It’s no secret that hair and black women have had, and continue to have, a long and complicated history with each other. I know why hair and hairstyling are important and how it connects to history and social structures as someone who went natural around 6 years ago now, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to delve deeper into the anthropological, sociological, and historical aspects.
There is just something about hair that is deeply personal, cultural, and social. Clark’s work with hair and her reasons for working with hair points to hair as an important factor in the lives of black women. There have been several questions I’ve been tossing around in my head:
- What are the implications of hair? In a social context? In a cultural context?
- What does hair say about us?
- How is African American hair historically and socially defined?
To try and even wrap my head around these concepts and themes I turned to history and anthropology/sociology. I’ve gotten a lot from my readings and I’ve managed to do a brain dump of the info. from several different articles. This was compiled over several days and sadly did not catalog the time specifically, but I have bibliography!
- From a historical standpoint, the relationship between black women and their hair started in Africa and was transported, like the women themselves, to America into slavery.
- Hair for the Africans was a signifier of age, community, wealth, ethnic identity, religion, and much more. Hairstyling could take up to several days to complete.
- The grooming of hair was one of the focal points in Africa women’s lives not only because hair held the power to identify oneself, but also because hairstyling was an important bonding social activity for women (qtd. in Patton, 2006, 5).
- Hairstyling continues to be something social which is something Sonya Clark points out. Like Clark and others, I associate haircare with communing with other women. In contemporary times, that communion has also been moved onto the Internet.
- The negative light in which black women began to view their hair came from the practices of slavery. The type of hair and hairstyle that were worn by slave women typically determined where they worked and what type of work they engaged in. Slaves with straighter hair and characteristically Eurocentric features tended to work within the house, a job that was coveted among the slaves due to the lack of field work, and the slaves with kinky “African-like” hair and features tended to work out in the fields doing back-breaking work (qtd. in Patton, 2006, 6).
- Language, along with historical usage of certain words, acted as an unconscious factor of enculturation which teaches black generations to view their hair with disapproval. Terms often used to describe black hair such as “nappy”, “wooly”, “kinky”, and “frizzy” carries negative undertones and associations. In contrast, words used to describe white hair such as “smooth”, “flowing”, and “silky” invoke positive tones and images (qtd. in Johnson, 2013, 15).
- “Beauty is subject to the hegemonic standards of the ruling class” (Patton,2006, 3).
- Through racial hierarchy practices such as assigning slaves that closely match the Eurocentric standard to less degrading work and other such discriminations, black women began to internalize the negativity associated with their hair. The internalization of such ideology remained through generations of black women and the black community as a whole.
- ” … harmful messages from enslavement about hair adornment, texture, and length are still conveyed to Black women (across the Diaspora) and even today this hampers choices and attitudes about Black hair” ( Johnson, 2013, 9).
- Paulette Caldwell in her article, “Hair Piece”, describes her personal choice to wear braids within the law professional world. She describes a disagreement between her mother and herself regarding Caldwell wearing an Afro to her graduation from law school and she states, “I will graduate at the top of my class, receive more honors than I know what to do with…My hair undoes all of this…” (Caldwell, 1991, 19).
- Caldwell’s experience reveals lingering internal bias toward black hair, whether in its natural state or in an Afrocentric hairstyle, and the idea among African Americans that in order to succeed and secure prestige one must have straight hair.
- Black women, throughout the years, define themselves and each other by the way they style and groom their hair, and in conjunction, hair becomes a medium used by black women as a means of self-identification or self-expression (Johnson, 2013, 4).
- The experience of Stacia Brown (2015) in her piece, “My Hair, My Politics” where she writes, “One friend admonished me to avoid braid, suggesting I’d be replacing one stereotype (militant) with another (ghetto)” (1).
- “Because hair is an ethnic signifier, the choice of natural hairstyle can be read by the dominant culture as a troublesome sign” (Johnson, 2013, 1).
- In recent years there has been a rise of black women choosing to adopt natural hairstyles whether for the health of their hair or for a political statement. Either way, the decision to abandon white hegemony and go against cultural ideology in favor of a juxtaposing image challenges the monopoly of Eurocentric standards within America and repositions those standards.
Brown, Stacia L. “My Hair, My Politics.” New Republic 246.11 (2015): 16. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 13 Nov. 2018.
Caldwell, Paulette M. “A Hair Piece: Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Gender.” Duke Law Journal, vol. 1991, no. 2, 1991, pp. 365–396. Web. 12 Nov. 2018
Greene, D. Wendy. “Black Women Can’t Have Blonde Hair … In The Workplace.” The Journal Of Gender, Race & Justice 14. (2011): 405. LexisNexis Academic: Law Reviews. Web. 12 Nov. 2018.
Johnson, Elizabeth. Resistance And Empowerment In Black Women’s Hair Styling. Burlington: Routledge, 2013. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 12 Nov. 2018.
Patton, Tracey O. “Hey Girl, Am I More than My Hair?: African American Women and Their Struggles with Beauty, Body Image, and Hair.” NWSA Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, 2006, pp. 24–51. Web. 14 Nov. 2018
