GCSE Plus student Elissa Hunter writes:“Tyra Banks, a well known American model, hosts a chat show on which a special series discussed the issues around African-American women’s hair. This show seemed to demonstrate that this is a very important thing among African-American communities.
Many different points were raised, with one in particular that was most prominent. This was the tendency for many black women to adapt or cover up their hair in ways that gave them the effect of having long, straight, and silky hair, instead of their natural locks. The thoughts were raised that a lot of black women do this, do it because they essentially want 'white' [people’s] hair. There are also women who are deliberately going against this, and deliberately having their hair as 'natural' as possible.
All this interested me, and I wondered if this is such a big issue here as in America. How do women in this area feel about their hair? Are black women that much lacking in self esteem when it comes to their hair? How do black and white women’s thoughts and feelings differ on this? And finally, who is more happy with their natural hair, white or black women? To find this out, I conducted a study involving 30 white and 30 black women in Bristol.
Taking the questionnaire answers overall, it seems that, in my area of Bristol at least, black women are not less happy with their hair than white women, in fact it may be the other way round.
The difference seems to be in how women see the place of treatments and additions in their lives. Neither seems to see them as a way to hide or to 'be what they are not'. White women tend, on the whole, to see them as one way to make a temporary change of look, of dressing for an occasion, while back women see them instead as a longer term part of fashion.”
