Dianne is the co-founder of Natural Haircare News and Coils To Locs.com. She's been blogging about natural hair ever since she made the decision to break free of the creamy crack in 2012.
Latest posts by Dianne Austin (see all)
Image from NYPost.com
It seems that work and natural hair just doesn’t mix – at least in this case where a naturalistas’ curly, coily, kinky hair seems to be synonymous with ‘unkempt’ and ‘unprofessional’.
A former employee of AEG Worldwide, which contracted with Barclays Center in Brooklyn, claims that she was fired because of her naturally textured hair which she refused to ‘tame’.
According to Tiffany Bryan, 27, she was regularly asked to do something about her hair before she was eventually fired. Her hair-related problems at work started last March when one supervisor told her she looked like she was electrocuted. From then on, the comments were relentless. She was asked to wear head bands to control her hair which she complied with, and eventually was told to pull her hair into a ponytail. When Bryan told her employer that it would be difficult to pull her hair into a ponytail, she was axed.
Bryan is now working as a mail carrier and is suing her former employer for $900,000.
In an interview with the New York Post, Bryan stated that she could not understand what the problem was, and that she received a lot of compliments about her hair during events at Barclays.
A few years ago, Bryan underwent chemotherapy to battle bone-marrow cancer and beat her cancer. At that time, she decided that when her hair grew back, she would keep it natural.
In the NY Post interview she said:
“I just didn’t want to put any chemicals in it after that. After you lose it, you don’t want to do anything that might cause a problem again.”
But little did she expect that her decision to keep her hair healthy and natural would cost her a job.
What do you think about the request from the employer? Should she have been fired? Based on the photo, was her employer right to ask her to ‘tame’ her hair?
Author: Dianne
 “Changing attitudes about natural hair” is what we do at Natural Haircare News. Through informative articles, podcasts and videos, we go beyond just sharing the latest advice and tips on kinky, curly, wavy haircare – We shake things up and focus on the realities of wearing our hair natural. |
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