By Leah Mallory | New York Amsterdam News | Word In Black
(WIB) – When it comes to unwanted hair, laser hair removal is one of the most popular solutions for long-term hair reduction.
Sometimes the process may require specialized care, especially for those with darker skin tones, as they are more likely to experience hyperpigmentation, scarring, and inflammation due to higher melanin content.
PeachFuzz Laser Studio in Brooklyn is boosting women’s confidence through laser hair removal, catering to a variety of shades — and melanated skin is their forte.
“We try to make an environment where you can feel comfortable and not have to worry about if we don’t have the right machinery for you,” said Keisha Lynn Wagner-Gaymon, nurse practitioner and CEO of PeachFuzz Laser Studio.
Wagner-Gaymon opened the studio with her sister, Kristin Wagner, who serves as the company’s COO, in June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, they operated out of an empty apartment in a brownstone where Wagner-Gaymon lived “with a hope and a prayer” that people would come.
“We just opened up, and my sister was the receptionist, and I was the only tech. We just plugged the phone in and said, ‘We’re going to get started,’” she explained. “People started coming, and we were like, ‘Wow.’ It was like the bat signal went off, and all these people were like, ‘Oh, my God, thank you. Finally, there’s somewhere I can go where I feel comfortable or where I can talk about this here.’”
By April 2021, they secured a commercial space in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Wagner-Gaymon said they see approximately 500 women a month – a turnout she claimed is a testament to their quality service.
“This is not even a storefront, so it just goes to show, through word of mouth, that this is a place where you are really going to see effective treatments and feel good about yourself,” she said.
Kimberly Mack-Leveille has been a client at PeachFuzz since its days in the brownstone. She said she has always struggled with facial hair and learned of PeachFuzz through a friend’s recommendation.
“[My friend] said, ‘Oh, I think someone is opening a laser studio that is going to focus on everybody, but also specifically Black women.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, give me that information,’” said Mack-Leveille. “After like four or five sessions, I didn’t have hair, and it stayed off for, like,
I want to tell you, almost eight to nine months.”
She admitted that she was hesitant about laser hair removal due to the fear of being burned or hurt, but that Wagner-Gaymon changed her perspective.
“Keisha helped educate me about this too — it’s that every laser is not meant for every skin type. So, a laser that specifically focuses on darker skin tones is a game-changer,” she said. “It means that you possibly won’t get burned, or that they actually know how to treat your skin because you hear of people going to laser studios, and they have lasers that are not for us. So, I want to go to [somewhere] that’s going to be able to cater to who I am.”
Wagner-Gaymon explained that they serve many women with experiences similar to Mack-Leveille’s, some of whom struggle with deeper insecurities.
“We’ve had women who go to sleep with makeup on because they’re hiding from their husbands, or young women who don’t want to date because they’re dealing with a lot of intense facial hair, and we’ve helped them,” said Wagner-Gaymon. “And we feel so good about it. We feel lucky and blessed that we’re able to have this business and support these women as well.”
Her interest in laser hair removal comes from her own experience as a teenager dealing with unwanted hair.
“I started having facial hair at sixteen, which was devastating to me. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to figure out what to do about this.’”
She learned about laser hair removal through an online forum and decided to give it a try, but then the worst happened — she got burned.
“I got my hair cinched to my face. It was a crazy experience,” she said.
“And I thought to myself, what if there was a space that was centered on skin of color? Where you didn’t have to worry about if they had the right equipment or if they knew nuances for our skin? We know all of that here, so it’s like a safe space we created.”
The sisters recently opened a second location in Valley Stream on Long Island, bringing culturally competent laser hair removal services to current and prospective clients out east.
Their goal, Wagner-Gaymon said, is to expand their business nationally.
“We’ve gotten emails and [direct messages] from people in Texas, Florida, Iowa, asking, ‘When are you coming to my state?’ So we know that there is a need, and if we could do this in New York, where there’s so much competition, we strongly believe that we can do this anywhere in the nation.”
But wherever they go, their purpose remains the same.
“We are just so proud to be able to serve women of color, and our mission is to make women feel confident and their best selves, empowering them from the lightest of shades to the darkest of shades.”
Visit www.peachfuzzlaser.com for more info.
This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.
This post appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.