The Psychology of Black Hair

Intrigued by the appraisal Michelle Obama had received online – on Twitter and other social media platforms – since being spotted with her natural hair out on Monday, I decided to do a quick Google search to see how many news outlets had picked up on it – was Michelle Obama’s hair worth a story? Just think about Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s bold suggestion in an interview with Channel 4 in August 2016: I’ve often said that if Michelle Obama had natural hair when Barack Obama was running for president, he would not have won. The policing of Black hair is problematic because women feel pressured to conform to hegemonic representations of white beauty to the point where permanent hair loss, burnt scalps, and painful treatments to straighten their natural hair seem more attainable than wearing the very hair that grows out of their heads in public. That my curls, my tight midnight black afro curls, were not only good enough, but they would be an integral statement in telling the world that I was ready to unapologetically celebrate my black body in all its glory.

The post in which I tell you why I am starting an academic blog about Black hair, identity and women of colour, why this is a conversation long overdue, and why you should be part of it. When I started my PhD project in 2014, I always knew that this should not just be a project about women of colour, but one for women of colour. As I am starting to write up my thesis, publish articles in academic journals and attend conferences, I can see how my research contributes to an academic discourse about questions of identity and representation as they pertain to women of colour in Britain, Germany and beyond. But the more women I met, the more conversations I had, the more I read and wrote, the more I could see that sometimes hair was more important to women of colour’s identity than the colour of their skin.