The bigger picture

Hair has been a political question in human societies for as long as human societies have existed. The political conditions of who covers their hair, who uncovers it, who cuts it, who lets it grow, who is permitted to style it, and who is paid for the styling, are politically contested in every culture. Australian hairdressing inherits multiple intersecting political histories, including European, African, Asian, Pacific, and First Nations traditions, and the contemporary salon sits inside that intersection whether anyone names it. 

The American historian Robin D. G. Kelley has documented in detail how Black hair, in the United States and globally, has been a continuous site of political contest. From slavery-era resistance through twentieth-century Black Power movements, hair has carried political meaning that exceeded any individual stylist's intention. His work is a useful starting point for reading why the politics of Afro hair specialisation in Australia is never just a technical question.

The American sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom has written about how the political economy of hair, particularly Black women's hair, intersects with class, race, and the work of presenting professionally in workplaces designed without those bodies in mind. The Australian salon does not sit in the same political conditions as the United States, but the global flows of products, training, and aesthetic standards reach Australian operators continuously, and the analysis helps surface what is happening in those flows.

The colonial transfer

Hairdressing in colonial Australia inherited British political assumptions about hair, respectability, and class. The barber and the hairdresser, distinguished by gender of clientele and by class associations, were political categories transmitted from Britain. The political assumption that European hair was the standard against which other hair was compared was a colonial racial inheritance, reaching salons through products, training, and aesthetic norms.

What that political vision excluded is part of the history. First Nations hair traditions, developed over millennia, were not part of the colonial salon settlement. African and African-diasporic hair, where it appeared in the colonial Australian imagination at all, was treated as exotic or problematic. Asian and South Asian hair traditions were marginal to the mainstream salon trade for most of the twentieth century.

Migrant hairdressers reshaped Australian salons in successive waves. Italian and Greek migrants in the post-war period brought European salon traditions that became central to mid-twentieth-century Australian hairdressing. Vietnamese migrants from the late 1970s established significant presence in nail and beauty work. Lebanese, Iranian, and Iraqi migrants in subsequent decades brought additional traditions. The political conditions of migrant labour in the salon trade, including casualisation, family ownership patterns, and language-cluster client bases, are the political legacies of this history.

The post-war salon settlement

The post-war Australian salon emerged in particular political conditions. Women's increasing labour-force participation produced sustained demand for salon services. Mass-market hair products, transmitted primarily from the United States through advertising and trade publications, reshaped what salons offered. The political settlement that made the regular salon visit a normal part of Australian women's lives was a political achievement, not a commercial inevitability. 

The trade union politics of hairdressing has been less visible than in some industries, but it has shaped the trade. Award structures, apprentice training requirements, and the political conditions of women's industrial protection all reach the salon floor. The political legacy of decades of incremental industrial organising is significant, even when it is not visible.

The barbershop political tradition

The barbershop has its own political history. Across many traditions including African-American, Italian, Greek, Lebanese, and South Asian, the barbershop has been a political space, a community space, and a place where men's political conversation happens at scale. Australian barbershops inherit this political function in different forms. 

The recent expansion of the barbershop in Australian cities, accelerating since the 2010s, is part of a global trend that includes the political reclamation of traditional barber techniques, the rise of culturally specific barbershops serving particular migrant communities, and the political conversation about masculinity, mental health, and male spaces.

The contemporary contest

The political conversation about cultural appropriation in hairdressing has intensified since the 2010s. The political question of who can offer which culturally rooted techniques, who is trained in lineage, and who profits from cultural specialisation, has reshaped what operators offer and what they can claim.

The political conversation about trans-inclusive practice has also reshaped hairdressing. The salon and barbershop as gendered spaces, with gendered service menus and gendered pricing, have been politically contested by trans, queer, and gender-diverse clients and operators. The political settlement on inclusive practice in hairdressing remains contested, with significant operators on both sides.

The political conversation about hairdressing as feminised intimate labour, with documented exposure to harassment, casualisation, and economic precarity, has been intensifying. Federal and state political attention on workplace harassment and on migrant worker conditions is reaching the trade.