Beautification of Gender Neutrality

Rachael Ibarra is the Director of Education at Elevate Salon Institute in Westminster. Rachael, in addition to many of our staff and owners, are involved with the LGBTQ+ community. In addition to curating a culture of inclusivity for our community we have altered our service menu to be gender neutral. Thanks to Rachael for spearheading this change to ensure we remain at the forefront of social change.

To combat gender stereotyping, Rachael explains, “We decided to change from men’s and women’s haircuts to short, medium and long haircuts. We identify these by: Short is up to neck length, medium is up to shoulder length, and long is anything past the shoulders. We also neutralized any other services that were previously labeled as mens or womens.”

In addition to this change we have trained students and staff in the importance of maintaining the utmost respect, and proper etiquette, when it comes to how everyone identifies. Rachael shares, “staff and students welcomed this change, and with training, discovered ways to ask our guests and each other how they would like to identify: she/they/him ect.”

We are in an ever-evolving world and Elevate is proud to be part of the gender neutrality movement. Owners, staff, and students believe that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of how they identify.

-Casey Delickta-