Good hair Vs. Bad hair: Part 1 & 2

Part 1: The history 

Has anyone ever told you, you have good hair? If you are a woman with 4B/4C hair this is not something you will hear very often, especially not from other black people. Well actually… not from anyone. We all have ideas in our head of what good hair is and for most people type 4 hair... just doesn't make the cut. This factor alone makes it necessary to have campaigns that encourage black people to love their natural hair, and to help redefine beauty standards in the black community.

 It seems strange that black hair doesn't even meet beauty standards in its own community, but in order to understand this inferiority complex you need to understand the history of black hair post European contact. Europeans used black hair  to justify that African people were not human and were more similar to farm animals, making it okay to enslave them and colonize their countries. Once enslaved, women with kinky hair were seen as wild, unkempt and unattractive. Having looser textured hair would actually gain you special privileges. This created a hierarchy among enslaved people, looser textured hair at the top and the kinkiest hair at the very bottom. This hierarchy continued on after the ending of slavery. The texture of your hair would determine what type of jobs you got or schools you went to, with those with looser textured hair getting better jobs. Black women needed to find a way to meet European beauty standards to succeed and in some cases just to simply make a living, especially those with the kinkiest hair. There were three main solutions:

Solution 1. Cover it up with a wig.
Solution 2. Use a hot comb to physically straighten your hair.
Solution 3. Use hair perm to chemically straighten your hair.

It makes sense that after hearing your hair is ugly and needs to be tamed and also being discriminated against if you didn't “fix it '' that you would also start to believe it's true and pass it down to your children. It even makes sense that you would become texturist and start to think of looser textured hair as “good hair” and kinky hair as “bad hair”.

However, many black people refused to conform to European beauty standards and wanted to normalize black hair and hair styles. This can be seen in the resurgence of dreadlocks in the 1920s, the afro during the civil rights movement, braids in the 1990s, and today..? The natural hair movement. This movement aimed to encourage black woman to embrace their natural hair texture and change beauty standards in the black community. After this movement began many black women started keeping their hair in its natural state, even in corporate settings. The beauty industry took note of this and started making more products to cater to the natural hair community and to cater to their bank accounts. This movement has helped many black women gain the courage to go natural and has helped natural hair companies make loads of cash, but has it truly fulfilled its intentions?

Part 2: The issue with the natural hair movement

In my opinion the natural hair movement has not fulfilled its intentions. The biggest issue with the current natural hair movement is texturism. The face of the movement shifted from women with type 4 hair, which represent a majority of black women, to women with type 3 hair who are a minority in the black community.

Natural hair youtubers and models with looser hair textures are the ones getting celebrated for their natural hair. They are the ones modelling for natural hair companies... and securing deals. The natural hair movement has helped change black hair care  from straightening hair, to now using 500 natural hair products to try to loosen kinky hair to a more desirable curl pattern instead of just embracing it, as the movement initially intended.
Just when I had thought we were slowly crawling out of the sunken place, we somehow made our way back. The current natural hair movement and the big brands supporting it are further reinforcing European beauty standards and are telling the majority of black women once again, that their hair is not beautiful and they need to find solutions. The solutions for this “bad hair” in 2020?

Solution 1. Use 500 hair products to loosen your curl texture.
Solution 2. Braid or loc your hair.
Solution 3. Cover it up with a wig.

This is not to say black women that wear braids or wigs are insecure about their hair. Wigs and braids are used as a protective style especially in the cold winter months. They are a fashion statement that had been part of African culture way before European contact. The issue is when women with type 4 hair are made to feel that their hair is bad or ugly unless they do one of those three options. This has led me to think that it may be time for a new movement. A movement that helps women with type 4 hair love their hair and embrace it, just the way it is. A movement that does not favor looser hair textures and holds brands accountable for texture discrimination. A movement where all healthy hair is good hair.

Sources

Byrd, A., & Tharps, L. L. (2014, April 30). When Black Hair Is Against the Rules. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/opinion/when-black-hair-is-against-the-rules.html

Elton, M. (2020, April 16). "Afro-textured hair had no stigma before the dehumanisation of black people that emerged from slavery": Emma Dabiri discusses the changing perceptions of Afro-textured hair. Retrieved from https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/afro-textured-hair-historical-perceptions-emma-dabiri-prejudice-slavery-legacy/

Horne, M. (2018, February 28). A Visual History of Iconic Black Hairstyles. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/black-hairstyles-visual-history-in-photos

Mogar, N. (2017, December 18). Hairstory: A Brief History of Wigs. Retrieved from https://www.articulateshow.org/articulate/hairstory-a-brief-history-of-wigs