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Market Research Chicago | Market Research Companies | C+R

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The expression of beauty through hairstyles has been a long-standing signature of Black culture. From the "fro" to hair wraps to braids, Black women use their hairstyles as a personal expression of who they are and to show the evolution of Black culture over time, an evolution which has brought us to a time when more and more Black women are embracing the natural beauty of their own hair. However, it doesn't escape controversy. Beauty, and specifically hair, in Black culture has been a sensitive topic of discussion for decades with roots all the way back to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond.

Recently, the connection between hair and identity has once again gained attention and garnered much debate within the Black community. Shea Moisture, a Black-owned hair company, has found itself in the middle of this debate after launching a new ad campaign. Since its founding, the company dedicated itself to providing its consumers, specifically Black women, with a range of natural products that span all hair types - from loose, bouncy curls to tight kinky strands. Historically, the brand has prided itself on filling in the beauty gap, normalizing and bringing more awareness to Black beauty while providing Black women with products that otherwise could not be found in traditional retail channels.

Their recent digital ad campaign sparked outrage when the company looked to appeal to a more mainstream audience by including Non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs) while excluding any representation of their core Black audience. Specifically, the ads seemed to gloss over the history and social hardships Black women have experienced in association with black hair stereotypes when compared to other cultural groups.

As with any topic that garners passionate responses, one must look at hair and cultural identity within the Black community for context. Social oppression, abuse, and racial discrimination have historically forced many Black women to hide their hair. For example, before the emancipation, hair wraps were used as a sign of oppression/social status and a means for Black women to make themselves less attractive to their owners. Fast forwarding to when Black women entered the industrial workforce, many felt forced to adopt a more anglicized practice when it came to hairstyles (straightened, processed, and altered from its natural curl pattern/state). Even today, in certain places, industries, or workplaces, traditionally Black hairstyles, such as dreadlocks, are restricted and can be a cause for termination. An 11th circuit court of appeals recently ruled that banning employees for wearing their hair in "locs" does not qualify as racial discrimination.

To help in understanding the emotional significance hair has on Black culture and identity, one doesn't have to look too far within our Black communities to understand the effects. Each woman has her own story or "hair journey" often marked by struggles stemming back to childhood. As a Black woman, I've experienced my own struggles to embrace my hair in its natural state and, to this day, consider it a vital step in accepting and defining my own cultural identity. As a young girl, I was often subjected to teasing because of my big "puffy" mane; however, my mom vowed to not ruin my natural curls with processed relaxers or straighteners. I'll never forget one day when I came home from my aunt's house with a fresh relaxer (that my aunt applied without permission). My mom was enraged and a bit heartbroken. She told me my hair was beautiful, and it would never be the same. At the time, all I wanted was "manageable hair," and if I were brutally honest with myself, I simply wanted hair that would help me blend in with everyone else in my small Springfield, Illinois community. Looking back, what I think my mom was trying to tell me was that my hair, and specifically I, was beautiful without being altered. Throughout high school and into my first years of college, I continued processing my hair, in part for ease as well as to prevent any damage or breakage (a side effect of discontinuing these chemical products).

After continuing this vicious cycle into my junior year, I'd had enough of the damage/effects these chemicals had on my hair and looked to break free of my reliance on them by embarking on a journey to "go natural." What proceeded me was countless hours of styling, researching and trying new products, and many hours spent in the salon to finally find what worked best for my hair type. Looking back, it was the best decision I made and correlated with a bigger milestone in my life, a sense of confidence and acceptance of the person I was becoming. Wow how empowering! It all came full circle when I took a trip back home after college with my natural curls in full force and someone said to me, "Wow you look beautiful, that hairstyle really fits you...Why didn't you wear your hair like that back in high school?" And then I realized what changed was that I finally felt comfortable being "me" regardless of the opinions of others.

Ask any other Black women, and they will have their own personal stories, experiences, and journeys with their hair. Shea Moisture is a brand that has always embraced these experiences and emotional connections in their products and ads. When a brand disassociates itself from the attributes that have played such a major role in defining and establishing its identity, what exactly has the brand done wrong? In this case, the brand may have briefly lost sight of its roots, of its core audience, their values, struggles, and triumphs. Black culture embraces inclusiveness, but it also yearns to be heard and personally catered to. As market researchers, it's our job to never lose sight of these core values, beliefs, and emotional connections that give brands life. History, culture, traditions, social struggles can't be denied. When brands ignore the importance of these elements, they are denying the value of that culture's identity, obliterating the very makeup of who the members of that culture are. Providing the space for not just Blacks, but all cultures, to feel accepted and celebrated for the things that make them unique is what it's all about!

Join us as we continue to explore our own journeys in understanding our cultural history and how we define our cultural identities in a new series of blogs around culture and ancestry coming soon!

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The Connection Between Hair and Identity in Black Culture | C+R

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The expression of beauty through hairstyles has been a long-standing signature of Black culture. From the "fro" to hair wraps to braids, Black women use their hairstyles as a personal expression of who they are and to show the evolution of Black culture over time, an evolution which has brought us to a time when...

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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"I feel that the kinks, curls, or tight coils in Afro hair is beautiful and unique. No other race on this planet has hair like ours-that makes me proud."
-Monica Millner, Natural & Free: Journey to Natural Beauty

Historically, hair has remained at the center of Black identity formation. Hair comes in various textures and can be crafted into a variety of styles. Some of these styles, like Bantu Knots and cornrows, have become staples among Black populations who have repeated them over millennia. Hairstyles serve not only functional roles, such as protecting hair, but also societal roles. In some cultures, they convey messages about background, tribe, and status, and document life events such as childbirth, war drafts, and funerals. Hair care and styling define Black identities by allowing individuals and groups to express their personal style.

Despite this cultural significance, Black hair has become the subject of scrutiny in a post-colonial era that upholds Eurocentric aesthetics. Over the past few centuries, Black people have been discriminated against for styles and textures that have become symbolic of Blackness. African Americans face barriers to opportunities to employment and education due to stereotypes that mark them as improper or unsuitable due to their hairstyles. As a result, many Black people, especially women, have been driven to chemically alter their hair texture or cover their natural hair with wigs or weave-in extensions. As of 2023, twenty-three states have passed the CROWN act -a law the prohibits race-based hair discrimination-to acknowledge that Black hairstyles hold equal value within American society.

Many artists and designers in the NMAAHC collection consider this history by exploring the role that hair plays within their own Black identities. These artists highlight Black hair's ability to form meaning due to its malleable nature that gives way to creative symbolism. The cultural significance of Black hair manifests through the themes demonstrated in art works that consider race through the lenses of gender, space, and time.

Tanekeya Word's Supernova Study

In her Supernova Study series, Tanekeya Word uses hair styling to consider what it means to be a Black girl. In each rendition of her mixed media series, Word crafts a universe centered around the Fulani braid hairstyle, which come from the Fula, Fulani, or Fulɓe people of the Sahel region. The hairstyle captivates the viewer with its vast volume that emphasizes the design within the braids. The stars braided into the hair define the space created by this structure as celestial. Placed against different paper collaged backdrops, the hairstyle sits at the center of a universe that has been created around each woman in the series.

Throughout the series, hair serves as a bridge between the outside world and the individual. Word describes that her artwork has a "focus on Black interiority, material culture, nature, and subaltern mappings in harmony with the body." While hair can be manipulated to interact with external influences, it still harmonizes with the preferences of the individual who grows the hair and wears the style. By using Fulani braids, Word highlights an international cultural expression by taking influence from a hairstyle worn by Black folks across continents. Furthermore, she uses the braids to consider a different type of Black space, taking an Afrofuturistic approach by using the hair style to tell a cosmic story. Word creates an extraterrestrial world with the Fulani braids as its structural supports, imagining a place where the temporalities, geographies, and traditions of the African Diaspora come together to create a universe where Black femininity thrives.

By extracting parts of the letterpress print and collaging images and mappings of space and the natural world within the head and hairstyle, I call upon the African Diaspora's continuum where traditions are mindfully re-shaped through the passage of time and Black womanhood is counter-mapped via an emic perspective.
Tanekeya Word

Germane Barnes' series of porch chairs Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown borrows imagery from Afro picks and headdresses from across the diaspora, such as those worn at Miami carnival and Caribbean Junkanoo parades. The inspiration for the chairs' backrests comes from a well-known symbol of Black power associated with Black hair-the Afro pick. During the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, the Afro pick became a symbol of Black nationalism as more Black people began to wear their natural hair. The Afro hairstyle signified a return to Black roots and demonstrated the ethos of the "Black is Beautiful" movement, which celebrated the inherent beauty of Afrocentric aesthetics and features. The specialized structure of the Afro pick features wide gaps between the teeth of the comb and an easily-grippable handle, allowing users to efficiently maneuver the comb through coily hair while maintaining the integrity of the curl pattern.

The afro picks above are very similar in style yet demonstrate different aesthetic relationships to Black identity formation. The Ghanian comb (left) remains simple in its wooden material and abstract ornamentation. In some Ghanian cultures, combs hold specific meanings. The Asante people of Ghana's Ashanti region use symbols called Adinkra to link verbal and visual messages, assigning meaning to specific aesthetic motifs. The comb symbol, Duafe, translates to wooden comb and is associated with femininity as well as traditional feminine virtues such as patience, prudence, fondness, love, and care. Here, Blackness is considered through the overlapping lenses of ethnicity, culture, and gender. Rather than a cultural or gendered connotation, the designer of the fist comb instead links hair styling with Black power imagery. Symbols of Black power-such as the clenched fist at the top of the sleek, shiny, black comb-link Black hair with political meanings. Through their artisanry, both designers express their individual relationships with hair to conceive of culturally, ethnically, and politically Black spaces. The headdresses on Barnes' chairs replicate the positions of the Afro pick handles, recalling the designs featured on these Afro picks.

The milled wooden back post works as interior framing and is derived from combs used to style Black hair. Black hair that is often policed and frowned upon instead of celebrated as it should. Studio Barnes

Each chair in Barnes' series reflects a different cultural context, asking the viewer to consider the interconnectedness of the relationships that Black people have with their hair and each other. Barnes emphasizes this theme of cultural transmission by adapting the concept of the porch chair, noting the porch as a site of Black community making. By linking motifs such as headdresses, Afro picks, and porches, Barnes's chairs represent a diasporic understanding of Blackness. Barnes brings the cultural and the political aspects into community with each other through his designs.

Though connected through themes such as national, cultural, and gender identities, each designer uses their work to convey a different message about their relationship with hair. Like these artists and designers, each Black person has an individual relationship with their hair, through which they find themselves in community with others. As a manifestation of personal identity, hair conveys a millennia long history of aesthetic message making. Hairstyles have become integral to Blackness by weaving together peoples, places, and practices.
BROWSE OBJECTS RELATING TO HAIR IN THE NMAAHC COLLECTION
Written by Deana-Rae Weatherly, Design and Architecture Curatorial Research Intern
Published on August 16, 2023

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Strands of Inspiration: Exploring Black Identities through Hair

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Many artists and designers in the NMAAHC collection explore the role that hair plays within their own Black identities. These artists highlight Black hair's ability to form meaning due to its malleable nature that gives way to creative symbolism.

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6 Things Everyone Should Know About Black Hair History

Hair means something different to each of us, but Black hair has a uniquely meaningful history as a symbol of survival, resistance and celebration. It's been wielded as a tool of oppression and also one of empowerment-and our society's perceptions of Black hair still influence how Black people are treated today. Here are six things to know and appreciate about the rich cultural, aesthetic and social history of Black hair.

1. Hair was a sacred cultural and spiritual symbol in ancient African societies.

Ancient African communities fashioned their hair for more than just style. Throughout the continent, a person's hairstyle could tell you a lot about who they were and where they came from. In the book Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, authors Ayana Byrd and Lori L. Tharps explain that braids and other intricate hairstyles were historically worn to signify marital status, age, religion, wealth and rank in society. From kings' ornate beaded braids to special headdresses worn by new mothers, these styles had deep cultural and historical roots.

It could take hours and even days to create these artful looks, so hair styling was also an important social ritual, a time to bond with family and friends (a tradition that's been passed on for generations -hi, baby Olympia!).

Hair was also thought to be a source of personal and spiritual power. As the most elevated part of the body, some communities believed it connected them with the divine. In Yoruba culture, for example, people would braid their hair to send messages to the gods.

2. Slave traders shaved the heads of all African people they captured-the first step in a process of systemic culture and identity erasure.

During the transatlantic slave trade, an estimated 12 million African men, women and children were kidnapped and sold into slavery. One of the first things the slave traders did to the people they captured was shave off their hair. Considering the strong spiritual and cultural importance of hair in Africa, it was a particularly dehumanizing act, intended to strip away their connection to their cultures.

When their hair grew back, they no longer had access to the herbal treatments, oils and combs from their homeland. Hair that was once was once a source of pride and expression of identity was often tucked away beneath cloth to cover rough, tangled tresses and shield them from hours spent toiling under the sun. With limited tools and time to care for their hair, people got creative with what they had at their disposal-relying on bacon grease, butter and kerosene as conditioners, cornmeal as dry shampoo and sheep fleece carding tools as combs.

3. Hair texture and styling played an important role in the survival of enslaved Black people.

Texturism, the belief that certain hair patterns are better than others, became widespread during the era of slavery. The texture of an enslaved person's hair could determine their value and working conditions, which in turn might impact their overall health, comfort and chances for freedom.

Eurocentric beauty standards dictated that coily hair and dark skin were unattractive and inferior; "good hair" was characterized by straighter, more European features. Lighter-skinned, straighter-haired slaves were favored and selected for more desirable positions in the house, so many slaves would go to dangerous lengths to straighten their hair, using hot butter knives or chemicals that burned their skin. This damaging mentality of "good hair" and "bad hair" has been passed down for generations, and it still influences many people's perception of natural Black hair today.

Braids also transformed into a tool for slaves looking to escape to freedom. Because drawing or writing directions was risky (and often difficult with little to no education), they would cornrow their hair to map escape routes, braiding the plaits into patterns that resembled roads to travel or avoid. Small bits of gold and seeds were hidden in the braids to sustain them after their escape.

4. Laws passed in the 18th century forced Black women to cover their hair in public.

When free Black women in the South started wearing their hair in beautiful, elaborate styles that attracted a lot of attention, many saw it as a threat to the status quo. So, in 1786 the governor of Louisiana passed the Tignon Law, which required Black women to wear a tignon (scarf or wrap) over their hair as a way of signifying that they were members of the slave class, even if they were "free." They followed the law, but rebelled by wearing beautiful, colorful fabrics adorned with jewels, turning the head wraps into glamorous, empowering fashion statements.

Once the U.S. took ownership of Louisiana through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the Tignon Laws were no longer enforced, but they still set the precedent for the policing of Black hair in the U.S. Many Black women continued to wear their head wraps as a symbol of resistance to white colonialism.

5. In the 1960s, the afro became a symbol of self-empowerment and activism.

An extension of the civil rights movement, the Black power movement of the 1960s and 1970s aimed to change the Black community's understanding of itself and its influence on society. The natural afro became a popular statement of power, pride and resistance. Some people felt hair straightening reflected a history of forced assimilation, so embracing their natural textures was a way of reclaiming their roots. Rocked by iconic Black activists, scholars and artists like Angela Davis, Toni Morrison and Nina Simone, the hairstyle symbolized the enduring fight against racism.

Lori L. Tharps of Hair Story explains, "Our hair was a physical manifestation of our rebellion. The right to wear our hair the way it grows out of our heads. Saying to the establishment: 'Accept us and appreciate us for who we are.' Stop expecting us to assimilate or subjugate ourselves to make you comfortable."

6. Institutional bias against Black hair still exists today, and will continue to exist if we don't push for change.

The Perception Institute's 2016 "Good Hair" Study suggests that "a majority of people, regardless of race and gender, hold some bias toward women of color based on their hair." (You can explore the results and take the hair bias test they developed here.) A 2020 Duke University study also found that Black women with natural hairstyles were perceived as less professional, less competent and were less likely to be recommended for job interviews than candidates with straight hair (who were viewed as more polished, refined and respectable).

Many schools and workplaces across the country are still legally enforcing prejudiced policies against Black hair, from landmark cases like that of Chastity Jones (whose job offer was withdrawn because she refused to cut off her dreadlocks) to everyday incidents like that of Jenesis Jones (whose high school penalized her for her "inappropriate" afro).

With The CROWN Act-the first legislation in U.S. history to ban discrimination based on hair style and texture-now passed in several states and on its way to becoming national law, we're on a hopeful path to more inclusivity, acceptance and appreciation of all hair types. There's still a lot more work to be done, but growing diversity of representation in the media, our government and the beauty industry is helping to squash racist stereotypes and start meaningful conversations-and that is something worth celebrating.

Learn more about The CROWN Act and sign the petition to end race-based hair discrimination here.

Written by Nikki Fox

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6 Things Everyone Should Know About Black Hair History

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6 Things Everyone Should Know About Black Hair History Hair means something different to each of us, but Black hair has a uniquely meaningful history as a symbol of survival, resistance and celebration. It's been wielded as a tool of oppression and also one of empowerment-and our society's perceptions of Black hair still influence how Black people are treated today.

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A ‘safe space’ where Black men can discuss their emotions

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The “Just Heal, Bro” national tour makes a stop in Charlotte this week. We talk with the man who inspired the event.