“I used to hate my hair, and it is kind of crazy when you have a little girl who grows up hating a part of herself,” she said.“I grew up seeing people in cartoons and movies with euro-centric features and straightened hair.”

Eva Bonsu’s perspectives on hair have evolved after years of trial and error. 2/22/2021. Photo courtesy of Eva Bonsu

Bonsu was a fan of Pocahontas who had brown skin, but hair was silky straight.

“I grew up with those images and felt that I needed to change that, and as soon as my Mom said that I could perm my hair to get it straight, I did it and it made me feel beautiful,” she said. 

Bonsu was 14 when she first felt the sting of chemical relaxers and the smooth hair that resulted. For years it made her feel confident, but she decided to cut off her hair and go natural because could not find anyone in the small town of Macon, Georgia who could do her hair and she became part of  the natural hair movement. 

The movement encourages Black women to embrace Black hair free from wigs, extensions, or chemicals that could cause damage to their natural hair roots in the long run. The natural hair movement began in the 60s as a political statement for Black activists. The movement permeated the 70s and dissipated in the 80s after Black people with afros started to be targeted for their activism against racial oppression. The trend took off again in the mid-2000s. It was accelerated when notable Black celebrities like Erykah Badu, Lupita Nyong’o, Janelle Monáe, Solange Knowles, Tracee Ellis-Ross, and Viola Davis began to wear natural styles.

According to Mintel,  a market intelligence agency, 40 percent of Black women reported that they were most likely to wear their hair in its natural form without any added heat, while 33 percent of Black women said that they would wear their hair in its natural form, but also use added heat to straighten their hair.

Although a Mintel study shows that hair relaxer sales have dropped by about 22.7 percent since 2016, and more Black women are wearing natural styles, it comes at a steep cost for some Black women in professional spaces.

Susan “Susy” Oludele, a Nigerian-American New York-based celebrity hairstylist who has worked on unique hairstyles for Beyonce and a bevy of other celebrities, said that many of her regular clients often complained about being discriminated against at work because of their hairstyles.

“There was a time when almost every other client I had would complain about the discrimination that they faced in the workplace because of their hairstyles, and I thought to myself, ‘this is crazy.’ I couldn’t understand it,” she said . 

Oludele said that there was a time that one of her clients had to spend over $800 on her hair because her employer disapproved of it.

“I did auburn-colored braids for one of my clients who works in the tech industry, and she paid $400 for those braids, but I soon noticed that she set up another appointment, and I later found out that she had to take down the braids I had just recently done and pay an extra $400 to have them re-done because her employer didn’t approve of the color,” said Oludele.

Because of the discrimination that many of her clients were experiencing, Oludele teamed up with OkayAfrica to draw awareness to the plight of Black women experiencing discrimination because of their hair choices.

Historically, Black workers alleging discrimination against their natural hair in the workplace have filled courthouses for over four decades. Still, these allegations often produced mixed results. The judicial rulings, intertwined with changing socio-cultural standards, have yielded a contentious and uncertain legal quandary. For decades, the social pressure to emulate eurocentric hair has permeated American society, especially influencing Black women’s hair and their grooming decisions. Despite this, some Black women have continued to stand their ground and maintain their unique hairstyles regardless of the mounting pressure that they receive from society.

Danielle Twum, a scientist with a Ph.D. in Cancer Immunology, said she has experienced microaggressions because of her natural hair. 

“While I was pursuing my Ph.D., an incident occurred in the bathroom with one of my professors,” she said. “I had on a crochet hairstyle, and I ran into her in the bathroom and after seeing my hair, she asked me how I could afford to do my hair, and change the styles regularly with the little graduate stipend they were paying me.”

Although Twum, like many other Black women, is aware of the prejudices that surround Black women and their hairstyles, she doesn’t allow it to define her.

“To me, hair is a fun way to express myself,” she said. “It’s a portion of me, but it is not entirely me. I am aware that as a Black woman, there are a lot of stereotypes surrounding my Blackness, but there was a reason I got a Ph.D. It was so that there wouldn’t be any doors closed to me.”

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“Good hair” or “bad hair”, many African American women are tangled in society’s perception of how they should wear their hair. When “good hair” means enduring the burning, unpleasant smelling relaxer crème or flat iron and “bad hair” means letting it grow naturally, with worries about conservative employers, which do they choose?

Deciding the style for African American women’s crowning glory is an intimate, almost soul-searching process.

“We take our hair really seriously because it’s more than just hair. It’s a part of our identity,” said Beneque Cousin, 28, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “Black women spend more on their hair than anyone by a very large margin.”

For Cousin, her hairstyles show her eclectic personality. She has had it natural, long, short, pixie short, weaved, relaxed, and two weeks ago, the public policy student at NYU decided that she wanted to have box braid. Box braids incorporates synthetic braiding hair with natural hair giving an opportunity to extend her natural hair. This hairstyle is popular because of its low maintenance and protects the natural hair.

In 2014, Mintel, a market research firm, estimated that the market value of hair products targeted for African American consumers was worth $774 million, an increase of 12 percent from 2009. If the selling track continues, by 2019 the market for African American hair care will reach $876 million. But the whopping escalation of the market was not proportionate in hair relaxer, the only category not to see growth. In 2013, hair relaxer sales declined 28 percent since 2008, down from $260 million to estimate $152 million.

“I had it relaxed since I was in the third grade, so I was always kind of used to having straight hair,” said Alexandra August, 18, of Greenwich Village. “I never really knew what my curl pattern looked like.”

August took a huge step and decided to embrace her natural hair two years ago. It was a lengthy and effortful transitioning period when she had to straighten her hair every day, wear extension and regularly cut off the relaxed part of her hair. The Long Island native defined her current hairstyle as ‘wash and go.’ She literally washes her hair and she is ready to go. No more chemicals, no more ‘creamy crack’ as relaxer crème is sometimes referred to.

Despite the natural hair trend and its capability of shifting the market, some societies and work environment might still be unable to grasp the idea.

“A lot of African American women want to, kind of either, wear their hair straight or perm… relaxed, because of work,” said Audrey Pray Jr., 22. “We make a lot of decisions based on work.”

Last September, the Army released an updated appearance and grooming policy after being criticized by the African American service members. Before, hairstyles like cornrows, braids, twists and dreadlocks were strictly regulated or even bleakly unauthorized for women in the military. On the updated version of the policy, dreadlocks remain unapproved, but the Army removed the word “unkempt” and “matted” in describing them as it were deemed as offensive and insensitive.

Pray had her hair locked 15 years ago, when she was still in the first grade. Her style guru was her mother. Pray’s mother has been wearing locks for as long as Pray can remember. One day, when Pray was seven, she asked her mother to, “hook me up” with the locks hairstyle. So her mother locked her and her sister’s hair.

But in the 1990s, locks were part of hippie counterculture and the girls in her school in Maryland have never seen anyone with locks before. So, Pray was teased.

“They called it all types of names like ‘do-do twist’; some people thought I had a wig on. It was hard,” said the Upper West Side resident. “I even got into a fight on the first week of my middle school because someone was picking on my hair. I’ve been through a lot with my hair.”

Now, Pray is fine. A production associate for content development at Nickelodeon, she is working in an area where creativity is encouraged. Amusingly, Pray has been asked for advice on how to grow hair naturally and maintaining her hip length dreadlocks. She admitted pop culture has much to do with the popularity of dreadlocks.

“I would say to my younger self that ‘you are going to be a pioneer on something fantastic in the future.’” as her fingers ran through her locks. “So don’t trip about them.”

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