Meath salon owner boycotts celeb magazines due to the 'toxic banter' they lead to
Some hairdressers are boycotting ‘glossy’ magazines in a response to the negative conversations about celebrities they feel they were contributing to.
Instead some salons are stocking magazines about food, fashion and wellbeing for their customers to read and chat about while they are getting their hair done.
In the wake of the death of Caroline Flack, Meath based hairdresser Derek O’Grady revealed he stopped buying them two years ago.
“I got really sick of the toxic 'banter' that seemed omnipresent in my salon.
"I realised it all spawned from the magazines that guests were reading while having their hair done.”
In a post on Facebook he said some of the magazines had, “pages and pages of fat shaming, slut shaming, ring of shame, torso of the week and the biggest sin of them all ‘celebs without make up.’”
Derek, who has had the Headmaster’s Hair Salon in Trim for the last 14 years, said when people look through some of the glossy magazines they can start to comment on the appearance of those featured in them.
“People go ‘look at the state of this one and that one’ and you just find you are listening to people giving out, (and) then you are giving out.
"Everyone is giving out all day long and that is not what we are there for so I removed them.”
He quietly stopped getting them and instead says, “I found a company that delivers a box of magazines once a month, it can be household magazines, interior designs, wellbeing or psychology.”
He said the conversations in the salon have changed and, “there is an awful lot of conversations about our fantasy kitchens now!”
“The tone has changed in the salon dramatically. We talk about our lives, our guests lives and normal (real) conversations.”
“We as humans have the ability to take down these toxic publications and end needless harassment of innocent people (mainly women). Caroline Flack R.I.P.,” he said on Facebook.
He put his post on a closed forum for salon owners and discovered that other owners had also moved away from magazines featuring celebrities.
More salons are now following his example including Our Salon in Ratoath.
