We, the outdoor community, call on helmet makers to actively work with underrepresented identities to understand their specific needs for managing the physical risk of recreating outdoors, while wearing the hair styles that are key to their comfort, identity, religion, and/or expression.  

Background: 

Currently, helmets used for outdoor activities such as climbing and challenge courses come in a very limited range of sizes which are not designed to accommodate the hair of black and brown people or those who wear religious headwear.  

In the challenge course industry and in the realm of guided climbing, if a client cannot fit into a helmet, they are not able to participate at all due to liability reasons. This is cutting people off at the first point of contact for many adventurers.  

Recreational and professional climbers with big hair are forced to choose between unfair options:

• Climb with an ill-fitting helmet that does not protect the sides of the head in case of a fall into the rock and may be uncomfortable.
• Climb without a helmet and accept a higher level of risk as a result.
• Avoid styles of climbing where a helmet is a crucial part of risk mitigation (for instance only ever climbing indoors, or only bouldering).
• Spend hours at a time putting hair into a protective style in order to accommodate a helmet (which is not even an option in some cases, such as dreads).
• Change their hair permanently to conform to the size and shape of the only heads that helmet manufacturers design for (white secular/Christian ones) despite their comfort, identity, religion, and/or expression

Not to mention that many people will never even try recreational climbing due to this high barrier to entry. 

Being able to wear a helmet is a privilege. Climbers who can't fit their heads in a helmet don't have autonomy in their safety due to the fact that helmets don't fit them properly. 

Outdoor companies are neglecting people with big heads and hair which is unfortunately consistent with the pattern of underrepresentation and racism in the entire outdoor industry. Helmet designers are well overdue in reaching out to black and brown athletes and those who wear religious headwear to talk about how helmets work. Let's tell them to do better now.    

If you'd like to stay in touch with these efforts and/or share your experiences with helmet sizing, please give us a shout at: bit.ly/helmets4all