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Permeating through to the White House is even so the negative connotation of Black Women's natural hair and the variety in which it is represented.
For black women, hair shows off creativity and culture. Hair has always been something by which black women have been distinguished; it's a characteristic they possess that makes them uniquely beautiful.
There's significantly more to black hair than what simply meets the eye; it is much more than a minor physical identifier. As stated in the previous post, there's always a story and a journey associated with the hair of black women; a journey of ups and downs, gains and losses, and even roadblocks.
The choice of how we choose to wear our hair is oftentimes more than a simple personal choice for most Black women across the world; it is more so tied into the social and political implications that can possibly have a profound impact on one's life [1].
Hair is a significant part of a Black woman's identity; our hair tells a rich story of our roots and DNA, more than our mouths are even able to. And for Black women in diaspora, our hair is most likely the only tangible connection we have to our place of origin after centuries of systemic oppression.
The rather recent natural hair movement has positively transformed the views of many black women - where we used to alter the strands of our hair as a means of fitting into the Eurocentric mold of beauty and conforming to society's view of what's acceptable, many of us are now celebrating our coils and kinks and embracing our hair in...
Oftentimes, Black hair garners unwarranted attention, seeing as, in most cases, people are merely fascinated by the vast diversity of it. This then opens up possibilities for black women to be put under a gaze of surveillance, one which scrutinizes their hair choices [1].
From a critical perspective, it can be clearly noted that the construction of whiteness in the media is presented to be a portrayal of light (Dyer, 1997) [1]. The structuring of whiteness in Western visual culture is refined and elaborated to depict white femininity as an embodiment of innocence and fragility - their original state.
The journey toward the liberation of Black hair is far from over. It was only in 2019 that The Crown Act which stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, was enacted in the United States, and currently, just 7 states in total have passed this law[1].