Welcome back to The Melanin Diaries – helping you to love melanin more by understanding it. In this month’s column, we’re going to call attention to the elephant in the room. That is, clients with melanin-rich skin who are not comfortable with going under the beam.  

Lasers can be intimidating for clients with melanin-rich skin for several reasons, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve all seen the trauma stories on social media and no doubt, so have our clients. The essential component to dismantling fear is having a solid understanding of lasers, along with the confident expertise of a skin professional.  

The reality is, clients aren’t always clear on what lasers are or what they are best for. 

Let’s quickly review. The word laser is an acronym that stands for light amplification by the stimulate emission of radiation. Not exactly what you necessarily want to explain to clients, yet, while that may not help the client to understand laser treatments, it is something fundamental for medical aestheticians to be competent around. When communicating the benefits of lasers with clients of all skin tones, the factors to emphasize are usually as follows: 

How Do Lasers Work? 

Laser light beams are absorbed by skin’s epidermal surface or the dermal tissue by materials found in skin called chromophores. This is the target of laser light and when absorbed, it causes the desired destruction of that particular material.  

The three primary materials that contain chromophores and that are common areas of concern for clients are: 

• Collagen to stimulate rejuvenation. 
• Hemoglobin to treat vascular concerns. 
• Melanin to treat hair removal, tattoo removal, and address hyperpigmentation. 

For individuals with melanin rich skin, the most common skin concern is centered around hyperpigmentation. This is where any interest from the client may be piqued. Unfortunately, traditional interest has been met with disappointment and fear as a result of improper clinical practice or devices. In those cases, almost always the assessment for client suitability was inadequate or there was an improper selection of laser settings or devices by the skin professional. 

C.R. Cooper is a connective, knowledgeable, and compassionate educator who has been a skin enthusiast for over 24 years. As the education manager and master educator for a renowned global institute of learning in the skin health industry, Cooper values organizational and individual industry standards, professional and personal brand integrity, but most importantly the inherent worth in every skin professional. 

Have you ever sensed a bit of hesitation from clients when you first connect with them – specifically clients with melanin-rich skin? What if you could read the minds of your clients with deeper hues? What might you surprisingly discover, and what might not surprise you so much? Skin care professionals may wish we had the inherent ability to read minds and then put clients’ concerns and questions at rest with just the right answer and solution, but that is not possible. 

Fortunately, skin professionals don’t need to have the magic power of reading minds in order to best support the needs and wants of their clients. Due to the prevailing misconceptions and underrepresentation in the skin space around melanin-rich skin, there’s still much work to be done. Many qualified skin professionals experience hesitation and skepticism from some clients as it pertains to entrusting their own skin to them.

The question remains, how do you handle that? Are there ways to even circumvent them? Or perhaps, we are asking the wrong questions and should, rather, seek a deeper understanding to the hesitations themselves? 

C.R. Cooper is a connective, knowledgeable, and compassionate educator who has been a skin enthusiast for over 24 years. As the education manager and master educator for a renowned global institute of learning in the skin health industry, Cooper values organizational and individual industry standards, professional and personal brand integrity, but most importantly the inherent worth in every skin professional.

Identifying and treating skin concerns is the basic calling card of every skin professional. The challenge, however, lies when the skin concern or condition is not as obvious to identify as we’d hope. Melanin-rich skin, to date, represents less than 20% of skin concerns in dermatology and basic industry curriculum textbooks. Not only do skin care professionals encounter uncertainties around traditionally identifying skin conditions, but for clients with melanin-rich skin, there exists an underlying belief of some levels of immunity to certain skin conditions. The truth is, all skin is susceptible to all skin aggressors and conditions. The primary factors skin care professionals should bear in mind are the variable nuances that can be masked and less than obvious skin concerns. 

As always, The Melanin Diaries are here to provide you with a few pointers to help you successfully navigate your client support for clients with melanin-rich skin. Before we call out the usual suspects of top skin concerns for various darker skin tones, we need to lay a good foundation. Human skin is more similar than it is different. To support and care for melanin-rich skin, understanding the inherent similarities it holds with all skin is fundamental, prior to being able to understand its unique elements.  

Reference 

1. C. R Cooper: The Skin Theologian. The No Compromise Black Skin Care Guide “Pro Edition”: The Skin ProfessionalSkin professional’s Culturally Intelligent Tool for Caring for Darker Skin. (© Charmaine Cooper Publications 2022) 

C.R. Cooper is a connective, knowledgeable, and compassionate educator who has been a skin enthusiast for over 24 years. As the education manager and master educator for a renowned global institute of learning in the skin health industry, Cooper values organizational and individual industry standards, professional and personal brand integrity, but most importantly the inherent worth in every skin professional.  

Welcome back to The Melanin Diaries. No one wants to walk on eggshells, especially passionate skin professionals. The bedrock of client care is effective communication, not the fear of offending them. There is a large advantage in leading a consultation with the positives of providing optimal solutions for clients and not with what could possibly go wrong. It is a level of confident empathy that can be felt.

Many skin professionals soar in their empathy levels, however, have to work a bit more on their confidence levels. It is not automatic for most. With the plethora of mishaps and miscalculated outcomes that have transpired in the treatment room for melanin-rich skin, some would argue that the concern is warranted. However, if risk alone was reason enough to not provide services, there would be no medical clinics, medical spas, or skin care studios. 

Therefore, mitigating risks, negative experiences, and mishaps for clients, rests on the levels of knowledge skin professionals possess. When it comes to caring for melanin-rich skin, there are at times invisible barriers that clients come to a skin health space with. 

C.R. Cooper is a connective, knowledgeable, and compassionate educator who has been a skin enthusiast for over 24 years. As the education manager and master educator for a renowned global institute of learning in the skin health industry, Cooper values organizational and individual industry standards, professional and personal brand integrity, but most importantly the inherent worth in every skin professional.

As the new year begins, skin care professionals have immense opportunities to honestly reflect on business wins, client wins, and best practices from the previous year. The other side of that same coin is to also be brutally honest, while maintaining levels of optimism for continual growth for the year ahead.

How did your client growth strategies turn out last year? Was client diversification and inclusion a part of your growth strategies for the entire year? Have you asked yourself why?

Everyone loves a fresh start, clean slate, or new chapter, and January has a way of bringing that to top of our minds like no other month can. No doubt, you had some indisputable wins, along with some legitimate areas for growth. 

MELANIN MATTERS

Although no one is asking you to whip out your 2024 resolution journal, you are invited to journey alongside “The Melanin Diaries” for the next 12 issues to explore how to deliver genuinely inclusive business and skin health practices where clients with melanin-rich skin are truly cared for. 

C.R. Cooper is a connective, knowledgeable, and compassionate educator who has been a skin enthusiast for over 24 years. As the education manager and master educator for a renowned global institute of learning in the skin health industry, Cooper values organizational and individual industry standards, professional and personal brand integrity, but most importantly the inherent worth in every skin professional.