{"id":13172,"date":"2020-12-17T19:51:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T00:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prose.com\/?p=13172"},"modified":"2020-12-17T19:52:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T00:52:12","slug":"miss-rizos-hair-salon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prose.com\/blog\/miss-rizos-hair-salon","title":{"rendered":"Miss Rizos Has Become an Unstoppable Force in the Curly Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

Dominican salons have become synonymous for straightening hair. Even someone with 4C curls can walk out with silky, straight tresses all with the help of a blow dryer on high heat and some forceful wrist action. But Miss Rizos, which was named after the blog Contreras created after embracing her own natural hair texture, is one of the first natural hair salons in the Dominican Republic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always worked with women empowerment and communities of development and when it comes to hair politics in particular, I kind of fell into it because I was going through my own process. I was doubting my own beauty and feeling insecure so I created this blog because I was finding myself talking to random women in the streets who were stopping me and asking about my hair,\u201d Contreras tells us. I would be sitting down in a restaurant with friends and people would just see me with my curls and ask me about how I got them to look like that or how I gathered the bravery to cut them so short because that wasn\u2019t a thing in the Dominican Republic back then \u2014 10 years ago. There were only a handful of girls wearing their natural curls in the country. That pushed me to create a blog where I would answer all their hair questions and simultaneously use it as a space to empower and motivate women to question the status quo and give themselves the opportunity to just learn about their hair more and through their hair learn about their identity and heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The salon had been such a success that Contreras opened up her second Miss Rizos salon last October in NYC, right in the ever-growing Dominican community of Washington Heights. While the COVID19 pandemic has come with its fair share of hits and obstacles, the loyalty of Contreras\u2019 clients both in NYC and in the Dominican Republic, have managed to keep the businesses going. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are very fortunate to still be open. To still be physically open is such a blessing and I don\u2019t take that lightly. We\u2019re very grateful that our clients are loyal and supportive through these times,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re facing a lot of challenges from not being able to fully serve everyone during the day because we have to social distance to take all these additional measures to protect people. It\u2019s been tough to pay full rent and not necessarily be generating full revenue because we don\u2019t have a full salon right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contreras even had to place brand partnerships on hold but despite the challenges, she isn\u2019t planning on slowing her roll anytime soon. During the four months the salon was closed, Miss Rizos provided virtual consultations for clients, as well as, for female entrepreneurs in need of business advice and tips. She\u2019s had a few other great programs up her sleeve that have been temporarily placed on hold for now. One involves providing low-cost to free workshops for local business owners in Washington Heights in Spanish and English and offering free hair styling for little girls and their moms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cOne of the things we do here in the Dominican Republic is we work with communities. We work with Soy Ni\u00f1a, Soy Importante<\/i> and we also work with Latinas y Lidres<\/i>, non-profit organizations,\u201d says Contreras. \u201cIn New York we haven\u2019t necessarily identified an organization that we want to work with so one of the things that we\u2019ve been trying to do is work with educators that come to the salon and work in different schools and offer free hair care services to young girls from 9 to 18-years-old and who want to learn about their hair and get that extra push.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Contreras, who has been involved in activist work since she was 14-years-old, the Miss Rizos brand is about way more than just hair. It\u2019s about encouraging women \u2014 Afro-Latinas especially \u2014 to recognize and embrace what makes them uniquely beautiful. It\u2019s about making them feel seen, valued and proud of their heritage and African roots. It\u2019s about doing away with the anti-blackness that has existed in Latinx communities for centuries. Social and political work has always come hand in hand with the work Contreras does with hair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, she worked with other activists and organizers to hold a meeting with the minister from Junta Central de Electoral (the Dominican Republic\u2019s board of elections) about updating the country\u2019s cedulas<\/i> (forms of identification). At the time women were being told<\/a> to straighten their Afro-textured hair for the cedula<\/i> photos. They were able to convince Junta Central de Electora to make sure hair discrimination<\/a> for ID cards was put to an end. This is the kind of work that speaks to the heart of the Miss Rizos brand, which is why Contreras has recently registered the Miss Rizos Foundation in the Dominican Republic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe decided that in the first few years we\u2019re going to focus on the educational component. We actually want to start working with the ministry of education and see if we can put our comic book<\/a> inside of the curriculum so that from the classrooms little girls and little boys are taught that their hair is not unconstitutional and not informal, improper or not beautiful,\u201d she says. \u201cWe want to be able to start there. As an Ashoka fellow, one of the things we learn is the importance of creating in-direct social change. Direct social change is the people that sit in our chair but there\u2019s only a limited amount of people that can sit in our chair so how do we create a more direct impact? We\u2019re hoping that through working with the ministry of education and schools across the island we can really tackle this huge issue from the root.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contreras wants to use her agency and the Miss Rizos platform to inspire and encourage women to really love who they are \u2014 pajones (curly fros) and all. This isn\u2019t just about hair for her \u2014 this is healing work. She has created the space for brown and Black women to celebrate their beauty, their importance and their worth. And she\u2019s just getting started!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Embrace your nature. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":13311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395,401],"tags":[266,268,479,267,265],"class_list":["post-13172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-category-inspiration","category-interviews","tag-curly","tag-frizzy","tag-new","tag-very-curly","tag-wavy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Miss Rizos Has Uplifted the Curl Community |<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From the Dominican Republic to NYC, Miss Rizos inspires many to embrace their natural hair all while giving back to the communities she so closely works with.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/prose.com\/blog\/miss-rizos-hair-salon\" \/>\n<meta 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