Black hair is political, holds meaning
PUPILS at Pretoria High School for Girls claim they have been subjected to racism. The girls say school rules forbid African hairstyles, such as afros, bantu knots, dreadlocks and braids.
Within popular discourse, natural hair is considered to be a source of liberation, where black women can accept and nurture their natural hair texture. My experiences with straightened hair on black girls trace back to early childhood. Most would say a black woman who had long, straightened hair was the most beautiful. I went to an all-black school and found long, straightened hair had become an ideal to many.
Googling “unprofessional hairstyles for work” yields image results mainly of black women with natural hair, while searching for the “professional” ones offers pictures of coiffed, white women. Often the hair styles themselves are not vastly different, only the hair type and the wearer’s skin.
Black hair is political. Its presence or absence holds bountiful meaning. It can be a signifier of femininity or masculinity; a racial signifier; a class signifier or a link to spirituality. Hair can identify one’s status in the world or in one’s social group.
Many black feminists discuss the role of internalised racism in the way black women feel about their hair. The modern black woman does not wear her natural hair, as it was seen as savage. Accepting Eurocentric beauty standards was a way for black people to find protection because emulating European standards of beauty, dress and behaviour was a way to be more easily accepted into corporate society.
Hair straightening became a way to appease whites and, tangentially, to reshape the black aesthetic. White beauty ideals played integral roles in the developmental stages of a national black beauty culture.
Straight hair became a sign of modern womanhood. There became a connection between hair control and order over oneself. Black and white alike considered those who could not or would not straighten their hair backward.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where hair plays a large role in presenting one’s respectability and femininity for black women. Hair is a medium through which heteronormativity is racialised.
Eugenicists and racists alike determined black people were hypersexual and deviant and began reading deviance directly onto black bodies.
The further one moves away from Eurocentric aesthetics, the more deviant one is perceived to be. Kinky hair is associated with blackness and blackness has historically been deemed deviant. Thus, “good hair”, characterised by manageability, is directly connected to heteronormativity, whereas kinky hair is queer.
Similarly, this linked black women who straighten their hair to respectability. Modern black women straighten their hair to live in the modern aesthetic of black womanhood.
Natural hairstyles are often considered to be inappropriate for the workplace or formal functions. Theorising with this, I argue “straight” is coded language pointed to heteronormativity and sexual purity.
But what is South Africa’s conception of a “tidy” image?
Why are so many schools and companies afraid of this “untidy” hair? What role does hair play in determining the proper grooming and image of women? And should we distinguish between an employer or school’s fear and repression of black natural hair, albeit the beauty constructed to reflect notions of the ideally-beautiful, but not professional woman?
It all boils down to assimilation. Straight hair is the norm. The default. The societal ideal. This comes from the necessity to conform and survive and better emulate societal beauty standards that oppress black women, in particular. Bakhaliphicebo Nakedi