Three girls sit in a pink room. The girl on the right is painting one of the girls on the left's toenails.

A Storytelling & Fundraising Platform

We are a multi-disciplinary storytelling and fundraising platform that amplifies the voices of women* and LGBTQIA+ individuals worldwide. Our mission is to leverage the $690 billion beauty industry to support feminist initiatives and women’s* causes, groups that receive only 1 to 2% of global philanthropic and donor funding.

Around the world, beauty parlors serve as undervalued hubs where multicultural perspectives on gender inequality, migration, human rights, education, and climate change emerge. Through our podcast, social media, and visual campaigns, we merge beauty content with activist storytelling to challenge stereotypes and inspire collective action.

Our Work

A woman in Kosovan bridal makeup stands facing towards the left.

The Global Podcast

What can we learn about situations for women and queer communities through beauty parlors? A lot it seems! In our podcast, beauty parlors around the world are a window into deeper topics, blending feel-good content with rich, insightful storytelling. So far, we have visited Kosovo, Georgia, Morocco, and Ukraine. Our podcast transforms self-care to community care, seeing beauty customs as forms of resilience, connection, and self-expression.

Drag queen Alfreya Bakla B sits at a desk wearing a sunflower yellow dress and crown.

Community Care Fundraising

The beauty industry is worth almost $690 billion, yet so little of its wealth is reinvested into the communities that make it thrive. Through strategic partnerships with beauty brands and companies, we aim to redirect a portion of industry profits into grassroots feminist initiatives – supporting women and queer-led shelters, education programs, and advocacy efforts worldwide.

Five women pose at the BP launch party in pink lighting

Feminist Community Building

We’re not just here to tell stories. We’re here to build a movement, both locally and globally starting with our home in Berlin. By connecting activists, storytellers, and changemakers across cultures in beauty parlors, we are creating events of intimate solidarity where feminist voices uplift each other. We are forging a space where the desire for change becomes collective action, where self-care becomes community care.

A dark nail bar, lit up with neon purple, green, and red lights.
Founder Annamaria Olsson receives a facial in a salon.
The books Decolonizing my Body by Afua Hirsch and Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir sit on a red blanket.
A woman behind the camera, her hand stretched into the frame, gets her nails painted by a nail technician.
The storefront of Taksim Beauty Saloon in Istanbul, Turkey.
A woman with dark hair applies lip gloss in the reflection of a police officer's shield.

Local mobilization, Global Fight

Sparked by a beauty parlor session during parental leave in 2023, Stories from the Beauty Parlor found its home in Berlin, but includes bright and diverse talent. Today, a dedicated transatlantic team is working to create innovative solutions in the face of ever-growing global feminist backlash.

Team members [from left to right] Pamela Chomba, Annamaria Olsson, and Iva Fehr pose for a photo.

Follow us on Instagram and TikTok!

View fullsize Building on our feminist book swop at our launch event - we are excited to announce our monthly accessible book club! In a world where women’s and queer rights are under attack globally, as public funds are being cut from cultural institutions
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View fullsize Who just ate at McDonald's for the first time in her life? Who said she’s boycotting? Who read Crime in Punishment in Russian as her last book? Who wants to do storytelling about the situation for Uyghur and Central Asian women and who is excit
View fullsize As we are getting closer to the launch of our next podcast episode @mariia.krychevska and @teodorina24 will take you behind the scenes of the making of our Queer Ukraine-episode. This special episode’s guest hosts will introduce themselves and
View fullsize After running out of funding in May (five glamorous things people never talk about when founding new projects) our team has been working in 100 % volunteer capacity since. That means doing what we can with the limited resources we have, while continu
View fullsize In our work so far we mainly met three types of people reacting to our idea: - the ones who instantly and intuitively understand why we choose beauty parlors as our prism for exploring women’s and queer lives globally. - The one whose first
View fullsize Do you believe in Community Power? That’s all that has been keeping me together. My city has been plagued by officers armed with w*apons, walking on our metros, streets, markets. They’re snatching people from cars, homes, outside librar
View fullsize And we are back from our no-kindergarten summer break ready to kick off the autumn! The pause by no means meant break in beauty or stories about female resilience, joy, shitloads of lipstick and constant negotiations about the female experience, &b
View fullsize So excited for this one! We can’t wait to share more about it soon as the research have already started and Mariia and Ina currently are on the road exploring pockets of queer beauty and resilience.
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