The Politics of Black Hair:
A Feminist Analysis of the Construction the Black Female Identity
The general consensus amongst most feminist scholars is that beauty standards have not changed much since the 1800s—the construction of female beauty still features a young white woman with large breasts, a small waist, light eyes, and long flowing hair. The act of policing the alteration of Black hair has become one of the most significant ways in which Black people engage in respectability politics. As of 2011, $507 billion dollars of the $836 billion dollar hair care industry is coming from Black women consumers. This means that 80% of all hair care consumers are Black women; while Black women only make up 6% of the United States population (Thompson …show more content…
Kabena Mercer has described, “all Black hairstyles [are] political [because] they each articulate [a] response to the panoply of historical forces which have invested this element of the ethnic signifier with both symbolic meaning and significance” (Mercer 104). The attention to hair is a by-product of racism and the slave system in America, as well as all the negative ideas that surround Black people because of these systems. The devastating effects of institutionalized racism on Blacks has led to the need to try and reconstruct a more respectable image, in the hopes that this will lessen the negativity that surrounds the black existence as a …show more content…
Due to the sensitivity of Black hair, it needs constant upkeep no matter what state it is in, natural or otherwise. Because if this the repeated act of a Black woman interacting with her Black hair in any way supports Judith Butler’s concept of performative reiteration. Black beauty, in Butler’s assertion, is about the act of doing and thus from there comes the Black female identity. The act itself is illustrative of Butler’s notion that “gender is culturally constructed,” which rests on the idea that “bodies cannot be said to have a signifiable existence prior to the mark of their gender” (Butler 13). Black beauty is the repetition of hegemonic norms in order to be a viable subject, and because these norms are entirely dependent on reiteration for them to come into being, subjects cannot be completely defined by the norms
A Feminist Analysis of the Construction the Black Female Identity
The general consensus amongst most feminist scholars is that beauty standards have not changed much since the 1800s—the construction of female beauty still features a young white woman with large breasts, a small waist, light eyes, and long flowing hair. The act of policing the alteration of Black hair has become one of the most significant ways in which Black people engage in respectability politics. As of 2011, $507 billion dollars of the $836 billion dollar hair care industry is coming from Black women consumers. This means that 80% of all hair care consumers are Black women; while Black women only make up 6% of the United States population (Thompson …show more content…
Kabena Mercer has described, “all Black hairstyles [are] political [because] they each articulate [a] response to the panoply of historical forces which have invested this element of the ethnic signifier with both symbolic meaning and significance” (Mercer 104). The attention to hair is a by-product of racism and the slave system in America, as well as all the negative ideas that surround Black people because of these systems. The devastating effects of institutionalized racism on Blacks has led to the need to try and reconstruct a more respectable image, in the hopes that this will lessen the negativity that surrounds the black existence as a …show more content…
Due to the sensitivity of Black hair, it needs constant upkeep no matter what state it is in, natural or otherwise. Because if this the repeated act of a Black woman interacting with her Black hair in any way supports Judith Butler’s concept of performative reiteration. Black beauty, in Butler’s assertion, is about the act of doing and thus from there comes the Black female identity. The act itself is illustrative of Butler’s notion that “gender is culturally constructed,” which rests on the idea that “bodies cannot be said to have a signifiable existence prior to the mark of their gender” (Butler 13). Black beauty is the repetition of hegemonic norms in order to be a viable subject, and because these norms are entirely dependent on reiteration for them to come into being, subjects cannot be completely defined by the norms