This year's Twin Cities Hair and Beauty Expo highlights love for natural hair
MINNEAPOLIS — The Twin Cities Hair and Beauty Expo returned to Minneapolis Sunday, with a mission to encourage, empower and educate women of color to learn to love their hair naturally.
"I'm finally at a place in my life where I can embrace my hair the way it grows out of my scalp, and there is no better feeling," Natural Syrup Founder and CEO Devonna Pittman said.
Pittman remembers a time where that wasn't the case.
"I worked in corporate America for 20 years. I remember feeling like I needed to show up to an interview with a chemical relaxer," she said.
This year, the expo's mission held even more meaning after a new law was passed to protect Minnesotans against hair discrimination.
"The Crown Act really gave us the freedom and liberation that we need to be able to walk into corporate spaces as we are, with our hair, with our texture and with our diverse beauty," Pittman said.
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It's a sentiment the expo's executive producer agrees with.
"We're free," Tephanie Delaney said. "It's just one step in another direction."
It's a move forward after years of advocacy. The expo spotlighted the Crown Act last year.
"The Crown Act removes a lot of that discrimination, a lot of that side eye, you know, tough conversations. And for me, it opens the door now," Delaney said.
Hundreds came out to the expo to check out the 60 BIPOC vendors on display. In addition to supporting small business owners, the Twin Cities Hair and Beauty Expo offered workshops, panels highlighting mental health and live music and entertainment. Delaney says it's all part of empowering beauty beyond the surface level.
"Beauty is the 360. Its multi-dimensional. Beauty is your mental health, right. Beauty is your physical health. Because all of that shows up – all of the internal beauty – shows up externally," Delaney said.
WCCO's Shayla Reaves was a guest speaker at the event.