbol of self-love and (diasporic) Black pride (Duarte 2025; Norwood 2018). As natural hair is often understood as a Black American phenomenon, this article focuses on Latina-owned salons to explore how the natural hair movement is operating in the U.S. Latine community and Latin America. In doing so, this study embraces the heterogeneous nature of the Black diaspora to expand the questions of curly and natural hair to these communities.

The social and historical contexts of the United States and the DR vary significantly. For example, the racial social system in the United States operates on a white–Black binary (Omi and Winant 2014). For Latines in the United States, they “are located in [. . .] a ‘racial middle,’ and they become legible when they are ascribed panethnic identities that homogenize them and situate them between Whites and Blacks in the racial order” (Zabala Ortiz 2024:438). Meanwhile, the DR is a mulatto nation, where Dominican identity ³ is “understood as mixed race, utilizing Indio [Native Caribbean] and Hispanic as intermediary racial categories that work to approximate whiteness while rejecting Blackness” (Duarte 2025:4; Mayes 2014). In addition, while the United States is an example of settler colonialism (Glenn 2015), the people of the DR have experienced different forms of colonialism, including but not limited to Spanish colonization at the founding of the “New World” and American neocolonialism in the twentieth century (Mayes 2014; Moya Pons 2010). Despite these differences in social and historical contexts, the United States and the DR share similarities in the “hierarchy of beauty”—particularly concerning texturism and colorism—or the valuing of straight or looser hair textures over kinky hair and lighter skin over darker skin, respectively, although there are local variations (Alvarez 1998; Candelario 2007; Patton 2006). In other words, the global color line that devalues Black and brown bodies translates into local manifestations of racialized beauty preferences across the Americas. Yet, the global natural hair movement has engendered a significant growth in the niche market of natural hair care globally, which is estimated to grow to “$15 billion by 2033,” a 50 percent expected growth in just a decade (Krubally-N’Diaye 2025). This market growth underscores the increasing importance of labor in natural hair care, particularly in curly and natural hair salons worldwide.

The natural hair movement in the United States began in the 2010s, building on the earlier legacies of the Black Is Beautiful movement from the 1960s and 1970s (Norwood 2018). For some Black and Afro-Latine women, accepting and embracing their natural hair was about a wellness lifestyle to eliminate toxic hair relaxers from their beauty routine, while for others, it is a tool to resist anti-Blackness that has been embedded in American society since its inception (Duarte 2025; Johnson 2024; Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword 2022). Alongside Black American women, Latinas and Afro-Latinas began to experiment with, accept, and embrace their curly or natural hair (Duarte 2025; Salas Pujols 2022). Blogs and video tutorials emerged as digital spaces of congregation around curly and natural hair to build community, learn about natural hair care, and affirm identity (Johnson 2024; Neil and Mbilishaka 2019). This led to the rise of curly and natural hair salons that economically capitalize on and socially support women with natural hair. Similar to the United States, the natural hair movement also began to emerge in countries in Latin America, such as the DR (Goins 2021; Lyon 2019).

Across countries in Latin America, the growing acceptance of natural hair has emerged, despite the historical contexts of racial projects of mestizaje, state-sponsored whitening (blanqueamiento), and global anti-Blackness, including in the DR (Gordon 2013; Paschel 2016; Wade 2015). Yet, even with the global natural hair movement, Dominican beauty standards continue to perpetuate colorism and texturism, which devalue curly and Afro-textured hair (Lyon 2019). Like those in the United States, curly and natural hair salons in the DR function as both small businesses and social spaces that provide their clients with social respite from anti-Black discourses and texturism (Lyon 2019). As I observed in the DR, these salons educate their clients about hair care and support their clients’ choice to wear their hair naturally. The specialized body labor of curly and natural hair stylists makes this possible. Even as research about the natural hair movement has grown, these studies principally focus on identity formation (Brown and Lemi 2021; Duarte 2025; Jenkins 2019). This article expands the scope of research to interrogate the gendered labor of curly and natural hair stylists who support individuals with textured hair through their specialized body labor.

Emotional and Body Labor

The concept of emotional labor was introduced in Arlie Russel Hochschild’s (2012) seminal work, The Managed Heart. Emotional labor is defined as “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display,” which highlights how service workers must manage emotions as part of their work (Hochschild 2012:7). Previous scholarship on emotional labor demonstrates that workers are often required to manage their feelings in ways that reinforce gendered inequalities (Hoang 2015; Hochschild 2012; Mears and Finlay 2005). Intersectional scholars have advanced the theorization of emotional labor to address class and race, in addition to gender (Kang 2003, 2010; Wingfield 2008, 2009).

Miliann Kang (2010) advances the theorization of emotional labor to address the racialized, gendered, and classed contours of emotional labor performed by racialized women in the beauty service sector. Body labor “incorporate[s] both emotional and embodied dimensions of body-service work” (Kang 2010:20). This article extends body labor to different contexts of racialization: intra-community salons across transnational spaces. While Kang’s framework addresses cross-racial dynamics between Korean manicurists and racially diverse clients, this article extends this framework to intra-community contexts: examining stylists’ labor in Latina-owned salons serving a predominantly Afro-Latina and Latina clientele in the United States and the DR. My concept of specialized body labor builds on Kang’s “body labor” (Kang 2010) through a transnational study to reveal how labor operates when stylists and clients share embodied experiences that devalue women of color aesthetics.

Beauty shop workers are a useful service occupation to examine because of the ways that embodied processes and emotional work reinforce or challenge broader social inequalities of gender, race, and class. Previous work on hair salons illustrates how hair stylists and clients reproduce racialized and gendered inequalities (Candelario 2000; Jenkins 2019; Wingfield 2008). However, does labor in the beauty service sector operate differently when it challenges standard beauty norms rather than reinforce them? If so, what are the labor processes that beauty workers engage in? While curly and natural hair stylists use body labor in their service work, they must also pursue additional training and beauty school education beyond licensure requirements compared to stylists in traditional hair salons, as detailed in the findings. The naming of specialized body labor as such is meant to emphasize the additional credentialization and training curly and natural hair stylists acquire in pursuit of their beauty specialization, compared to hair stylists in traditional salons. By examining a case study of work in curly and natural hair salons, I highlight the specialized body labor, including the additional training required in beauty service work to disrupt racialized and gendered inequalities in cultural norms.

Methods and Positionality

While this article focuses on natural and curly hair stylists, it is part of a larger study that considers the gendered narratives and racial identity-making during the natural hair movement for Dominicans in New York City (NYC) and Santo Domingo, DR. Rather than a comparative case, this larger study uses a transnational methodology to explore how ideas of Blackness within Latinidad change during the global natural hair movement. Dominicans serve as a theoretically rich case study, given that about 90 percent of the Dominican population is estimated to have Black ancestry (Torres-Saillant 2000), yet the national rhetoric of who is a Dominican person omits Black racialization in favor of a mixed-race ideal of a Dominican person (García-Peña 2016). Hence, the larger study focused on how Dominican women on the island and in the U.S. diaspora navigate disparate ideas about racial identity and racialized beauty throughout their natural hair journeys. I used Santo Domingo as the ideal site in the DR, as it is the largest metropolitan area on the island (Moya Pons 2010). Similarly, NYC serves as the ideal site to study Dominicans and their diaspora because it has been home to the largest concentration in the United States for decades (Bergad 2022; Itzigsohn 2009). Overall, curly and natural hair salons across both cities serve as ideal observational spaces where these transnational processes of identity and beauty negotiation unfold in everyday practice.

My project’s transnational methodology consisted of semi-structured interviews with Dominicans in NYC or Santo Domingo, as well as ethnographic fieldwork in curly hair salons and a beauty hair course in Santo Domingo. This article draws exclusively from the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the hair salons and the beauty school course between 2022 and 2023. Given that my research question concerns Latinidad, I prioritized observing Latina-owned salons (Puerto Rican or Dominican).

First, over 100 hours of ethnographic observations were conducted in four Latina-owned curly or natural hair salons: three in NYC and one in Santo Domingo (see Table 1). In the U.S. salons I observed, clients were primarily of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent. However, the salons served a clientele with a heterogeneous racial/ethnic demographic, including Black Americans, non-Black Latinas (like Mexicans), West Indians (like Jamaicans), and a few white Americans. In the Dominican salon I observed, clients were primarily Dominicans, whether they resided in Santo Domingo or were visiting from the United States. Given the history of racialization in the DR, while many Dominicans in the United States and on the island do not assign themselves a Black or Afro-Latine identity, they may be perceived as having Black ancestry in the United States or in the DR. Therefore, this article uses the language of “Afro-Latina” and “Latina” to describe the salons’ primary clients and honor their self-identification, although this does not suggest that they are non-Black Latinas.

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Table 1.

Salon Observations (100+ Hours, Four Salons).

City	Salon pseudonym	Ownership	Stylists’ ethic/racial demographics	Hours of observation
New York City	Crowned Curls Salon	Dominican-owned	Two Dominicans/Afro-Latinas, one Dominican/Latina, one Black American, one white American	32
New York City	Curly Magic Salon	Puerto Rican-owned	Two Puerto Ricans/Latinas, one white American	30
New York City	Uptown Girls Salon	Dominican-owned	One Dominican/Latina, one Puerto Rican/Latina	19
Santo Domingo	Rizos de Estrellas Salon	Dominican-owned	Three Dominicans	46
				Total: 127

Second, participant observations were conducted in a three-month beauty school course for stylists who specialize in curly and natural hair in Santo Domingo, DR. The classroom learning included topics on haircutting basics and techniques (shaping cut, volume cut, bangs, trim), identifying damaged hair and strategies to style and cut damaged hair, information on different hair textures (fine, medium, and thick) and curl patterns (kinky, curly, and wavy), among other topics. After lunch, the models came in, and we practiced what we had gone over in the previous week’s homework and the day’s lecture. We were responsible for securing our own models for the beauty school practice. Some of my interview participants kindly volunteered to be models for the beauty school course, under the supervision of the director/instructor. If a model volunteered who was not a previous participant, I disclosed my position as a researcher.

For my analysis of the observations in the salons and beauty school, I transcribed my observational jottings, post-observation, and post-class memos. I coded my jottings and memos in Atlas.ti to identify patterns and emerging themes, such as “hair transition protocol,” “beauty school training,” “expectations of femininity,” and “client preferences.” In writing this article, I translated the Spanish quotes and fieldnotes from Santo Domingo into English. Fieldnotes are lightly edited for a more streamlined presentation of the data throughout the article. In addition, pseudonyms are used for salons, stylists, clients, and interlocutors.

As the researcher, I considered my positionality within my methodology. I am a U.S.-born daughter of Dominican immigrants, raised in NYC. I shared similar experiences with some salon owners and stylists, who are also U.S.-born Latinas. Many of my childhood summers consisted of visiting my grandparents and family members in the lomas (hills) of the northern Cibao region of the DR. This means that my Spanish is colloquial to that region, and some people in Santo Domingo initially assumed I was Cibaeña, but they would soon realize my Americanness in a longer conversation.

Given that this research considers racialized and gendered aesthetics, I also reflected on how I styled my hair during participant observations in curly and natural hair salons, as well as the specialized beauty course. Although straight hair for Black and Latina women is understood as more professional compared to curly or natural hair in the United States (Brown and Lemi 2021) and the DR (Lyon 2019), I developed my “researcher subjectivity formation” to visually align myself with the participants and salon interlocutors by wearing my hair in its naturally curly state (Kehal 2025:2). As an ethnographer, this seemingly mundane decision accomplished two things. First, it signaled to participants and interlocutors that we had shared experiences of what it meant to wear curly or natural hair in the Latine community, and the United States more broadly, thereby gesturing toward an interpersonal solidarity, whether real or imagined. Second, as this research aims to understand how organizations, such as salons, reinforce or challenge hegemonic cultural ideas, including beauty, I did not want to reproduce the racialized beauty hierarchy in my visual representation or in my researcher subjectivity formation in the field by straightening my hair.

Findings

This research underscores the significance of how everyday labor can foster inclusivity and challenge marginalizing racial and gender norms. Hence, I argue that curly and natural hair stylists in Latina-owned salons utilize their specialized body labor toward promoting more inclusive beauty standards for their clients, specifically the acceptance of curly and natural hair. First, I outline how stylists seek out and receive additional beauty school training to specialize in curly and natural hair. I then explore how stylists’ specialized body labor—grounded in their specialized training and embodied racialized knowledge—facilitates their clients’ acceptance and appreciation of their natural hair texture. Finally, I demonstrate how stylists’ emotional labor, combined with their specialized skills and racialized embodied knowledge, collectively works to challenge restrictive beauty standards for their clients and women with textured hair more broadly.

Specialized Skills: Credentialing, Beauty School, and Even More Beauty School

In speaking with stylists at the four beauty salons I observed, I heard the same complaint from them: beauty schools do not prepare them to cut and style natural or textured hair—kinky, curly, or wavy hair. As illustrated in this section, traditional beauty school curricula in New York State and Santo Domingo have not included training on curly or natural hair care, reflecting the Eurocentric beauty standard that values straight hair over curly and natural hair in both places. This exclusion is so significant that in 2023, New York became the first state to legally require cosmetology programs to include textured hair training (NY State Senate Bill S6528A 2023). Therefore, this legislation highlights what stylists in this study had long identified as a structural gap in their professional training. This exclusion in the beauty school curriculum has driven stylists to seek additional training to acquire the technical skills needed to service women of color in curly and natural hair salons. Hence, this section illustrates how stylists addressed this structural barrier by showcasing the additional training they underwent to successfully perform specialized body labor.

There is no licensure requirement to become a hair stylist in the DR. Still, there is a vast network of beauty schools across the country that help establish a standard practice. In Santo Domingo, the Rosario International Academy of Beauty & Aesthetics (Rosario Internacional Academia de Belleza & Estética) is a major beauty school in the country, with 10 sites in cities across the country, including five locations in the Santo Domingo metropolitan area. At the time of data collection, this beauty school did not offer any courses for cutting or styling curly or natural hair. As I observed in Santo Domingo, many curly hair stylists rely on various strategies to educate themselves on natural hairstyling and cutting practices, including formal and informal education. Informal education includes practicing hairstyles and cuts on themselves, family, and friends; watching YouTube videos and other social media posts; and engaging in much trial and error. Formal education opportunities for curly hair beauty schools are limited and costly.

For example, the owner of the curly hair salon I observed in Santo Domingo, Yurdana (Yur for short), from Rizos de Estrellas Salon, prepared to open her own curly hair salon by taking beauty courses available in Santo Domingo at the previously mentioned beauty school. When she realized that there were limited choices for beauty school courses in the city specializing in curly hair, she sought out other resources. Several curly hair stylists in Santo Domingo have pursued formal education by enrolling in specialized beauty courses offered by U.S. curly hair specialists and beauty school instructors.

A popular option is to take the Rezo Academy’s curl certification course with multiple levels. The first level is a two-day course that offers specialized cutting and highlighting techniques for curly and natural hair. Yur took this course when they offered it in Santo Domingo, which cost her $1,500. According to Yur, this is compared to the average minimum wage of a salon employee, which is about $250 (plus commission) per month. Hence, the Rezo Academy certification is a costly option for stylists in the DR who want to acquire formal education about curly and textured hair. Yur has also taken Rezo certification courses in NYC to increase her formal education level. Presently, Yur is Rezo-certified at Level 3, which she advertises on her salon’s Instagram page to help her attract middle- and upper-class clients to her curly hair salon and price her services accordingly. However, Yur is from a privileged class background, which has afforded her a U.S. travel visa, English-language skills, and the financial resources to pursue this formal education for her curly hair salon business. Her services are in high demand, as evidenced by her booking levels, which filled up quickly during my time observing the salon. Therefore, even though Yur became Rezo-certified, the lack of affordable curly hair courses presents a significant financial barrier for many would-be curly hair stylists in Santo Domingo.

The limited number of curly hair courses in beauty schools in Santo Domingo and the financial barrier to taking the courses that are offered factor into the social structures that make curly and natural hair specialization a niche beauty service. For example, Josefina, a student in the specialized beauty course I observed, traveled to Santo Domingo from La Romana, a city more than two hours away via public transit (approximately 75 miles), to attend the course because she could not find another beauty program that would teach her the fundamentals of styling and cutting curly hair, as she is the owner/stylist of a curly hair salon in La Romana. The lack of access and financial barriers to curly and natural hair beauty school courses limit the number of stylists who can help Latinas and Afro-Latinas feel confident in their hair, thereby reinforcing the controlling images of curly and natural hair as difficult (Collins 1990).

At the time of this research, NYC hair stylists faced a similar problem in beauty school. Unlike the DR, hair stylists in NYC are required to have a license to operate. However, the formal curriculum in beauty schools in NYC did not teach how to style and cut natural hair. Instead, the curriculum focused on styling techniques to straighten textured hair. This made becoming a curly hair stylist more challenging because, in addition to earning their beauty school degree, they must also learn the specialized skills of styling and cutting natural hair through additional beauty school courses.

This lack of training on curly hair reinforces the devaluation of the technical skills required to style and cut curly and natural hair. Instead, aspiring curly and natural hair stylists must find their own motivation to pursue this additional education and credentialing. A junior stylist at Curly Magic Salon, Rebecca, put it like this:

I am mostly learning on the job at Curly Magic because beauty school concentrates on straight hair, not curly hair. The only thing I am going to take from beauty school is the color techniques. I am learning about curly hair by working at this salon, especially from Sofia [salon owner and senior stylist]. (Rebecca, 20s, Junior Stylist at Curly Magic, paraphrased from fieldnotes, 2022)

Rebecca is able to learn how to style and cut curly hair from the other senior stylists at Curly Magic, especially Sofia, the Puerto Rican owner and head stylist. Rebecca still needs to dedicate time and resources to learn all the content in beauty school to obtain her stylist’s license. Yet, she acknowledges that most of the formal curriculum she is learning, which focuses on straight hair, will not apply to her chosen profession as a curly hair stylist. Rebecca further explains, “Although I have learned to style curly at the salon, today, I do not know how to give you a curly cut. Our in-house workshops will teach the other junior stylist and me how to do different kinds of curly hair” (paraphrased from fieldnotes, 2022). In order to train the junior stylists at Curly Magic, Sofia organizes in-house workshops on Thursday evenings after the salon closes. These workshops are led by her, an outside stylist, or a curly hair educator.

The exclusion of textured hair from standard beauty school curricula—reinforcing its positioning as a “niche specialization” rather than essential training—made it common practice for natural and curly hair salons to provide additional training for their stylists. Crowned Curls Salon, another natural hair salon in NYC, has employed a similar strategy to educate its stylists. The salon manual states that performance indicators for stylists include attendance and performance during mandatory monthly training sessions led by either an outside curly hair educator or a salon team member who receives a financial bonus. Furthermore, junior stylists at Rizos de Estrellas Salon in Santo Domingo also receive training from the salon owner and head stylist, Yur, during off-peak hours. Consequently, the need for additional training to specialize in curly hair imposes an additional barrier for those seeking employment in the beauty industry in both Santo Domingo and NYC. In response to this barrier, the beauty salons themselves have learned to address the lack of curly hair or natural hair education offered in beauty schools by providing in-house training for their staff stylists and solidifying their expert status (Gimlin 1996; Yeadon-Lee 2012).

The additional training and costs that go into acquiring curly hair education are consistent barriers to entry for stylists who also want to specialize in curly haircuts and styles. The lack of natural hair education in beauty schools is an educational policy decision that hinders the ability of stylists to learn more about curly and natural hair. The formal curriculum in beauty schools in NYC and Santo Domingo reinforces the notion that straight hair is the supposed standard while relegating education about curly and natural hair to a specialization that only stylists with the ambition to expand past this standard of beauty learn about. Hence, stylists acquire additional accreditation and training, building toward specialized body labor they perform in Latina-owned curly and natural hair salons in the United States and the DR.

Practicing and Applying Specialized Body Labor in Latine Salons

In learning the specialized skills that build toward their specialized body labor, stylists and stylists-in-training start applying these skills in beauty school with volunteer hair models and their clients at the salons. During my participant observations in the beauty course specializing in curly and natural hair in Santo Domingo, I experienced the tension of applying specialized skills in cutting and styling natural hair while trying to meet the model’s expectations as I trained to develop specialized body labor.

For example, after reviewing the technical procedures for a volume cut with bangs and observing the instructor cut a model’s hair, it was the beauty school students’ turn to practice a volume cut on our volunteer models with curly and natural hair. A volume haircut with bangs emphasizes the volume of the hair by creating waterfall layers and a rounded shape for the client’s hair, and bangs add to the voluminous effects in the front of the face’s profile. For this practice, the instructor helped me secure a model who had high-density hair and multiple curl patterns throughout her head (waves and curls). Although the model’s density and multi-patterned hair presented a challenge as a beginner, as it would take more time and attention to detail compared to models with medium-density hair or models with a more uniform curl pattern, I was excited about putting what I had learned into practice. By practicing both specialized skills—cutting, styling, and drying textured hair—and emotional labor, I actively resisted texturism by withholding the normalized complaints clients internalize about their own multi-patterned hair, documented in my salon observations. In doing so, I refused to reproduce the devaluation of curly and natural hair circulating in the Dominican community.

After completing the initial wet cut on the model’s hair, styling, and drying it, we both felt tired and restless because, after more than four hours of work, it was almost 8 PM. Aside from the half hour the model was under the hooded dryer, I was standing up or kneeling for most of the service. As I cut the different sections of her hair at different angles to achieve the desired volume, I balanced the scissors in one hand and the comb on the other and reached for the other styling tools or products intermittently, with arm motions that went above my head or to shoulder level as I went through the cutting and styling motions. Part of this beauty school course was learning how to hold the scissors and at what angles to position your body and arms in relation to the client to minimize short-term body fatigue and long-term body pain associated with hairstyling, such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Therefore, curly and natural hair stylists exert taxing physical labor practiced through the specialized skills, along with the emotional labor of meeting clients’ expectations.

Yet the model and I were not done. After these four hours of cutting, styling, and drying, I still needed to do the final step of retouching the volume haircut before the instructor could review and approve the job I had done. I asked the model to stand up for the final retouching when I would finalize the rounded shape, her bangs, and ensure a general cohesiveness in her hair shape. When she stood up, she noticed that her bangs appeared uneven, and she asked, “Why is this side of the bangs longer?” and pointed to the left side. I knew there would be a longer side; I had noticed that her bang section had both curly and wavy textures in the initial stage of the wet haircut. Therefore, after her hair was styled and dried, the wavy sections appeared longer than the curly sections, which coil and compact more compared to wavy hair. This final step of retouching is done because clients sometimes have multiple textures. The instructor overheard the model’s question and walked over to us; the instructor assured the model that I had done it correctly. Speaking to both the model and me, the instructor explained as she surveyed the model’s bangs, “Look, because you [author] did it right. You cut the waves and curls to the same length, the only thing is that the curls shrink more, and we already knew that.” The instructor’s explanation reassured the model and me, and I was also relieved that the instructor offered support in what could have become a hairy situation with the model. With my confidence renewed and scissors in hand, I completed the retouching cut, trimming the model’s bangs to align with her curls and waves, and refined the rounded shape throughout her hair. The model left happy, and I felt content that I had completed the day’s lesson.

This example from beauty school highlights how stylists need to balance their specialized skills in styling and cutting natural hair while reassuring the client throughout the process, thereby developing their specialized body labor during a beauty school course specializing in curly and natural hair. In addition, throughout the course, the instructor highlighted the differences in care kinky, curly, or wavy hair needs depending on the client’s natural curl pattern. Hence, beauty schools aimed at training curly and natural hair stylists offer future stylists the opportunity to practice care work through their emotional labor; practice the specialized skills of haircutting, styling, and drying; and learn how to talk about different curl patterns without reinforcing the texturism that Dominicans have learned to associate with kinkier curl patterns.

Some traditional Dominican salons, whose livelihoods rely on straightening Dominican women’s hair in alignment with Dominican beauty standards (Candelario 2007), have adapted to the growing natural hair movement. Uptown Girls Salon is one such salon that serves as a one-stop beauty shop for mostly Latina clients in the neighborhood. During my observations, the salon employed four stylists specializing in traditional Dominican blowouts, two stylists focused on curly and natural hair textures, a nail technician, and a lash and brow technician. Massiel, one of the curly hair stylists at Uptown Girls, cultivated a clientele that included both weekly regulars and those who visited less frequently (about every three to six months), primarily for curly haircuts.

One such client is Ana, who was new to Uptown Girls. I arrived toward the end of Ana’s wash and go ⁴ appointment after Massiel had washed and styled her hair and she had recently come out of the hooded hair dryer. Massiel directs Ana to her styling chair, sections Ana’s hair into front, middle, and back sections, and clips the front and middle sections up to start separating Ana’s curls in the bottom section. As Massiel does this, she explains to Ana what she is doing. Massiel rubs a hair serum on her fingers to separate the large curl clumps into smaller curls without adding too much frizz and breaking the curls’ cast—the crunchy feeling left behind by the curl-defining gel. This helps Ana’s hair look more lived-in and adds volume. As Massiel does this, Ana is glad to be learning more about styling her hair at home. Ana reveals to Massiel that she did not know how to get rid of the cast of her curls, “and I hated it like that,” she explains. As Massiel finishes one section, she moves on to the next section, reapplying hair serum to her hands as needed to de-clump Ana’s curls, leaving her curls defined, shiny, and “juicy,” as Ana exclaims. In the end, Ana is content with the outcome.

Ana had previously been apprehensive toward voluminous hair, a hegemonic idea that is reinforced in traditional Dominican salons as a negative aspect of Afro-textured hair (Duarte 2025); however, with Massiel’s help, she has learned to appreciate her hair’s natural volume. When she stands up, she does a happy shimmy dance and thanks Massiel three times. Then, they go outside for Massiel to take “after” pictures for her Instagram account, which is how she showcases her skills to recruit new clients and communicate with clients. Once Massiel is done taking Ana’s photos, I hear Ana enthusiastically say, “I am going to tell my sister to come here with me to get our hair done together!” Massiel and Ana share a cheek kiss and a hug, a warm greeting often exchanged in traditional Dominican hair salons and among Dominican family and friends, before Massiel comes back inside to text her next client.

Through specialized body labor developed over years of beauty courses and salon experience, Massiel provides wash-and-go services that consistently leave clients feeling content and enthusiastic—a pattern Ana’s response exemplified. Stylists also encourage their clients to ask questions about how to style their hair at home, passing down the specialized skills of wash-and-go styles to empower their clients regarding their curly or natural hair. This demonstrates a routine event, where the stylist successfully performs specialized body labor to leave the client satisfied with her curly hair, despite it not being the beauty norm. While Massiel’s labor with Ana represents one interaction, it exemplifies a valuable labor practice: curly and natural hair stylists collectively perform specialized body labor that challenges the devaluation of textured hair embedded in Eurocentric beauty standards. By centering women of color aesthetics, each client interaction reinforces a more inclusive beauty paradigm.

Emotional Labor through Expert Consultations in Latine Salons

Emphasized in both the curly and natural hair salons’ procedures and the specialized beauty school course was the attention to clients’ emotional well-being during the initial consultation at the start of the appointment and throughout their interactions with their clients. In other words, the professional training and responsibilities of natural and curly hair stylists in the salon underscore their emotional labor in support of the client’s emotional well-being and even in alleviating past “hair traumas,” as stylists and clients have described clients’ previous experiences of gendered racism in the context of their natural hair texture or texturism. This is because for some Latina and Afro-Latina women with curly and natural hair, visits to beauty salons can trigger past insecurities about their hair and themselves. Lola, a Black Latina who proudly wears her voluminous curls and curly bangs, is both the manager and a stylist at Crowned Curls. In an onboarding meeting with a new stylist, Lola described the nature of their clientele simply as, “We serve a traumatized demographic” (fieldnotes, 2022).

Naomi, another young Latina stylist who had worked at the salon for about two years, elaborated,

A lot of people that come here have been previously traumatized at traditional salons because they’ve been turned away because they have too much hair, or they think they have ugly or bad hair. At Crowned Curls, we tell them, “No, you don’t have bad hair,” or “Your hair isn’t ugly. Your hair is beautiful!” It’s just that they need the right hair education for their hair texture—right products, techniques, maintenance. (Naomi, 20s, Junior Stylist at Crowned Curls Salon, paraphrased from fieldnotes, 2022)

In other words, the hair trauma that their clients have previously experienced is the gendered racism that women of color face in the Eurocentric beauty hierarchy. This beauty hierarchy devalues the aesthetics of women of color (Parra 2025), especially those features associated with Blackness, such as natural or Afro-textured hair (Johnson 2024). Hence, stylists’ labor is not limited to making their clients look beautiful; it is also to help their clients feel confident in their textured hair by engaging in emotional labor (Sharma and Black 2001). These comments from Naomi and Lola highlight how, through their specialized body labor, stylists provide their clients with expertise in styling and cutting textured hair; stylists also engage in emotional labor to mitigate and alleviate the racialized insecurities of their predominantly Latina and Afro-Latina clientele. Thereby, stylists create a positive and reassuring experience for clients at the salon.

As Naomi’s quote alludes to, while traditional Dominican salons often engage in price discrimination based on hair density or curl patterns—charging more for higher hair density or for kinkier textures—the curly and natural hair salons in this study deliberately reject this practice. As Yur from Rizos de Estrella Salon and Lola from Crowned Curls revealed, their salons set uniform prices for haircuts and styles regardless of clients’ hair density, curl pattern, or length. Instead, they average the estimated costs across diverse client needs. This business model reflects the salon owners’ specialized body labor: the emotional labor of recognizing clients’ past hair traumas of hair-based discrimination, combined with their racialized embodied expertise in serving clients across the natural hair community. By severing service costs from individual hair characteristics, these curly and natural hair salons resist reproducing texturism within their salon spaces, particularly for their predominantly Latina and Black Latina clientele.

Part of the emotional labor that curly and natural hair stylists undertake is also paying close attention to the language they use with their clients. Given the historical implications of Afro-textured hair, particularly kinky hair, ⁵ which has been regarded as pelo malo or bad hair in Black and Latina communities (Banks 2000; Candelario 2007), stylists aim to redefine the negative perceptions associated with descriptors of natural hair—like kinky hair and pajón, which translates to “messy afro hair” in the Dominican context—by re-educating new stylists and their clients about these terms.

I provide another example from Crowned Curls. Alice is the newest stylist and the sole white stylist in the salon. Unlike the other Latina, Black Latina, or Black stylists at Crowned Curls, she had not personally experienced the same hair traumas that the salon’s predominantly Afro-Latina and Latina clients have experienced. During a staff meeting, Lola reminded Alice—as the newest team member—to be mindful of her choice of words when communicating with clients. Lola explained to Alice, “Do not say ‘a lot of hair’; instead, say ‘high density hair’ and vice versa for ‘a little bit of hair’; instead, say ‘low density hair’ or something like that. Similarly, with supposedly ‘nappy hair’ or ‘dead hair,’ it is better to say ‘coily’ or ‘kinky hair’ because that is the hair texture, and ‘chemically processed’ [for the latter]” (paraphrased from fieldnotes, 2022). Similarly, Yur emphasized this language at her salon, Rizos de Estrellas Salon. In addition to language around hair density and chemically processed hair, Yur also addressed the use of pajón in her salon. Rather than saying pajón, her staff was instructed to describe the curl pattern: kinky, curly, or wavy. Other natural hair salons in Santo Domingo have taken the alternative approach of reclaiming pajón with a positive embrace to describe their clients’ natural hair.

Natural and curly hair stylists engage in emotional labor that encompasses their choices of language and how they conduct hair consultations at the beginning of appointments and throughout the client’s experience at the salon. Another example at Crowned Curls illustrates the guidance stylists provide through both their expertise in natural hair—through their specialized body labor, including emotional labor. While finishing up drying and styling the hair during a haircut appointment, Alice’s client surprised her by announcing that she wanted curly bangs. Like with every appointment at Crowned Curls, Alice began with a consultation with the client, who had stated that she wanted a rounded cut while retaining her hair’s length and described how she usually wore her dark brown, curly hair: with a side part or in a ponytail. However, the client expressed skepticism about Alice’s expertise with curly hair, specifically because Alice is white. Given their prior negative experiences at other salons, the predominantly Latina and Black Latina clientele occasionally questioned whether Alice possessed the appropriate skills to serve their hair needs. Still, the client seemed satisfied enough to continue with the service with Alice.

Once the consultation was finished, Alice proceeded with the appointment. The client’s hair was washed, and Alice sectioned, cut, and styled the client’s wet hair as they chatted. Meanwhile, I helped Alice dry the client’s hair. More than an hour into the appointment, as Alice was doing the finishing touches, her client informed Alice, “Actually, I think I want to get bangs, like this picture,” and showed Alice her “inspiration picture” from Instagram, which is a picture of the hairstyle or haircut they want to emulate. However, the inspiration picture featured a young woman with looser curls and higher density hair than the client. Given that they are at the end of the appointment, that curly bangs are a drastic change from the client’s usual hairstyles, and that the inspiration picture has a different curl pattern and density from her client, Alice tries to encourage her to think more about getting bangs at her next appointment, rather than rushing into the decision in the moment.

As Alice speaks, the client seems unconvinced and looks at herself in the mirror while pulling some of her front pieces toward her forehead to see how the curly bangs would look on her. Overhearing this interaction in the intimate salon space, Lola approaches the client to speak with her.

[Lola] explained what would happen with bangs, which felt more like advice [rather] than pushing her away [from bangs]. [Lola] told her about her own bangs and her more elaborate styling routine. Because the client uses a side part, with bangs, the hair is pushed forward instead. [Lola] told the client to come back in a week if she still wants bangs and to think about it. She advised the client to look at hair inspiration with her curl pattern. Then, the client continued to speak with [Lola] at the desk about hair inspiration during her checkout. (Crowned Curls Salon, edited for clarity from fieldnotes, 2022)

While Alice felt pushy when attempting to dissuade the client from getting bangs, Lola connected with the client personally by using her own bangs and styling routine to demonstrate and educate her on the additional maintenance required for curly bangs. Whereas Alice explained why bangs would not work—more maintenance, the client’s current lifestyle, and the different curl pattern of the inspiration picture—Lola’s advice stemmed from her knowledge of natural hair, her own experiences with her natural hair, and the emotional labor of ensuring the client felt heard instead of dismissed (“come back in a week”). Lola helped the client feel validated while establishing a plan that aligned with her wants, unlike other experiences she may have had in a traditional salon, where her wants may have felt dismissed. This interaction illuminates a racialized difference in how stylists perform specialized body labor. Lola’s specialized body labor mobilized her embodied racialized knowledge to quickly establish trust. In contrast, Alice’s specialized body labor required practicing emotional labor and demonstrating expertise throughout the appointment to build credibility despite the racialized skepticism her whiteness triggered.

This attention to using their emotional labor while guiding clients during the hair consultation and the rest of their appointment is also emphasized in the beauty school course specializing in curly and natural hair. The instructor provided guidance on how to support clients when they arrive with an unrealistic inspiration picture. The instructor explained common areas of tension during the consultation:

During the consultation and hair diagnostic (about 20 or more minutes), you need to understand the client’s goal, their lifestyle and career, and how often they exercise or move their body throughout the week. For example, your client is a vet who has to have her hair tied back for work but wants to have curly bangs [usually layered bangs or curtain bangs]—you cannot give her bangs because it won’t work for her. Instead, you can suggest long bangs [which hit from the cheekbones or lower for styling versatility] because you, as the stylist, need to imagine how the client will take care of her hair day to day. [. . .] We need to know how to orient the client because 85% of the time, the client will have an inspiration picture with a different curl pattern or the photo [for a haircut] has longer hair than the client. (Translated and edited for clarity from fieldnotes, 2023)

This is why the consultation at the start of the appointment is imperative to understand what the client wants, their lifestyle, and their hair’s current condition and curl pattern to guide them in their hair expectations for the appointment, while being mindful of the client’s emotional well-being to ensure they do not feel dismissed, and instead leave the stylist’s chair feeling satisfied. The client’s inspiration picture may be unrealistic for the client because they have a different curl pattern or hair density, as in the previous example, or because the client’s lifestyle would not support the haircut. Sometimes the inspiration picture is unrealistic simply because the photo itself represents idealistic outcomes, which are unrealistic for day-to-day wear, as the instructor explained, “On social media, curly hair influencers have visual tricks that clients do not understand, such as lighting, camera angle, or pushing the hair forward for seemingly abundant curls” (paraphrased and translated from fieldnotes, 2023). Thus, stylists’ services at a curly or natural hair salon involve not only the practical and physical hairstyling and cutting in specialized body labor, but also the emotional labor associated with providing services for the racially embodied item, that is, natural hair. If done well, stylists in curly and natural hair salons can help their clients accept their curly or natural hair, thereby challenging dominant beauty norms that devalue their clients’ beauty as women of color.

Conclusion

This article analyzes how curly and natural hair stylists in Latina-owned salons perform what I term “specialized body labor” to support clients—predominantly Afro-Latinas and Latinas—in navigating and resisting Eurocentric beauty norms that devalue their natural hair texture. Through their specialized body labor, curly and natural hair stylists aid their clients with their hair trauma, or past experiences with gendered racism that devalued their hair. Through their specialized body labor, stylists also educate their clients about curly and natural hair care practices. Therefore, through stylists’ specialized body labor, they disrupt beauty hierarchies by equipping their clients with the confidence to wear their curly and natural hair in professional settings and everyday events.

Building on Kang’s (2010) concept of body labor, this article introduces “specialized body labor” to emphasize the additional credentials and training stylists undergo to specialize in curly and natural hair. Stylists who work in curly and natural hair salons develop their specialized beauty skills through hands-on experiences in the salon and additional specialized training to style and cut curly and natural hair, which goes beyond the formal beauty school curricula. Through these labor practices, curly and natural hair stylists help their clients, predominantly Black Latinas and Latinas, learn about and navigate their hair care practices for their textured hair, often neglected in mainstream beauty, while healing from past hair-related traumas to accept their natural hair textures. Specialized body labor, as this article demonstrates, is the integration of interdependent dimensions: the specialized skills stylists utilize in cutting and styling curly and natural hair, and the emotional labor they employ to build and maintain client trust and satisfaction. By utilizing their specialized body labor to educate clients on the specialized techniques for styling their curly and natural hair at home during consultations and appointments, as seen with Massiel, stylists also empower their clients to accept their natural hair textures and encourage them to redefine beauty and femininity to include their natural hair. In addition, the vignette with Alice and Lola highlighted the racialized differences in employing specialized body labor in a Latine salon.

Unlike previous work on people of color’s emotional labor that has focused on predominantly white workplaces (Kennelly 1999; Wingfield 2010), the stylists in Latina-owned curly and natural hair salons work in predominantly Latina spaces—the stylists are mostly Black Latinas and Latinas, as are their clientele. Therefore, stylists’ emotional labor is not responding to the feeling rules of a white-dominant work environment. Rather, their emotional labor is used to support their clients in facing a racializing society that is hostile to curly and natural hair, and Black and brown bodies more broadly. Through stylists’ specialized body labor, they provide emotional support and beauty expertise to their Afro-Latina and Latina clients who are transgressing the dominant Eurocentric beauty standards of straight hair in the United States and the DR.

However, structural barriers limit curly and natural hair stylists’ ability to create more inclusive beauty standards. Attending beauty courses to specialize in curly or natural hair takes additional resources—time and tuition funding—limiting access primarily to would-be stylists from privileged class backgrounds, especially in the DR, where such training is less available. In addition, clients regularly lamented the higher costs at curly and natural hair salons relative to traditional Dominican salons. However, these prices reflect the intense labor that stylists provide, stylists’ specialized training, and the growing demand for curly and natural hair stylists due to the expansion of the natural hair movement. Paradoxically, this cost structure reproduces the controlling image of curly and natural hair as inherently more difficult and therefore more expensive to manage compared to straightening textured hair.

The analysis focused on stylists’ labor inside the salon space. However, this article does not address the significant digital labor that many curly and natural hair stylists perform as educators and influencers on social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Future research on beauty service work and labor could examine how stylists’ digital labor works in conjunction with their in-person labor with clients.

This article offers sociologists a theoretical roadmap for examining how women of color’s labor can reproduce, resist, and complicate social inequalities of race, gender, and class. Rather than locating agency solely in consumer choices, this study centers on the labor of stylists themselves in shaping the social meaning of racialized beauty and femininity while resisting texturism, which devalues women of color’s aesthetics globally. While other studies of the natural hair movement address how texturism is reproduced within the mainstream movement, including among Latinas (Duarte 2025) and social media (Johnson 2024), the analysis of this study indicates that stylists’ specialized body labor works toward dismantling this preference for looser curl patterns.