Kinky hair
[1] Each strand of this hair type grows in a repeating pattern of small contiguous kinks which can be classified as tight twists and sharp folds.
[11] Robbins (2012) suggests that kinky hair may have initially evolved because of an adaptive need amongst humans' early hominid ancestors for protection against the intense UV radiation of the sun in Africa.
The resulting increased circulation of cool air onto the scalp may have thus served to facilitate the body-temperature-regulation system of hominids while they lived on the open savannah.
The trait may have been retained and/or preferred among many anatomically modern populations in equatorial areas, such as Micronesians, Melanesians, and the Negrito, because of its contribution to enhanced comfort levels under tropical climate conditions.
Hair groomers possessed unique styling skills, allowing them to create a variety of designs that met the local cultural standards.
During the approximately 400 years of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which extracted over 20 million people from West and Central Africa, their beauty ideals have undergone numerous changes.
[27]: 35 During this time, kinky hair "was at its height of politicization", and wearing an Afro was an easily distinguishable physical expression of Black pride and the rejection of societal norms.
"[26]: 43 Negative perceptions of kinky hair and beauty had been passed down through the generations, so they had become ingrained in Black mentality to the point where they had been accepted as simple truths.
"[28]: 36 In turn, in this value system, "African elements—be they cultural or physical—are devalued as indices of low social status, while European elements are positively valorized as attributes enabling individual upward mobility".
[28]: 36 In this system, "hair functions as a key 'ethnic signifier' because, compared with bodily shape or facial features, it can be changed more easily by cultural practices such as straightening.
Young, Sara Spencer Washington and Garrett Augustus Morgan revolutionized hair care by inventing and marketing chemical (and heat-based) applications to alter the natural tightly curled texture.
Women at that time tended either to wear wigs, or to hot-comb their hair (rather than conk it) in order to temporarily mimic a straight style without permanently altering the natural curl pattern.
Popular until the 1960s, the conk hair style was achieved through the application of a painful lye, egg and potato mixture that was toxic and immediately burned the scalp.
In the early 20th century, media portrayal of traditional African hair styles, such as braids and cornrows, was associated with African-Americans who were poor and lived in rural areas.
[32] Scholars debate whether hair-straightening practices arose out of Black desires to conform to a Eurocentric standard of beauty, or as part of their individual experiments with fashions and changing styles.
[34] Cheryl Thompson writes, "In 15th-century Africa, hairstyles were used to indicate a person's marital status, age, religion, ethnic identity, wealth and rank within the community (see Byrd & Tharps, 2001; Jacobs-Huey, 2006; Mercer, 1994; Patton, 2006; Rooks, 1996).
Rooks (1996) argues that hair-care products designed to straighten hair, which have been marketed by white-owned companies in African American publications since the 1830s, represent unrealistic and unattainable standards of beauty.
[43] In 1981 Dorothy Reed, a reporter for KGO-TV, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco, was suspended for wearing her hair in cornrows with beads on the ends.
[44] A 1998 incident became national news when Ruth Ann Sherman, a young White teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn, introduced her students to the 1998 book Nappy Hair by African-American author Carolivia Herron.
Imus's producer Bernard McGuirk compared the game to "the jigaboos versus the wannabes", alluding to Spike Lee's film School Daze.
Her slide show included her negative comments about Black women wearing natural hairstyles in the workplace, calling them "shocking", "inappropriate", and "political".
The Kenyan model Ajuma Nasenyana has criticized a trend in her native Kenya that rejects the indigenous Black African physical standards of beauty in favour of those of other communities.
[48]In November 2012, the American actress Jada Pinkett Smith defended her daughter Willow's hair on Facebook after the girl was criticized for an "unkempt" look.
"[50](Brown 17) She continued, stating, "It's a practice TSA only agreed to stop a few months ago, when the agency reached an agreement with ACLU of Northern California, which had filed a complaint in 2012.
Published in 2016, the article entitled "African American Personal Presentation: Psychology of Hair and Self Perception" summarized an experimental procedure conducted in America, using data from five urban areas across the country and females ages 18–65.
A questionnaire was administered which determined how "African American women internalize beauty and wearing of hair through examination of locus of control and self-esteem.
In 2019, the California State Assembly unanimously voted to pass the CROWN Act, a law that would prohibit discrimination based on hairstyle and hair texture.
[55][56] During the 19th century, throughout the West Indies, the teachings of Jamaican political leader Marcus Garvey encouraged an active rejection of European standards of beauty.
The resulting Rastafari movement of the 20th century has maintained that the growth of freeform dreadlocks is related to divine illumination, largely informed by the Biblical Nazirite oath.
[58] Manicure locks—alternatively called salon locks or fashion locks—have numerous styling options that include strategic parting, sectioning and patterning of the dreads.
