Essentially, itβs a movement that started in the US , where African-Americans began embracing their natural hair texture and taking more care of their hair . People of other ethnicities caught on and so thereβs a lot more βcurly hairβ products available now, even from brands like Pantene or LβOreal. You may have heard of the Curly girl method , or the low poo / no poo method.
Is this a trend in your country ? Do people with curly hair wear it that way in public or they straighten it ? Is it seen as socially acceptable ? Are there quality products that the average person can afford?
For my part, growing up in Cuba, there werenβt very many options for products, and many were just too expensive and only sold in tourist stores. βPelo arregladoβ meant straightened hair. My relatives used to joke that I didnβt brush my hair when I wore it natural. Now that I donβt live in Cuba and can take care of my hair properly , a lot of family members have reacted really negatively to my hair.
I was seeing so many girls wearing their natural hair out on the past few years and all of the sudden all I see is wigs or box braids. There was a super popular tweet that said that braids and natural hair were not proper hairstyles for events or clubbing, with thousands of responses agreeing with this statement. On tik tok there's so many videos that say stuff like "my hair when it's wet looks 3C and then it goes back to 4xyz. i hate it here π". It feels like people with 4 type hair are really getting tired of having natural hair and wigs have become the new default style.
Don't get me wrong, black women can do whatever they want with their hair but it's saddens me to see the movement going a few steps back.
I learned this from Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., a professor at Stanford who studies how vision and our brains are interconnected.
I have partial albinism so I look mostly Caucasian (blue eyes, brown hair, tan skin), but I have black parents. I have 4a hair and Iβve been struggling a lot about whether can be a part of the natural hair movement. My albinism gives me white privilege but I have been bullied about my hair a lot. Someone called me a βwannabe n wordβ- only white people ever said anything like that. I had corn rows once and people accused me of βtrying to act blackβ- this time it wasnβt just white people. I just want to ask if itβs okay for me to say I have natural hair and wear natural hair styles, cause I just straighten in now and my hair is hella damaged.
I understand that ppl went natural for themselves and for the health of their own hair but for a moment a lot of us were on a mission to make natural hair acceptable in all settings and I feel like we slipped and dived right into lace fronts.
A lot of women are natural underneath their wigs, and say theyre protecting their hair but...[RANT STARTS HERE] this is a poor excuse for the insecurities we were trying to tackle at the beginning of this movement, i think. the wigs look a mess, like hair hats and very thirsty. Like "Im very desperate to not look like an average black women". If we are to get our hair accepted by society and into professional work environments we have to SHOW our hair in all its states.
The work that goes into these lace fronts is actually costume make up and its depressing to see so many blk women put that much effort into a wig and not their own hair.
Im perfectly fine with all the smoke that comes with this post. If im crossing the line please read me.
Edit: also how are young girls ever gonna grow to love their own hair if the women they look up are always in all these dramatic wigs. In the future we're gonna ask why young black men still aren't attracted to black women when they grew up during a problack/black is beautiful movement and this moment will be the reason why! the only time most of us act confident is when those wigs are on. long exotic hair will have the same significance as heels and fancy clothes sending a message that black hair is not presentable. Some might be doing it for themselves but whether they like it or not it is sending a message [RANT OVER]
I strongly believe that the SEC allowed for this to happen. If all those options would have caused the gamma beta delta omicron +rewards squeeze we have all been waiting for, it would have meant a market crash. Today mustβve had one of the largest buying volumes in months, yet the price didnβt climb. We all know that it was crime that kept the price down. They canβt keep doing this forever, sooner or later, marge will call. So Buy and hodl, Hedgies R Fukt. I posted this from the shitter. NFA.
They had natural hair in the 70s but that died out by 80s.
Iβve always wanted to dye my hair pink but I wasnβt allowed to growing up and I was too self-conscious in my early 20s. Then I got married and I knew I could never do it because I attend a lot of formal events with my husband where pink hair would make me stick out like a sore thumb and I didnβt want to negatively impact his image in any way.
I finally took the plunge and dyed my hair pink late 2020 as even if it looked awful I wasn't leaving the house anyway. I ended up really loving it and Iβve maintained it until now.
A few days ago, my husband asked me when I was going to dye it back. I told him I wasnβt planning to and he told me he needed me to dye it back to brown in the next two weeks. He has a business dinner coming up and he thinks me having pink hair for it wouldnβt go over well. He said I was a reflection of him and I knew what I was signing up for when I married him, so I needed to change my hair back.
I told him I wouldnβt and now heβs upset with me.
AITA for refusing?
Please don't get offended by this by no means am I trying to be rude but I am curious to what you guys think
I thought the natural hair community was created for black girls who struggled with the constant pressure to relax their "nappy hair". I thought it was to encourage girls with kinky hair and have us stand out and show that our hair is considered beautiful just like everyone else's; to show that we don't need to straighten and have lushes curls to be pretty. We wanted these type of girls to be comfortable with what THEY have while empowering other women to do the same, and to fight against the European standards. There is a reason why it's not a curly haired movement and I think it's because most kinky haired girls always wanted their curls and would get texturizers for them. Today now it's just a simple trend and not about the race or culture.
Ever since the curly textured girls have joined, everyone praises them while to this day people are still shaming kinky hair (I have been shamed in school). Once my mom said that me in an afro looks messy, and that's part of the reason why I always wear a bantu knot outted puff (she is a natural too so i didn't understand) and also I went to school in a bantu knot out and legit people were just staring at me and I felt ugly. (self esteem issues) Curls get most of the glory. There are girls with kinky hair that fawn over other curls. They get more views on Youtube, Instagram, etc. While there are quite a few famous kinky haired people, but not as much as the curly girls. They have had curly hair all their lives and get all the brand deals and also put on the forefront. Yes, I do know that there were some curly haired people that were also shamed, but you can't compare it to the amount of hate the kinky girls had to go through. I feel it's not that special to the kinky girls anymore, especially 4c girls. Have you ever noticed that people with 4a/4b hair are more successful than those with 4c hair?
Idk I saw a video similar to this and was just wondering all this as I do not care that much I accept everyone I am just glad that I focus on my hair and how it's healthy, but I cannot lie and say that they have not affected my life.
I'm 50/50 mixed European-African with type 3 curly hair but from my African parent, I've inherited the kinky/bumpy texture.
I used to flat-iron my hair for many years, but it was my own choice and not because of peer pressure, job pressure or racial slur, so I don't consider myself as part of the Natural Hair Movement.
I always do wash-n-goes, but I may have different hair goals than many people with Type 3 curly hair, like growing out my hair even if that means less bouncy curls, and wanting to create a less textured feel.
In this case, is it appropriate to consider my mixed curly hair also as "natural hair"?
I've been natural pretty much my entire life. I did get a perm when I was 16 and then ended up getting a big chop maybe 9 or 10 months later. I've never been a twist out type of girl or any of those styles. My hair has always been braided in some way. Styling my hair daily actually weakens my hair and that's actually what makes my hair start to thin and fall out. So I just stick with protective styling and my hair grows and stays thick and healthy. Anyways, that's my back story. The reason why I wrote this post: All this hair typing and texturism is really starting to get on my last nerve. I work retail so I speak to a lot of people on a regular basis. I always end up talking with the black female customers about hair mainly lol. But I've met many, especially lately, that will make comments about how they're glad they went natural but they wish they had "good" hair. Or they went back to perms because they "couldn't get their curls to pop". And I be wanting to tell them, you know maybe you don't have curly hair and that's why but that's okay. And I feel like it's not my place to say so because I do have naturally curly hair myself. I guess I have 3c/4a hair. I just know it's curly. Some of it is tighter, some of it is looser, but it is visibly curly. I don't want to seem like I'm being rude or condescending so I keep my mouth shut. But I feel like you should embrace what you have. I love to see black women wearing their natural hair. But I feel like curly, especially looser curly hair, is the new perm. It's the new standard. I make a point to tell each and every black woman and young girl, especially if wearing her natural hair and it's coarser, that she's beautiful and her hair is beautiful, because if we don't do it as black people, nobody else will. And I say it because I really mean it. I do wish I had the confidence to wear my hair out more often, because I have on many occasions. But it just seems like a foreign concept for me because that's how I was raised. My mom would make comments about my hair texture growing up. But she just went natural within the last two years and for the first time in my life, I've seen my mom's natural hair, and her hair is the same texture as mine!
I was browsing r/naturalhair and it just downed on me that the part of the natural hair movement that isn't about 4-type women learning to care for and love their natural hair is also a manifestation of the "black women having to care for and take a backseat to people who have nothing to do with them".
By that I mean that there seems to be a significant amount of people who feel their are part of the movement because their white or generally non-black mother relaxed their hair and/or didn't care to learn how to manage it in a healthy way. While I agree it's not their fault that their parents didn't do the work and they should find a place where they can learn and love their hair, the truth is that their inclusion always forces dark skinned kinky haired women out, as they inevitably become the standard. It always happens, in any industry, anywhere. It is just fact, I don't know who people like to pretend this is a hot take. This is also true in advertising as well as in formulas for the products themselves. And it is actively damaging to black women with 4-type hair textures when they struggle to see themselves represented in their own movement. And if so-called allies were truly that, they would recognise that and not be so willing to be the centre of attention.
I don't know what to say or do next tbh, but it's exhausting to have yet another movement created for us and by us be coopted because someone's non-black mom and black dad preferred to just dump what they perceived as a problem (their kid's natural hair) onto others, always at the expense of black women.
Link from
#r/LifeProTips
from u/askoshbetter
I learned this from Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., a professor at Stanford who studies how vision and our brains are interconnected.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/s1ix7b/lpt_go_outside_in_the_morning_to_get_natural/
