77Æ
“Afro-textured hair had no
stigma before the dehuman-
isation of black people that
emerged from slavery”
GETTY IMAGES/ALAMYfrom.” And I get it – prejudice against curly hair is definitely
a thing – but it’s not actually stigmatised in the way that
Afro-textured hair is.
In the hierarchy of hair types, which comes from a western
beauty standard, the most Afro-textured hair is the most
reviled. The looser curl of many people with mixed ancestry
is perceived as the beauty standard of black hair, and is more
comparable to the type of curly hair that some white people
have. Even though I’m mixed, my hair very much favours the
African side of my heritage, so I don’t have those loose curls.Can we trace all of this back to the experience of slavery?
Absolutely. There was no stigma associated with Afro-
textured hair in the continent before the dehumanisation
of black people that has its origins in the power relationship
that emerged from European expansion and then slavery.One of the most well-known ‘African’ hairstyles is, of course,
the Afro. What is the history of that style, and to what extent
is it truly African?
The Afro is indeed iconic, and is I think what a lot people
would first think of when they think about natural Afro-
textured hair. It’s achieved by leaving the hair to grow naturally
from the head, unmanipulated – and it grows up and out
rather than down.
Because of the name ‘Afro’, and because it’s the way in
which our hair grows out naturally, there’s an assumption
that it’s the most ‘African’ style of hair dress. But women in
Yoruba culture wouldn’t have ever really left their hair out in
that way, because it would make it prone to dryness, tangling
and breaking. Instead, it would typically have been moistur-
ised, braided and twisted.
So actually the Afro is, instead, more of a diaspora response
to racism: a retaliation against the stigma associated with hair.
The argument was that, if people were going to say black hair
was ugly and ‘lesser than’, it was an act of defiance to showcase it
in its full glory. That imperative wasn’t really there in precoloni-
al west Africa, so people didn’t have to make that statement.
It’s also important to remember that, when we look at thea process first invented around a century ago in the US.
It’s a chemical process that deforms the elliptical shape of the
hair, breaking it and making it straight, meaning that you can
achieve a kind of facsimile of European hair. It was invented
by Garrett Augustus Morgan in 1909, but popularised by
hugely successful ‘hair capitalists’ including Annie Malone
and Sarah Breedlove – known as Madam CJ Walker.
These recently emancipated African-Americans, often
women, became self-made millionaires through the produc-
tion and marketing of hair relaxer. On Walker’s death in
1919, for instance, she was the wealthiest self-made woman
in the United States.
Relaxer works – it completely transforms the way your
hair looks – but there are associated costs. There are links
between the chemicals involved and endocrine disruption,
cancers and fertility issues. I relaxed my hair for almost
15 years, and I would always have chemical burns on my
scalp. I didn’t really mind them, even though obviously
they were painful, because in my mind they were evidence
that my hair had become even straighter.So the pressure you felt to look a particular way was so strong
that you were happy to put up with burning your skin in
order to achieve this look?
Yeah! It’s staggering, now, to think about the level of cognitive
dissonance, but the way I saw it was as though I had a chronic
malaise that required treatment – and this was the treatment.
That’s how I imagined it.Does this internalised dislike also extend to men?
These are definitely issues that affect men as well, but I think
we associate it more with women because, until recently, there
has been more of a culture of long hair being entwined with
ideas about femininity and womanhood.
I’ve spoken to men who have texturised their hair, using
a type of relaxer that doesn’t make the hair bone straight but
gives it a loosely curled look – because there’s also a hierarchy
of the types of curly hair. White people often say to me: “Oh
yeah, I’ve got curly hair – I understand where you’re comingИЗП
ОДГОТОВИЛАГРУППППGETTY IMAGES/ALAMYGETTY IMAGES/ALAMYGETTY IMAGES/ALAMYGETTY IMAGES/ALAMYААGETTY IMAGES/ALAMYGETTY IMAGES/ALAMY"What'sNews"VK.COM/WSNWS