How Natural is Too Natural?
When Patrice Grell Yursik began wearing her hair in a wash-and-go style, she got lots of praise. “Women would tell me they wish their hair looked like mine,” said Ms. Yursik, 33, the creator of the blog Afrobella.
While African-American natural-hair advocates of yore, like Angela Davis, embraced a halo of tightly coiled hair, the new “natural” style of choice seems to be longer curls with more definition–which is not always easy to achieve, as Ms. Yursik can attest.
“Many of us have moved beyond the use of harsh chemicals to achieve a different texture, but we’re still walking around with the belief system that led relaxers to such prominence to begin with,” she said.
“The belief that straighter textures and longer lengths of hair are somehow more beautiful comes from what we see around us. Look at the images of black women in the media – if their hair isn’t straight, it’s a very particular type of curly look that’s meant to represent natural hair. It’s another way for the arbiters of mainstream beauty to divide our community.”
When singer Solange Knowles, 26, gave an interview about her hair on Essence.com, this division, referred to as “curlism,” got mainstream attention. Picked up by the popular natural hair blog Curly Nikki, the piece incited vitriolic responses from commenters, who felt Ms. Knowles, whose strands are tightly coiled, was a poor representation of women with natural hair (one person deemed it “unkempt”). “I never painted myself as a team natural vice president,” Ms. Knowles responded on Twitter. “My hair is not very important to me.”
http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/how-natural-is-too-natural/?src=mv&ref=style
