Let It Furl
Frizzy. Squirrel tail. Brassy. Coarse. Thick. Wavy. Mushroom top. Bushy. Fuzzy.
Theirstory Introduction
The words above describe my hair. For forty’ish years I have been dealing with/maintaining this mane with little knowledge about who to use to style and cut it, the products to use, styling tools, and time management for doing all the things to this “crowning glory” of mine. I have had pixie cut hair to hair that spans my back. I have had more spiral and regular perms in my youth than I can remember. I have had it dyed red, brown, and blonde — highlights, balayage, and permanent color all over. I have had it blown dry, curled with an iron, flattened by iron, curled with hot rollers, slept in pink foam rollers, slept in black spiky rollers, and braided. I have gone from washing with shampoo and conditioner every day to once/twice a week. I once went without washing my hair for three weeks. When I was little I washed with the same shampoo and conditioner for years. Then, when I was a teenager I was told that it was best to switch brands every time I emptied the ones I was using. I have gone from having an oily scalp to a dry and itchy scalp.
In all these processes, treatments, and styles I have never had someone style my hair keeping my natural wave. No one has offered, asked about my wave (it’s visible when wet), or cared to step in and enlighten me on how to wear my wavy curls. I was “today years old” when a friend shared a link with me about the “plop method,” shared the products that have worked for them with their springy curls, and told me that I could schedule a “styling appointment” with a stylist who specializes in curly hair. This information blew my mind. It got me thinking about the different types of hair, styles that girls and women have had foisted upon them, the consequences of styling one’s hair outside of the norm/cultural expectations, and why it took me forty some years to realize I have been questioning nothing (going along with the status quo and cultural expectations) when it comes to my hair.
Different Types of Hair — a HersStory
European hair
It was only a few years ago that I first heard the term, “European hair.” A Black female friend had shared it in conversation with me when talking about how restricted she felt in being able to wear her “Natural hair.” In her experience, European hair was the standard to which she would never naturally achieve and if interested would have to get a wig or extensions made from European hair. I had never heard the term European hair before and secretly wondered if my hair was considered “European hair” based on my ancestral background.
“European hair (Russian) refers to Caucasian hair from the western world, predominantly Russia. In the western world, there are very few women willing to sell their hair, meaning high demand with limited supply and high prices. European hair has a fine denier and has natural light brown and blonde shades, meaning less processing. Not recommended for coarse hair textures, but can be used by hair types other than Caucasian. European hair is naturally silky and shiny and considered to be the highest quality of hair extensions you can buy” (Hair Extension Magazine).
I do not have Russian ancestors though my hair is blondish brown. My hair also is not fine or ‘silky and shiny’ in appearance and texture. In order for me to achieve this standard, I would have to add more lightening to my hair, flatten my hair on one of the hottest temperature settings of my flat iron, apply a smoothing creme, and avoid any situations that would make me sweat or that would subject me to any level of humidity. I, too, cannot achieve this standard naturally.
Chinese hair
If you are looking for hair extensions the three types are European, Chinese, and Indian. They are named for the geographical areas of those who donate their hair for the extensions. Based off these geographical areas, the hair that comes from these areas has the same characteristics (no deviations will be found in your request for the specific hair). For Chinese hair, Hair Extension Magazine offers the following description.
“Chinese hair tends to have a thicker follicle than European hair and has little to no curl. Natural state is black or brown, meaning the hair must be bleached to remove the pigment, then deposited with color. As long as the process is done correctly, the hair will not lose its quality after extreme processing. Chinese hair is very strong and flexible and is suitable for most hair textures. Known for being sleek and manageable, while maintaining a naturally straight texture. Unlike Indian hair, it will not become frizzy or wavy in humidity” (2021).
For me to achieve this standard, would be for me to buy hair extensions or a wig composed of hair from a person in China. My hair is not black or brown, is not sleek, not naturally straight, and will become frizzy due to my wave if in humid conditions. Again, I cannot achieve this standard naturally.
Indian hair
The last type of hair extension/wig is Indian hair. Indian hair extensions are described in the following paragraph from the Hair Extension Magazine website.
“Indian hair is one of the most common hair types on the market, as there is a large population of women who regularly donate their hair for religious purposes. Indian hair has a similar texture and density to European hair and is versatile and easy to style. Blends well with most hair types, especially African American hair, and has a light, bouncy feel to it. Although hair tends to become frizzy in moist temperature, high quality Indian Hair will be able to maintain its silky texture with proper care and maintenance. Use of anti-frizz products at the ends is highly recommended.”
For me to maintain an Indian hair standard on myself without the use of hair extensions or wigs, I would need my hair to be de-bulked — have it thinned. My hair is not light, bouncy. It gets very heavy, the longer it grows. I would need to learn what anti-frizz products work the best on my hair as that is one thing my hair has in common with Indian hair. Finally, I would need to dye my hair a brown to black permanent color thereby making this standard also one I cannot achieve naturally.
So far I have covered the types of hair and standards available via hair extensions and wigs. These standards and geographical areas do not closely match or resemble my natural hair. Based on these standards alone, I wonder why these geographical areas became standards for hair extensions and wigs? Why are there not wigs and hair extensions available in every natural hair type? Before tackling answers to these questions, I first need to see the other ways hair types are categorized and classified.
Different Types of Hair — a HersStory continued…
If you Google “different types of hair,” “hair types,” or “types of hair” you will get a first set of results that are all talking about the same thing. This same thing is “curl type” which comes in number and letter, “s” shape/”z” shape, “curl pattern,” and a drawing of the hair shape and/or an image of a person with this curl type. Not all hair has curl and that is something missing from most of the first page results. Very few of the sites mention straight hair. In my search, I decided to use Allure magazine’s webpage that breaks down the various curl types (including straight), the article was published within the last year, has drawn images of curls in addition to images of celebrities with the curl pattern, and adds products best to use for each curl type. The various hair types are as follows:
- 1 is straight
- 2 is wavy
- 3 is curly
- 4 is coily
Within each hair type and respective number are sub-categories A, B, and C. The subtypes “are based on the width or diameter of your wave, curl, or coil pattern. Type As have a wider pattern size, Type Bs medium, and Type Cs the smallest of the three” (2020).
Based on this guide, my hair is somewhere between a 2B (Salma Hayek) and a 2C (Lorde). Like Salma’s my hair is flatter at the crown and my waves start midlength, but like Lorde my waves are thick and susceptible to frizzing.
The nice thing about this guide is that it attempts to make the wearing of waves and curls mainstream. It is easy to achieve when you are working with celebrities who most likely have their hair styled by someone other than themselves and it is often to portray a character or fulfill a look for a role. But what is it like out here for us non-celebrities? How does knowing one’s hair type help them be successful in the non-mainstream world? I ask these questions when thinking back to the three geographical locations for buying and receiving hair donations to make hair weaves and wigs. Who/what countries are being excluded from this market? If you answered geographical locations that include individuals who have wavy/curly/coiled hair that would be one answer. Another answer would be anyone with Afro-textured hair/hair from individuals in African countries, hair from Jewish individuals, hair from Latinx/Chicana(o) individuals, hair from individuals living in the Caribbean Island region, and hair from individuals in the Pacific Island region. These areas and lands are the ones that come to mind when thinking about groups of people that have wavy, curly, and/or coiled hair types and is not an exhaustive list.
Styles Foisted Upon Girls and Women
In thinking about the countries, geographical areas and regions, and groups of people excluded from the hair market and mainstream look, one style of hair sticks out as the standard and that is straight — type 1A, 1B, 1C. Yet, when I think back to the Hair Extension Magazine webpage that describes the hair extension types “curly” is not a descriptor. When it describes Indian hair it lists its likeliness to get frizzy and backs that up with how to “remedy” the frizz. This omission of curly hair from the standard and the subsequent attempt to shame those who have curly hair that frizzes is another signal that the hair and beauty industry has explicit biases in favor of straight hair and implicit biases against curly hair. Chris Rock has a documentary on Netflix, Good Hair where he briefly touches upon the bias in the hair weave and wig industry when he approaches beauty supply shop owners with a bag of African hair. Whereupon he is told directly that they will not buy it and are not interested in his product because no one buys it and it is not a part of the market.
This ideology for hair does not begin and end with companies who market donated hair for hair extensions and wigs. It begins the moment a girl’s true hair shows up. I say this because it is between four and eight years old when a girl’s hair develops into the hair they will have throughout their life. I remember from an early age that curls were all the rage but not NATURAL CURLS. I grew up in the 80s and for a White female like me, manufactured curls were the necessity and the norm. For nearly a decade, I got permanents “perms” — chemicals pasted and poured into my hair around special rollers, sitting in a drying chair for an hour, and this procedure was done every six to twelve months. When I wasn’t getting perms, I was the guinea pig for my mom in trying different types of rollers — most of them the kind that I had to sleep in to see a result. Because of the thickness of my hair I do not remember a roller that did not successfully put a spring in my mane. Some of them made curls so tight it frizzed and fluffed the ends.
By the time, I was done with perms (looking like an exploded poodle was my last straw), I had found curling irons and hot rollers. I dabbled in hairspray, mousse, and gels for a while trying to get that crunchy look that became popular in the late 80s to early 90s but the world shifted from destroying the environment with big hair (and the products responsible for the destruction) to grunge. Hairspray was no longer cool nor the hair styles that came with it and I did not like the way gels made my hair heavier than it already was.
The grunge era was also an era of the “bob.” Remember the photo of Salma Hayek that described the 2B curl type as “flat on the crown and starts around midlength?” Picture a flat crown with straight, but frizzed hair that ends around the chin where a wave would begin. I looked like a mushroom cap with bangs because bangs were still a trend but without the tall, big, hairsprayed to heaven look.
In all this time, I had learned that in order for me to wear my natural wave it had to be crunchy. If I wasn’t wearing my wave crunchy then I should not bother trying to wear it at all. I did not know the secret to my friends’ hair that laid soft and curly in spirals. (One of them said they used lotion in their hair. I tried that and it made my already oily scalp twice as oily, which made my strands look stringy and greasy.) I resigned myself to having frizzy hair that I could curl by iron or roller. I ended up thinking I did not have “real” curly hair or “good hair” for many years because any attempt to retain my waves ended up with my mane looking like a flat-like, furry squirrel tail.
In this section, I have described my own experiences with styling. However, in my experiences I have never felt threatened or intimidated to wear my hair a specific way so as not to get fired. There is however, a “professional” look for White women and deviation from that may come in the form of a warning, looks, gaslighting, sniveling, and public shame but nothing severe as job termination. This is not the case for Black and Brown individuals.
Consequences of Styling One’s Hair Outside the Norm/Cultural Expectations
The threat of losing one’s job based on how they wear their hair is overt and sometimes covert. Only recently was legislation passed (USA Today) and established prohibiting businesses from firing individuals based on discriminating practices against one’s physical appearance. Even then, there are still businesses and industries that will make up offenses and write individuals up even when they are exemplary employees. I attended a conference where a few of the presenters mentioned instances of hair discrimination. One shared details about how they wore their hair in a “Euro-centric” way until they were through their probationary period. Once they had felt they had gained the confidence and trust of their colleagues and supervisor then they got the locs they had been wanting all along.
The legislation being pushed through state courts is called the “Crown Act.” C.R.O.W.N. is an acronym for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural hair.” The C.R.O.W.N. Coalition and their partners have a campaign to end hair discrimination. In their 2019 study with Dove and the JOY Collective, they had participants rate job readiness of individuals based on images of hairstyles on Black women and non-Black women. Overall, the images of hairstyles on Black women were “consistently rated lower or ‘less ready’ for job performance” (Dove Research Brochure) than the images of hairstyles on non-Black women. Another important piece in this study was finding that “Black women are made to be more aware of corporate grooming policies than White women.” Black women also reported being sent home for their hair and judged more harshly than what the White women reported.
In my experience, I have never been written up, sent home, and/or received a warning for my hair. I also have not ever been exposed to or shown a “grooming policy” in the places I have worked. However, I have seen a double standard in practice before when dining at one of the restaurants near my current job.
The restaurant I mention employs mostly students. One afternoon I was standing in line waiting to place my order and began noticing that most of the students working the registers and delivering the food were female and had long hair. Of the females about 50% were White and 50% were non-White. The White female students were all wearing visors with hair that was not contained. It may have had a rubberband in it but their hair was bouncing wildly and for the most part was all over the place. The non-White female students all had hair nets and underneath the netting their hair was neatly and firmly fixed in one spot. No stray strands, locs, or braids were hanging nor bouncing wildly. I sat stewing about how to report the bias and subtle racism to management (that was White). I decided to email the manager (a White male) and frame my outrage as a hygiene and food sanitation concern. I made sure to note the difference in visor wearing employees vs. hair net wearing employees. I did this so that the students wearing visors (White girls) would be told to have their hair all pinned up and that the students wearing hair nets (Black/Brown girls) could be recognized for following food safety and sanitation rules. From a hygiene and sanitation concern, the last thing any customer wants is hair in their food. While the manager assured me that he would see to everyone having their hair pinned up (not wanting to lose customer(s) over it), he also told me that employees had the option of wearing a visor or hair net. At the end of the day, we both knew that the visor vs. the hair net was not the issue but hair unpinned was.
Forty Years of Questioning Nothing
Why was I “today years old” when I began questioning the status quo practices of styling my hair? It started in messaging a month or so ago. I was admiring JVN’s (Jonathan Van Ness) fabulous curls in a picture they shared on their Instagram. I shared it in a DM with a friend who had also liked the picture. This instigated a conversation about their curls which I said I also admired and I shared my frustration with being able to show off my waves. They then shared the plop method article and a link to buying SGX’s Curl Creme from Target. It set me in motion on the path of learning and re-educating myself on hair and curl care.
It took me this long to “wake up” because I had over time resigned myself to what I knew and/or what I was good at. In this resignation, as I said before I had deemed myself as not having “good” hair nor “real” curly hair. Much of this was based off the people in my life that had that soft, natural curly hair look — looking like no product or effort had happened in the springing of the tendrils from their scalp. So, some of this was me having the wrong perception combined with ignorance and a lack of knowledge on curl care.
I did not have anyone in my circle(s) that had hair prone to frizziness (that was talked about), coarse, and mega thick hair before now. Outside of the people I knew and associated with, I became a trend follower to some extent because it was “safe.” I did not for the most part do very many risky/extreme things with my hair until I was in my 30s and feeling like it was time to be adventurous.
For much of my youth, I desired to have a European hair look and I did not even know that’s what it was. It stemmed from many of the models in my Seventeen magazine who were White having bright, shiny, blonde, straight, long hair that laid flat without fuzz or frizz. Because it made them “desirable” and I wanted to be “desirable.” No one in this magazine had a “squirrel tail” look. It did not take them 30 minutes or more to blow dry their hair. Their hair did not look like a bird’s nest after sleeping on it wet. Again, this was my ignorance but also assumptions I had internalized about how I was less than the standard that was being portrayed in the media and culture.
Conclusions: What to Do and Where to Go
What do I want to do with this new knowledge? Since, first drafting this piece I have done a few searches online. Some of them dealing with hair but also recently I have been trying to find better facial skin care products. In these searches I came across an article by Chelsea Peng on Marie Claire, “All the Cool New Ways to Wash Your Hair: A Guide.” In addition to styling, I have since learned I am basically doing my hair washing routine all wrong (yet again!). Because of this article, I am trying to decrease and possibly eventually eliminate altogether the use of shampoo. Chelsea mentions a scalp rub/massage technique in the shower in lieu of shampooing. In past years, I have learned to reduce my hair washing to once (sometimes twice) a week and will continue this but with conditioner or oil (I am currently waiting on a lilac oil I mixed up to be ready for use) only when I am washing my hair. I have suffered dandruff and an itchy scalp in the last two years and nothing I have tried thus far has worked (see “Teabags for Dandruff” for one of my scalp treatment trials). I hope I see improvement with this latest bit of information.
I am also continuing with the “plop method,” Aveda’s Cherry Almond Softening Leave-in Conditioner for wet waves, and the use of SGX’s *semi-magical* and *great smelling* curl creme for reviving my dry waves. I have seen results with this method and these products but need a little guidance in getting the most waves and 2B/2C patterns out of my tendrils. My next step is to reach out to my stylist and/or a stylist specializing in curls to learn techniques and possibly other products.
Outside of my own experience with my hair and cultural expectations what am I going to do with the information gained about how society treats women with hair outside the standard? My awareness level has been raised in regards to language in handbooks, company policies for appearance, and the CROWN Campaign’s growing influence. I would like to take this information and use it to make change in language and approach to company expectations on appearance and professionalism. Many places these days have “diversity” committees that help influence changes like this and so getting involved in committees, bringing their attention to these concerns, and having the committee connect with admin/authority to implement changes is one way. The CROWN Act Campaign site offers resources that I have listed below as ways to help push the campaign forward and end hair discrimination. I have taken the first step in signing the petition. At the end of the day, it is my hope that this increases awareness and action in the readers of this article and that together we can bring down the discriminatory status quo that keeps the standards in hair care and style afloat.
To get involved with the CROWN Act Campaign, sign their petition, email letters to legislators, get help if you have or are currently suffering hair discrimination, and/or join the CROWN Coalition. More information can be found at the CROWN Act Resources page.
References
Amay, J. (2020). How to figure out your curl type. Allure. Retrieved May 9,2021 from https://www.allure.com/gallery/curl-hair-type-guide
Cox, C. (2020, February 6). Protecting afros, twists, braids: Maryland county becomes first to ban hair discrimination. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/02/06/montgomery-county-bans-hair-discrimination-maryland/4683361002/
C.R.O.W.N. Coalition. (2020). The CROWN Act Resources. The CROWN Act. https://www.thecrownact.com/resources
C.R.O.W.N. Coalition. (2020). Have you experienced hair discrimination?. The CROWN Act. https://www.thecrownact.com/hair-discrimination-help
C.R.O.W.N. Coalition. (2020). Interested In Your Organization Joining The CROWN Coalition?. The CROWN Act. https://www.thecrownact.com/hair-discrimination-help
C.R.O.W.N. Coalition. (2020). Official Campaign of the CROWN Act. The CROWN Act. https://www.thecrownact.com/
C.R.O.W.N. Coalition. (2020). Working to eradicate race-based hair discrimination. The CROWN Act. https://www.dove.com/us/en/stories/campaigns/the-crown-act.html
Hair Extension Magazine. (2021). Hair Extension Types | Sources of Hair. Hair Extension Magazine. https://hairextensionmagazine.com/sources-of-hair/
JOY Collective. (2019). The CROWN Research Study and Dove Research Brochure 2020. The CROWN Act. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5edc69fd622c36173f56651f/t/5edeaa2fe5ddef345e087361/1591650865168/Dove_research_brochure2020_FINAL3.pdf
Naturally Curly. (2020, June 30). How to Plop Curly Hair: A Curly Girl’s Guide. Naturally Curly. https://www.naturallycurly.com/curlreading/curl-products/to-plop-or-not-to-plop
Peng, C. (2015). All the Cool New Ways to Wash Your Hair: A Guide. Marie Claire. Retrieved May 9, 2021, from https://www.marieclaire.com/beauty/news/a13611/the-dictionary-of-hair-washing-methods/
Stilson, J. (Director). (2009). Good Hair [Film]. HBO Films.
Tolbert. (2020, April 20). Teabags for Dandruff. Medium. https://tolbertmbb.medium.com/teabags-for-dandruff-d97baf9fc6a8
Van Ness, J. [@jvn]. (2021, March 25). The 70’s called and said their silhouettes are coming back STRONG! [Image]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CM2icwhjpT4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
