June is Pride Month and you may be wondering how to take this opportunity to celebrate this occasion at your clinic and show your support as an ally to LGBTQ+ people everywhere. It’s also a good time to assess how welcoming your practice is to LGBTQ+ clients and staff year-round. Read on to learn more about what Pride Month means and how your aesthetic practice can participate in a fun and meaningful way.
What Is Pride Month and Why Is It Important?
All over the world, June is recognized as LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) Pride Month. The choice of date connotes an important event in Queer history — the Stonewall Uprising, a series of protests which lasted over the course of six days in Manhattan in June, 1969. The protests were organized by members of the gay community in response to the discrimination they faced from the NYPD, who frequently conducted unjustified raids on Greenwich Village, which had numerous outwardly-LGBTQ+ residents.
Today, through parades, workshops, parties, picnics, lectures, concerts, and more, Pride Month celebrates the progress that has been made since that date, while also serving to bring awareness to the ongoing discrimination the LGBTQ+ community faces. You don’t have to identify as LGBTQ+ to participate in Pride Month. It can, and should, be celebrated by everyone, especially given how much impact the gay rights movement has had for other forms of activism, benefitting human rights as a whole.
How To Support Pride Month at Your Aesthetic Clinic
Here are three meaningful ways you can support Pride Month at your clinic.
- Educate. Keeping up to date with important LGBTQ+ issues and training your staff accordingly is a great start. It’s especially important to know about using inclusive language in your clinic, with patients, and in your marketing so you don’t unintentionally exclude a potential client or misuse their pronouns. Being sensitive to the aesthetic concerns of your transgender patients is good for them and good for your clinic’s revenue—in the LGBTQ+ community, word of mouth travels fast.
- Celebrate. Show your support for Pride Month with pride-themed décor, merchandise, and client gifts. You can work the occasion into your marketing by offering special packages for people attending the Pride Parade, for example, bundling non-invasive body treatments and facial treatments that will have them looking good in time for the parade with no downtime. In your clinic messaging, emphasize that Pride is all about showing off what you’ve got, and looking and feeling your best.
- Advocate. Celebrating Pride Month is only meaningful if there’s true support behind it. Therefore, take this opportunity to use your platform to spread the word about an LGBTQ+ cause you stand behind. One option is to choose an organization and donate a portion of your proceeds during Pride Month to their cause. Even if it’s just standing up for more inclusivity, a little goes a long way.
How To Support LGBTQ+ Staff
Making your clinic a safe space for LGBTQ+ people is about more than your patients—it’s a positive thing for your clinic staff, too. It’s also good for your business, because any workplace with a reputation for intolerance risks turning away skilled applicants without even knowing it. In June, take a look at your HR policies to make sure inclusivity is a priority. Additionally, have a process in place in case a staff member needs to make a complaint about experiencing hostility from another staff member or a patient. While it’s not pleasant to think about this sort of eventuality, it will make your staff feel secure and show them you care.
Another idea for supporting your LGBTQ+ staff during Pride Month is to give everyone the day off for the date of the Pride parade in your city so your clinic staff can show their support in person. You could even have your own float! Not only is it a ton of fun, but it shows your support and gets your business’s name in front of thousands of people.
Most importantly, listen. Unless you’re LGBTQ+ yourself, listening is your most important role as an ally. Your LGBTQ+ staff and patients are the best ones to tell you how you can turn your practice into the most supportive and inclusive space possible for the entire year.
Happy Pride from all of us at Venus Concept!
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