Shop talk: a health educator targets beauty and barber shops to promote AIDS awareness.

It's a typical Friday morning at Let's Straighten It Out Hair Salon. A middle-aged woman in a black plastic smock is sitting under one of the dryers that line the wall. Three other women gather around a manicurist's table so casually that it's hard to tell the employee from the customers. Owner Tracey Hubbard alternates between cutting hair and answering the phone.

But, unlike customers at an ordinary salon, these women aren't gossiping, reading magazines or watching TV. Instead, their attention is focused on Kimberly Dean, senior health educator for the Chicago Women's AIDS Project, who is offering her insights on condoms. "Even with these regular-sized condoms, I have seen people put 'em from the tips of their fingers up to their elbow. I have also seen them put 'em over their head," she tells the women. "Now, if I see something this big or that big trying to enter into me ... it ain't gonna happen."

"Amen!" someone adds, as other women laugh.

Beneath the jokes, though, the women share a serious concern about the threat of AIDS in their community--so serious that, when Dean went door to door advertising her salon-based AIDS education program, Hubbard volunteered her South Shore salon.

Known as the South Side Women's Collaborative, the program aims to train owners and stylists like Hubbard to become educators in their own right and to help foster discussions about health topics and answer customers' questions while they work. "There's a lot of people that are infected and just don't really know how to protect themselves," Hubbard explains. "So I just felt like it was the right thing to do."

The program--run by the project and two other South Side nonprofits, the Christian Community Health Center and the South Side Help Center--was modeled after a similar, now-defunct service that targeted beauty shops in Evanston.

Catherine Christeller, the project's executive director, explains that the traditional role of beauty shops as gathering places in African American communities provides a ready audience for MDS education. And, as salon employees get trained, customers who may not have access to MDS information will have the chance to encounter it in their everyday lives. "We're looking to develop peer leadership," she says. "Women are the best educators for other women."

In the few months since the program began, the project has managed to enlist 12 salons, barbershops and small businesses in South Shore, providing them with training, educational materials and testing information.

For Dean, the program means more than just reviewing sex ed basics. As a victim of sexual abuse and former drug addict, she's able to connect with women who are afraid to get tested. "But it's better to know than not to know," says Dean, who's been clean for the last 14 years.

Partly because of this personal approach, Dean believes, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. "I think this should be everywhere," said Nogah Brinson, as Hubbard cut her hair. "Even on the bus. You should do this everywhere because it's real."

Dean recently sat down with The Chicago Reporter to talk about her experiences.

What's been the reaction to your presentations?

They want this. [They'd say,] 'You know what? My church members are not next to me, so any question I'm going to ask, I can ask right here.' I've even had women saying, 'I don't want to see this,' but you can see them sticking their head out from under the dryer.

This is the perfect place--beauty shops and barber shops. This is the best place to go, into people's businesses, because you have a captured audience. And we're even going to start trying to do informational videos for days that I can't make it.

What do men talk about in a barbershop?

Mainly blaming women for doing everything, you know what I'm saying? When a man gets an STD, he says a woman burned him. Okay. Maybe someone did burn you right here, but you had 12 other partners in between that, so did you burn them? And he thinks he didn't. They could have an STD, but he didn't do it.

Matter of fact, a case in point in the clinic yesterday. This young man--he knows who gave it to him and what he's going to do to her. Why would you? She didn't even know she had it. What if it was you who had the STD? How would you want her to treat you? But it doesn't click.

What is the message you're trying to convey?

If you gotta have sex, use protection. The virus is out there still. And our babies are the ones that's really catching it.

It's not just about HIV. It's about self-esteem. It's about partner negotiation skills. Well, what is partner negotiation skills? It's that I have a right to show my partner a certain way that we can use this stuff, and we can enjoy it.

You know, I was in the store yesterday. This little sister got this big black eye. You know, you can feel how she felt. When I told the lady, 'Nobody has the right to hit you,' that went right over her head. But, as a woman that was battered, I have years of foundation under me. She's still in it. It might not be her time yet.

A lot of times, people might not hear you the first time. They might not hear you the second time. They might never hear you. Well, guess what? They might not hear you, but they might be sharing this information with somebody else. It may take somebody else to get them to using it.

When I first got into this field, I was working at this clinic. This woman--we became friends. I didn't know she was HIV positive--didn't need to know; it was none of my business. And one day she shared it with me. She was going with this policeman. He knew he was infected with HIV. He knew it. She was married, she got vulnerable, they start dating ... now she's living with HIV.

You see what I'm saying? I mean, it's all because we're looking for love in all the wrong places. Or we're looking for love, and we're scared to go out and say, 'Let's go get tested together.' Some people will come in the clinic--they will bring one partner in the morning, bring another in the afternoon. Or one partner in the morning, another one later on down the line.

People don't realize. And then they get mad because they come in there, 'Well, somebody gave me this.' I always tell them, 'You cannot say, "Somebody gave me this." You gave it to yourself.' Because it is about you protecting you. If you leave here--I gave you all the tools I have. They shouldn't get a sexually transmitted disease. But they're not hearing.

And then you have some people--like I said, they don't want to hear nothing that day. But they will come back to you, without even seeing the doctor, 'I want to thank you for what you said to me. I brought my son, I brought my daughter, I brought my girlfriend.'

Kimberly Dean, senior health educator for the Chicago Women's AIDS Project, makes rounds regularly to beauty and barber shops to help foster discussions on AIDS and other health issues facing the city's South Side communities. Photo by Audrey Cho.