Black hair matters

Bright flashes encapsulate the room, countless clicks from the cameras follow. All eyes and lenses concentrate on the model in the centre of the set. Makeup-artists and stylists scramble to her between shots, re-touching her lipliner and adjusting her top straps.

The hair-stylist only has 10 short minutes to transform her voluminous afro into a slick ponytail. It proudly sits on top of her head, holding the fruit of her heritage and framing her striking face. Each tress and curl in its natural state embraces a huge part of her identity, and is styled to perfection for others to witness its raw beauty.

During the Civil Rights Movement black hair was symbolically a statement of pride, and a way for people with afro hair to reclaim their own version of power and beauty. The photographer skips through the shots, twisting his lips making a squishing sound in deliberation. The decisions made this time are no longer solely concerning which shot is more beautiful, but which is more powerful.

There is a gaping hole within the media and beauty industry for representing women with afro hair in its natural state. Women of colour gracing the covers of magazines is increasing, although seeing a woman with her afro hair in its natural state is a rarity.

Recently, the likes of actress Lupita Nyongo and athlete Serena Williams have taken a front seat in embracing their natural hair, adorning the covers of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and Vanity Fair to name a few. But it has to be questioned whether this spotlight on natural afro hair is too little too late.

For 20 year old Leeds University student Natahci Akaji, these imperative role models and the conversation about how to educate women with afro hair on managing their curls were completely absent from her life. At five years old she began getting her hair chemically relaxed with her mum which continued until she was 11.

“It's just something that I did, we’d go to the salon and we’d both get it done. When I stopped getting it relaxed I would straighten it so I damaged my hair for so long. I wanted it relaxed again but my mum wouldn’t let me, I’m still even tempted now because of the convenience and the way it looks.”

You only have to ask a woman with afro hair or take a look at Chris Rock’s documentary ‘Good Hair’ to see the harm consistent use of chemical relaxers can have on people’s hair and scalps.

You’d be shocked if a child with Caucasian hair was going into the salon every six weeks for a perm. Why is it so normalised for girls as young as five to routinely have this treatment, and why is there such a pressure for mothers to encourage it?

Needless to say, there is no doubt that the option to change the texture of their hair allows women with afro hair to have autonomy over the way they look which is powerful in its own right, although their choice to change their appearance - such an integral part of their identity - should never sit in the shadow of assimilation.

European standards of beauty are consistently portrayed to young girls with afro hair as their standard of beauty despite their differences. Natachi learned trying to maintain these white standards came at a cost both in terms of health and financially, so when she was 15 she embraced her natural hair.

“I remember when I came to school with my natural hair one day. I did a braid out so it was quite big, I thought it looked really nice. It was a school trip and when I came out to wait for the bus, people started laughing at me and pointing. That was really intense.”

The importance of representing women with afro hair becomes all too clear when you hear of anecdotes like Natachi’s; it is more than just encouraging diversity, but it enables women with afro hair to begin to reclaim their culture and their beauty in a society where white standards of beauty are consistently imposed on them.

According to the data giant Statista, the total value of the hair-care market in the United Kingdom was measured at 1.72 billion pounds in December 2019. Despite only making up 4% of the population, Black British women spend six times more than their white counterparts. This huge disparity in the market has been coined black buying power, with many capitalising on the fact that there hasn’t always been specific options and products for managing afro hair.

The age-old prejudice that black hair is something to be changed and not embraced was one established in the years of slavery, and, as the statistics shown above suggest, possibly still shapes women’s attitudes towards their hair now. One of the first to capitalise on this disparity was Madame C J Walker who, in 1907, became the first black self-made millionaire by developing the ‘straight hair comb’ for women with afro hair.

Celebrity hairstylist Vernon Francais launched a hugely popular product line in 2016 specialising in afro hair which “champions the versatility of kinks, coils and curls.” These products were developed after he embarked on a campaign to prove that internalised racist attitudes aren’t limited to just white children being ignorant to afro hair like in Natachi’s case, but also exhibited in real life when women wearing their natural hair can be viewed as unprofessional, and compromise their ability to be hired.

Although ‘black buying power’ suggests there is a disproportionate pressure from society on black women to groom and tame their locks, it also suggests that education is becoming more accessible and ways to manage their hair are becoming less damaging. Education is exactly what two-time British Afro Hairdresser of the Year winner - Rick Roberts - says is imperative in changing black women’s attitudes about their own hair.

When asked how many women go to him with afro hair, and are not happy with the way they look or the way their hair is, he retorts, “Every one of them.”

“I think for many black women, their natural hair is a strong part of their identity, although it's hard for them to have the confidence to wear it. I think people use the excuse sometimes that it’s more convenient to just braid their hair, or it’s just easier to put a weave on, but I know that when you say to a lot of women within the black community, ‘Do you want to grow out your natural texture?’, a lot of them have no idea how to control it, because they’ve never been taught.”

When a client comes to Rick wanting to relax their hair, Rick makes it his priority to educate and show women alternate routes to go down so they can learn to love and celebrate their curls and embrace their natural beauty. His commitment to helping women fight against a white standard of beauty is bore out of his own experiences.

“I used to wear my natural texture but I actually used to get called microphone head all the time. Kids would come up to me, touch my hair and call me feedback because of the noise it would make on my hair. At that time it was never seen as normal, professional or nice to have, it was different and you stood out.”

This belief that afro hair is unprofessional, or not as beautiful as Caucasian hair has been cultivated through years of oppression. Melissa L Baird said in an article titled ‘Making Black More Beautiful’: Black Women and the Cosmetics Industry in the Post-Civil Rights Era’, “At the end of the 1960s, newspapers across America announced the arrival of cosmetics for black women with headlines such as ‘New Cosmetics to Make Black More Beautiful’. The wording was significant.”

The beauty industry attempted to engage with a historic cultural movement by capitalising on black women’s insecurities. It is no wonder women of colour have faced such battles in celebrating their hair’s natural state and tackling a white ideal of beauty, when such damaging messages have been the foundation for a beauty empire they are told they need in order to be beautiful.

In a society so obsessed with female beauty, dismantling anti-black attitudes in whatever way they dress themselves - be it children making fun of Natchi and Rick’s afro, or women denied roles they are more than capable of doing because their hair isn’t professional enough - starts with the beauty industry, and their responsibility to celebrate hair that they helped to demoralise.