A conversation with hairstylist Rubi Jones

Where did it start for hairstylist Rubi Jones?

It’s funny; a few weeks ago, a friend asked me to do a career day for her kid, and my intro was a photo of me and all of my extended family at my sister’s quinceañera. Our hair and makeup were all done up to the nines with the looks everyone wears now but in the ’90s. I told the kids that that was how I grew up. I would get dressed up at least once a month for a wedding or a quinceañera in my family, and we would do each other’s hair and makeup. Every time my family got together, there would be perm solution in the air, and that’s just how I grew up! Hair was always in my life, but never something that I thought of as a career. 

I am a first-generation immigrant, so from day one, my family wanted me to go to college and do the whole “thing,” they wanted me to become a doctor, lawyer, etc. So, while the hair and the makeup were very much a part of my life, school was also a big part. I was trying to be my own identity, trying to find myself. 

I went to college for art history, and I never entirely fell in love with it. I would always drive around and see this beauty school near my university and wish I could go there. So one day, I signed up on a whim. I naïvely thought that I would do college during the day and beauty school at night, and then the day I started beauty school, I just thought, “Oh my God. Is this how I should feel when I’m in class?” I never wanted to leave; I fell in love with it. I finished off my semester and did beauty school from there on out. 

I always loved fashion. Going back to the quinceañeras, what came along with the hair and makeup was picking out a dress from a magazine. My grandma, who is a super talented seamstress, would sew the ones we wanted. I always loved magazines, and when I started beauty school, I learned that I could do hair for magazines. That was it for me. It came full circle. 

After beauty school, I came to New York because I would look at those tiny fucking editorial credits to see where the hairstylists lived and what they did. Bumble and Bumble were credited in a lot of those at the time, so I just went and got a job there. At the time, they did a lot of fashion shows and had a great assisting program where you learned the basics of hair. It was so intense. You had to master a blowout; you’d be blowing out hair for three months straight until it was perfected, then you’d move on to a haircut, and it was like a straight line until it was perfected, then a bob, and so on. It took like two years, sometimes three, for someone to make it through the whole program. That’s where I started my New York career. I would do fashion shows and assist on shoots, just to try to work my way into the world, and I slowly made it.

Did you ever feel the weight of being a woman in the world of editorial hairstyling? 

I think I assisted for about five or six years before I signed with an agency, and when I was starting to shop around for agencies was kind of when I could no longer deny how sexist the industry was. I remember leaving an agency meeting with an agency that had requested to meet with me. I respected them, but the meeting didn’t quite flow. When I walked out of there, I had a flashback to my first month at Bumble. When I was hired, I remember making it clearly known to the staff and managers at the salon that I wanted to do fashion shows. When fashion week came up a few weeks after I started, I was told I couldn’t be on the first show circuit because I had to go through all the steps and show training before working backstage. But this Co-worker of mine, who I think is an incredible and extremely talented hairdresser, was able to do the fashion shows. I remember asking why he could do it, and I couldn’t, they said, “Well, he’s a guy – you have to be able to carry those big set suitcases.” There could have been other reasoning, but that overt answer made it clear that this was a gender issue, and it is one of the elements that surely affected the timing of the progression of my career.

I remember walking outside of the agency meeting not feeling great, which is normal, you know, sometimes a meeting doesn’t go the way you want, but that came back into my head, and I just started crying. I just thought, “What the fuck”. 

There’s a gender gap in the hair industry, and when I was looking for an agency, I saw it in the rosters. There were no women in a lot of rosters, or sometimes there was just one, but there were plenty of men. These are the little things that happen. It’s never this huge, in-your-face experience, it’s all these tiny micro-aggressions that push you back. 

“European white men  alongside American barbers saw that the industry was flourishing and said “Let me just tell you how it’s done,” as historically happens everywhere. So, organizations were created, regulations and practices were put in place that slowly erased the story of the true salon. ”

It’s hard because when you think about the general public, they don’t see what you see. They don’t go to the local hair salon and see it overrun with men. When the general public isn’t catching onto this, it’s not something that is a “major fight”; it’s something that the professional women in your avenue are waging on your own, which sucks even more. 

Exactly. Coming full circle, that point goes back to what I’m doing here. In the last year, there was a point in time during that insane lockdown that I didn’t touch hair for months at a time. I felt such mourning, and I deep dove into reading and researching. I started reading all these books that tell you the history of the American hair industry. In these books, I saw exactly what happened, dating back to the 1930s, that created the segregated and sexist industry that we live in now. That’s what pushed me to start this. 

All these things that had never made sense to me, like when you look at the rosters and the heads of the major hair care brands, and 95% of them are European white men; it started to click. The industry is extremely segregated. For the most part, white hairdressers don’t know a single thing about black hair or the hair of any other marginalized community in the US. They’re all just completely separate. In these books, you see exactly why. I could tell you all of it, but part of the reason for this library is to physically and visually show people. 

When you come and see this library, you’ll wonder why you’ve never heard about the history within most of these books. Hairdressers will wonder why they never received these books in their training. Ask yourself who was writing these books. Ask yourself what stories were being written and added into our cosmetology textbooks. That’s why I want the most extensive collection of cosmetology books so you can see why they’re so segregated. Look at the authors then; look at the authors now!  The vast majority of authors to today’s textbooks are still white and the textbooks are segregated. I just want everyone to come and see where we are, what’s missing, what hasn’t been told, or what may just be an oral history at this time, and where we’re going to go from here. Things need to change. 

Do you feel that one of the reasons for this segregation is buried in the industry’s inception? 

Interestingly, in a very small gist, one of the ways that the industry began in the US was because women needed a safe space to work. You were either black, and you didn’t have safe spaces at all because you were working in people’s homes in incredibly unsafe working conditions, or a factory with hazardous working conditions as well. White women were also working in factories with dangerous working conditions, so the American hair salon began. You weren’t able to go to a barbershop because barbers didn’t want women in their spaces, so they created a safe space where they could economically thrive. 

European white men alongside American barbers saw that the industry was flourishing and said “Let me just tell you how it’s done,” as historically happens everywhere. So, organizations were created, regulations and practices were put in place that slowly erased the story of the true salon industry.

Throughout the industry, there has always been this push and pull. As you said, everyday Americans are mainly seeing women at their local hair salon. These places have been a safe space for anyone that wasn’t accepted in a barbershop. LGBTQ+, all minorities, everybody that doesn’t exist in a white, male, Euro society. These regulations came through and took away women’s autonomy in these historically safe spaces. 

When you come and sit in my chair, I naturally am taking care of you. Yes, I’m taking care of your hair, but also so much more than that. That’s where the community work comes into play for me. In these histories, you read that hair salons have always been community spaces where the workers take care of their communities through their hair needs, which leads to health, which leads to economics, voting, all of that. As soon as black women, and women in general, got the right to vote, hair salons signed women up to vote. A few weeks ago, all hairdressers were invited to this US chamber of commerce meeting where they’re trying to use hairdressers to help educate our clients about the vaccine and its importance. 

Everyone knows the importance of what a hairdresser can do when you sit in their chair. Still, I think that these regulations have slowly been trying to professionalize the industry and take away some of that intimate personal connection that each hairdresser has. If this hadn’t happened, the industry would have already pushed forward some of the things I’m fighting for now, like paid family leave. These are family issues, and in a workplace where it’s primarily women, these individuals would have fought for these things just like they did in the past. In the past, Madam CJ Walker, Annie Turnbo, and so many other hairdressers had always been involved in the community and political work because when you see an issue with your clients and your community, you take care of it.