Landes. In her hairdressing salon, Sarah supports people in gender transition

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No offense to some, Sarah Visnadiopened her gender-neutral hair salon in April 2024, the Bohâme Studioin his village of Montfort-en-Chalosse. A project that combines both its skills, but also and above all its values.

“We hyper-genre everything”

For the 29-year-old young woman, “equality in hairdressing does not exist,” she tells us straight away. “In this profession, we hyper-gender everything, I don’t see why it would be more expensive for a woman and less expensive for a man, when we spend the same amount of time on it.”

The one who trained in particular with Raphaël Perrier and who has just won the Grand Prix for innovation at the Mondial de la coiffure in the “new services” category, has gone further, since she now supports people in transition of gender.

“It was in one of the old salons where I worked that I was confronted with a person in transition. I realized that we didn’t know how to support them.” She then decides to contact a surgeon specializing in implants, another in transformation surgery, and a psychiatrist. She researched a lot and started providing support.

A real test

“When there is, for example, a transition from a feminine gender to a masculine gender, the hormones mean that there may be the beginnings of baldness, hair that may fall out, skin problems, etc., we are not not used as a hairdresser to a facial line that changes so much, so it is important to adapt, I wanted to support them in that sense, but also in makeup.”

Here, it's not a show reserved for the LGBTQI community, it's an inclusive place, where everyone can come. The media tends to equate gender-neutral to this community, but that just means accepting everyone, no matter who you are.

The young woman also offers to privatize her salon for a day and calls on a photographer “for a shoot that allows you to gain self-confidence”. She recalls that for these people, “it is a real ordeal, a change of life and they are sometimes alone (…) the psychological aspect is sometimes more complicated than the physical aspect”.

For Sarah, whether it is an “ordinary” person or a transgender person, “above all, she wants people to listen to her and not to make her haircut in a hurry”. Today, 16 people in transition come to his living roomshe explains.

This man in a dress in Italy

This kindness and this need to include, Sarah Visnadi found in travel and in the openness that they generate: “I lived in Italy for a year, I have family there, I take for example this man who wore a dress in the street, no one looked at him… here, it’s more complicated.”

She refers in particular to some remarks or even comments of a violent nature which were uttered within the confines of her salon: “we will no longer take on a client, she took the liberty of saying that it was better to burn them than to have them face to face.” She nevertheless ensures that in the majority of cases clients understand her approach.

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