Hair In African American Culture

The pressure to fit in and conform to modern day European beauty ideals can be a lot to deal with for African American women of all ages. So much so that women everywhere who are not satisfied with their hair texture, because it is not socially accepted, go to get their hair chemically relaxed. Chemically relaxing naturally kinky hair is nothing new to black culture and is often seen as normal. The problem with this is that the chemicals used in these products can cause all types of burns and lesions in the scalp (Wise, Palmer, Reich, Cozier, & Rosenberg, 2012). Aside from burns and lesions, hair relaxers can also cause uterine leiomyomata, noncancerous tumors, that appear almost double the amount in African American women then in Caucasian women (Wise, Palmer, Reich, Cozier, & Rosenberg, 2012). This shows the great lengths and risks that black women go through to gain the look that society tends to agree with more. Hair is a very important thing when it comes to African American culture. Women spend hundreds of dollars either buying hair care products or buying extensions to install into their …show more content…
Those women, although still slaves, were treated much better then those who had Negroid features such as darker skin, kinky hair, and a wide nose (Thompson, 2009). This discrimination had gone on so long that it created a legacy of women who passed down the way of thinking that if their skin wasn’t as light or hair wasn’t as straight or long then they weren’t as beautiful. This way of thinking, that black isn’t as beautiful and the only way that it can be is if black women alter themselves and their hair texture to become more beautiful, is very prominent in this new millennium without most of the girls knowing they are even a part of it (Thompson,