Our Story
Black women are beautiful stories in motion and Back to the Shop helps Black women tell those stories. Behind every hair, nail, makeup, or fashion trend there are unique experiences that result in styles that are often celebrated, emulated, or misunderstood. Knowing how it feels to be met with positive and negative responses to her style in various environments from girlhood to adulthood, BTTS founder Dr. Shané Weaver, observed the sentiments of other Black women and decided to develop a platform for sharing our beauty stories on our terms. BTTS is a platform that mirrors the environments where Black women’s beauty grooming and stories are made, specifically the shop or the salon. Like the bustling conversations that occur in Black beauty salons, the stories shared in BTTS are intersectional, empowering, uninhibited, and Black women centered!
We believe that sharing stories empowers the story teller and the listener. As a Black woman shares stories of beauty culture and through beauty culture, she gains access to freedom from external control that often attempts to tell her who and how to be. When a person listens to a Black woman share her story on her terms, the listener is able to better understand and engage with the story teller and her beautiful content. At Back to the Shop we beleive every person has the right to define themselves for themselves and everyone has the right to feel beautiful. So cozy up under your dryer hood, grab your favorite grease, pick your favorite nail or lip color, and let the beautiful stories unfold.
Our Team
Dr. Shané Weaver is the Editor-In-Chief of Back to the Shop is Dr. Shané Weaver, Senior Cosmetologist, Africology scholar, literature scholar, and life-long beauty culture participant. The meaning and concept of Back to the Shop is derived from her life story where everything she has done in life always led her back to the Black beauty salon or Black beauty culture. She is a third-generation stylist who spent time in spaces of Black beauty her entire life where Black women’s freedom in hair, skin, and nails was central which figures into the concept of Back to the shop. She is an educator in areas of literature, film, and beauty culture.
Helagenet Gemechu is an Eritrean and Ethiopian American who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Her interests in hair began her junior year of high school where she wrote her extended essay on the significance of hair in African American and Afro Hispanic culture. She earned her bachelor degree in International Studies with a concentration in International development in Sub-saharan Africa. Her interests include the effects of colorism on the African Diaspora, hair, and writing creatively on her own project.