“While other families were paying similar amounts for music lessons or soccer teams, we were throwing out money simply to be accepted by white people.” Read about the economics of black hair
ou might not remember being checked for head lice at school. I do. I can still see the school nurse looking flustered when it was my turn, her white skin turning red. I thought I must have done something wrong, a horrible feeling for a goody-two-shoes six-year-old. The nurse gingerly pulled out one of my plaits and struggled to get the comb through, before giving up and sending me back to my classroom.
I remember the stylist excitedly telling me how beautiful my hair would become. She parted it into several sections, before slathering white cream on each one. When she was finished, I told her my scalp was starting to tingle. Never mind that, she said. Just take a seat and wait a few minutes. A study by America’s Department of Health and Human Services, published in 2019, found that women who used chemical hair straighteners were 31% more likely to get breast cancer than other women. All hair products contain a frightening array of chemicals, especially in America. The European Union bans 1,300 chemicals from cosmetics. America bans only 11.
Things changed when I set foot in the working world. In the late 2000s I was living in New York City and hungry for an internship. I started to feel uncomfortable when I went for interviews. I sensed that prospective employers were judging me for my not-quite-straight ponytails and jagged hairline: the result of using hot styling tools to try to straighten my curls.
Even as a lighter-skinned black woman with tight but not quite kinky curls, I felt that embracing my natural hair was risky. I was carving out a professional identity for myself: becoming more confident in the classroom and gaining the respect of my students and their parents. Would I still look the part? What if my hair went haywire? I could barely remember what my natural hair looked like, and most of my memories involved fighting what grew out of my head.
I let my hair grow, disguising the in-between stage with two-strand twists pulled into buns and bantu knots hidden under hats. I devoured YouTube tutorials and bought a vast array of hair products like shea butter and jojoba oil. And I psyched myself up for the big chop. Suddenly natural hair looked like a good investment. CurlMix, a natural-hair-care company, received only $25,000 in venture-capital funding in 2018 but managed to bring in $1m in sales that same year. By 2020 that had risen to $6m. Large cosmetics companies wanted a piece of the action. L’Oréal developed a natural hair line in 2013 and Pantene followed in 2017.What’s surprising is that it took so long. Black people have always spent a lot on hair care.
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