How hairdressers support wellbeing and communities
Transcriber: Christine Silva
Reviewer: Ghada Khalil
My name is Debbie McGlade.
I’m a hairdresser
and a salon owner in Belfast.
What’s different about our salon is
it’s a family-run salon,
and I think the clients can feel that
when they come in.
I think they feel like they’re part
of the family.
My idea of a good salon is,
or, both me and Julie’s idea
of a good salon
is people can come in and enjoy it,
and chat to other clients.
It’s a small space.
Everyone knows everybody.
We know all our clients’ names.
We know everything about our clients.
And they kind of know us well as well.
We want to have, like, amazing products,
amazing hair, but with a really, really
friendly shop where people can actually
come and enjoy getting their hair done
and walk out feeling amazing and feel like
they’ve had a nice day out.
The role hair salons play
in communities like ours
is it helps people feel better.
It makes them feel like
part of a community.
We have people come in to us
and they’re like from sixteen
to eighty six.
Everybody is welcome to our salon.
So we have like, you know, people come in
and they’ve got to know each other.
They come in for a cup of tea
with each other.
They come at the same time and they’ve
got friends, and they’ve been friends
outside the salon. And for some
of our older clients as well,
it’s the only contact they sometimes have,
maybe, with people.
I don’t think people understand
how important
coming to the salon
is to some people.
As hairdressers, people think
it’s just about, like, great hair,
and just providing a service,
but here at our salon,
we feel we provide
more than just a service.
A big part of our job is making people
mostly feel good about themselves,
even, for example, if I have a client then
who has lost all her hair due to cancer.
She only found out she had cancer
there not so long ago,
and she had messaged to see
if we would cut her wig.
She had texted me that morning
to say that was it still okay
for her to come down
and things like that.
And she said that
she wasn’t feeling very good,
what she did say to me, she wasn’t feeling
very good about herself.
She was finding it really, really tough.
And then when she came in,
we had a chat with her and we’d said,
Jude would give her a head massage,
and she said maybe
Jude doesn’t want to do that.
And Jude says, “No, of course, I’m more
than happy to to give you a head massage.”
And when she left, she just felt so
much more comfortable and happier.
And as you could see, she was lifted
because she was upset when she came in.
And she came back with a text message
later on and just said,
“Thank you so much. I really
enjoyed my wee pamper session,”
because of what she’s been through
in such a short space of time.
When she left, we were we were like,
it did actually bring tears to our eyes.
It feels so good making
people feel that, you know,
they’re important and, and you’ve
made a difference to their life,
or their day or whatever.
You just just made them feel better.
And just to be able to
do that for somebody
and make somebody feel like that;
as a team, that made our day.
The power of great hair, to me, isn’t
just about having nice hair.
It’s about making people feel good
over the years,
like, how you can impact people
by doing their hair,
just blows me away at times.
Great hair means, to me,
it just makes people happy.
It gives them confidence,
makes them smile.
When you look in the mirror
and you just feel good.
It affects all other parts of your life.
So going forward, what I would like people
to understand about hairdressing is
that it’s not just about standing, cutting
hair all day, giving people great hair.
It’s also about the impact we can have
on people’s lives,
and how good we can make people feel.