Stag Barber: Haircuts for Everyone

We are all cut from the same cloth, so why pay a different price based on gender? Stag Barber is trying the chop the stigma of a gendered hair salon.

Words by ARRAN PROCTOR

air is everything. We wish it wasn’t so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is. It’s the difference between a good day and a bad day. We’re meant to think that it’s a symbol of power, that it’s a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it and it pays your fucking bills. Hair is everything.” Fleabag was so incredibly correct with this outburst. Hair allows us to express ourselves, whether that be through a vibrant colour or an interesting style (whether or not it’s cool, edgy, chic, or French). Hair is specifically important for queer people, it allows us to show off our differences.

However, for a lot of queer people, it is hard to find somewhere that will cut your hair and not make you choose a gender you do not identify with. Enter Stag Barber. An Edinburgh hair salon with a bright

“Hyellow interior who are keen on de-gendering your haircut. Speaking to the owner, Murray McRae, who has been cutting hair for 18 years, it was interesting to find out why his team made this change. They opened in 2014, amid the peak of the hipster barbershop experience, under the name Stag Barber Co.

After a few years they started picking up female clients who wanted a more so-called “masculine” haircut, as well as an increase in clients who identified as non-binary. After a while, this led them to make a plan to move to men’s and women’s prices, as Murray had only experienced the traditional salon process. This amounted to having a few clients give pushback about the change, leading the barber to change direction. “It wasn't until we'd spoken to our clients about the plan,” Murray explains, “there were a few people, which very gladly had actually said, ‘Well, hold on a minute. I'm a female, I've been paying this price, and you're now going to be charging me more because I’m female.’ And then there were also people who said, ‘actually I don't like to associate with either gender, and you're gonna make me choose.’”

A sudden realisation fell on them at that moment, “Why are we doing this? Why does it have to be a gendered place?” They took some time to reflect on this feedback and made a new plan. “What we decided was to base the haircuts on hair length and we just took the gender away from it. And it doesn't matter who you are. If you want a short haircut, it's going to take this amount of time and it's going to cost this much money.” As soon as they made this change everything started to align, Murray exclaimed, “as soon as we did it, there was just this huge sense of like, oh, yeah, that's how it should be.”

They made the change in 2018, transforming their traditional barber aesthetic into a slick, yellow, contemporary hair salon. Since then, their business has boomed, they have opened new salons, and the response has been wholly positive. Murray highlighted how this change affected people, “What we found is that a lot of people were looking for us, everyone's been very thankful that they have the option now to come here.

Somewhere that doesn't pigeonhole you in a certain place based on gender.”

Murray mentioned it has even had a positive effect on the people who work at Stag. Explaining that for a handful of them they had felt excluded and othered in traditional salon environments, “We have a very weird eclectic group of legends who have all admitted that they don’t fit in.” He said that Stag has allowed them, “to wear what they want and express themselves how they want in their workplace.”

The salon owner wants Stag to be as inclusive as it possibly can be, they have even trained all their staff on cutting curly and afro textured hair.

Murray is excited to see his business grow and continue to allow people from all walks of life to feel comfortable when getting their haircut. With a brand-new salon opening up in Leith later this year it is thrilling to see such an accepting business flourish in a time of hardship.•

Left: Murray McCrae, the owner of Stag Barber.

Right: Stag is inclusive of all people, regardless of gender.

(Credit: Murray Orr)