LANCASTER, Pa. — How a person feels on the inside might not be the same as how they look on the outside. To celebrate Pride Month, FOX43 visited a small barbershop in Elizabethtown Borough that’s changing lives one haircut at a time.
“Hair is a huge part of everybody’s identity, a lot of people express themselves through their hair,” said Jackie Neal, the lead barber at Elizabethtown Barbers.
A family-owned business in Lancaster County, Elizabethtown Barbers is helping customers feel comfortable in their own skin.
“I was trying to find a gender-affirming, safe barbershop,” said customer Raphaela Cassandra.
“This barbershop is really wonderful in the community and the safe space it's created... a lot of times it’s a very scary experience for a queer person to walk into, a very often times, gendered space as a barbershop and being worried about being accepted and welcomed into that space and getting a good haircut,” added Lem McCarty, another customer at Elizabethtown Barbers.
How a person chooses to cut their hair can impact how others see them. It can also impact how others are treated, especially if they’re within the LGBTQIA+ community.
“I definitely think that there’s a lot of anxiety just from previous social norms to appear a certain way,” Neal said.
And that’s where the Elizabethtown barbershop comes in. As an LGBTQIA+ supportive business, Elizabethtown Barbers is giving people their voice back and working to spread the word about their safe space.
“We added ourselves on the website, STRANDS for Trans, and then that really brought in quite a few people as well,” Neal said.
Elizabethtown Barbers is just one of several businesses in a group called STRANDS for Trans, a website that provides a list of LGBTQIA+ accommodating businesses within their respective communities.
“I told Jackie that I found the place on STRANDS for Trans and explained that it was really important to me to find a space [where] I could feel safe to get a haircut and feel respected,” Cassandra said.
“It’s so wonderful to have that resource, it’s not something I had when growing up and I think having that resource is going to allow people to feel more comfortable to go get a haircut that they truly want,” McCarty said.
So, what do haircuts have to do with gender-affirming care?
As Raphaela explained, “We think of gender-affirming care just as medical care, but people are doing gender-affirming things every day, and I wanted the experience. I know the experience makes me happy to be in a barbershop and get the haircut that I want to get, that’s gender-affirming care to me.”
“When I can provide a haircut and spin somebody around in the chair and they look in the mirror and say, ‘Wow this looks like me,’ that’s a really awesome feeling,” Neal said.