A hairstylist identified how the specific hairstyle many women have been requesting directly correlates to the financial struggles lots of us are currently facing.

A 2024 survey found that women spend about $1,064 on their appearance every year, with 27% of that amount going towards trips to the hair salon. It’s hard to maintain that kind of hair care budget in a struggling economy, so many people are cutting corners where they can, and stylists can tell.

A hairstylist shared her theory on how the economy changes hair trends.

Stylist Daisy Gowin made a video addressing the hairstyles she has recently noticed many clients asking for and what she concluded about this trend. “As a hairstylist, I have my own theory,” she explained. “When girls start going natural or getting more low lights, getting more smudge roots, that’s how we know.”

She said this shows up most of all in women choosing “old money blonde” hair, or “low-maintenance blonde,” to save their time and money and reduce the cost of higher-maintenance styles.

“It’s not just because they don’t have enough money for maintenance,” Gowin continued. “But they also don’t have enough time to come in the salon and get their highlights touched up every four weeks because they’re working or they’re stressed or busy.”

Gowin sympathized with women’s collective redirection to more natural looks due to financial struggles, but she argued that they are doing a disservice to themselves by neglecting their stylistic preferences. However, she reasoned that this is understandable, seeing as “nobody is making any money.”

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Many women have let go of self-care as a way to save money.

Due to the costly prices of maintaining their hair, nails, and skin, among other things, in addition to unwaveringly high costs and insufficient wages, women have either begun choosing lower-maintenance styles, learning to provide these services for themselves, or sacrificing them altogether.

Women have less time for self-care now because inflation doesn’t seem to be getting any better. So, unless women are significantly wealthy and have the funds to maintain the self-care they want, they have to find more affordable ways to keep up with their beauty.

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According to a survey by StyleSeat, the top five beauty items and services women are willing to cut back on in times of financial hardship are makeup, nail salon services, hair salon services, hair care, and skin care. This doesn’t mean they don’t care about how they look, but they have to be practical in tough times.

“I’m too poor to be blonde anymore,” one woman commented on Gowin’s video. “I can’t even afford to get my nails done. I’m more concerned with affording food.”

“I have been doing my own hair old money blonde for years,” someone else shared. “I save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours a year. I hated going to the salon — it was overpriced and the results were inconsistent.”

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More people are learning how to do their own hair to avoid paying high prices at the salon.

Some individuals have used their access to free knowledge on social media to their advantage, learning how to cut and style their hair by watching instructional videos on YouTube and TikTok. This became popular during the pandemic, when many salons were closed for an extended period of time. Now, women are finding that those skills they learned are still helpful.

While the results may not compare to the quality one can receive in a hair salon, learning how to style your own hair is certainly worth considering if it means saving a significant amount of money on a regular basis.

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However, an even larger majority of working women have given up on hair care altogether, realizing how much cheaper and less time-consuming it is to simply embrace their natural hair. As much as women love getting their hair done, many have realized they need to make certain sacrifices in order to afford the rising costs of living in an inflationary economy.

For the vast majority of the country, basic necessities are becoming more difficult to afford, and these individuals are making sacrifices to save time and money.

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Francesca Duarte is a writer based in Orlando, FL. She covers lifestyle, human-interest, and spirituality topics.