Gender-affirming salon in Ames helps customers embrace their identity
A stylist at a new salon in Ames plans to make a difference for anyone no matter how they identify.
On June 28, Identity Salon had its grand opening, joining the other shops in the downtown Ames area.
"I always wanted to be a hairdresser to make people feel beautiful and good about themselves and I don't see any better way of doing that than helping the queer community," salon owner Roslyn Redman said.
Redman has been a stylist for years. However, owning a business is new to her. She has been working on opening her salon for over a year.
Redman said Identity Salon is Ames’s first gender-affirming salon.
"'Gender affirming' can be anything from whatever fits what you want to look like and how you want to be perceived," Redman said.
Redman said it's really important for people to feel comfortable with how they look, whether it's in public or in private. It's part of why she wanted to open up her salon to give people — no matter how they identify — the power to feel like themselves.
It’s something that's important to many of her clients.
"When you're queer and your appearance is constantly like dissected and attacked and used to define who you are or try to define who you are, when you get to do something and make a decision to define how you look and how that makes you feel it's a huge deal," Redman's friend and salon client Avery Staker said.
While Wednesday was the salon's grand opening, Redman's time in the industry has helped her develop a strong clientele list. She says 80% of her clients are in the queer community.
Redman said she has been building relationships and feeling more passionate than ever about opening her salon following this year's legislative session.
"It pushed me even harder to open," Redman said. "A lot of this stuff has just made me absolutely devastated, especially when it comes to our kinds in Iowa because they can’t speak up."
Redman and her close friends said that making sure clients feel comfortable is important to the salon's mission.
"Oftentimes as people — when we learn about something new — as adults, we find it scary. We want to shut it out. We don't like things that we don’t know," the salon's marketing and outreach director and Redman's childhood friend Miranda Keith said. "My challenge to people is if there's something that you are really upset about, ask yourself why. If you are scared of something, ask yourself why."
You can find more information about Identity Salon on their website.