The Beauty & Strength of Black Hair!

Black hair is distinct. It is distinguished. It is vibrant. It is symbolic. The biology of Black hair is exceedingly similar to other hair types. But it is the morphological difference in our hair’s elasticity and coil/curl patterns that causes it to have unique needs. Still, Black hair remains strong and beautiful.

The strength of Black is phenomenal. We see our hair as our crowns today, but Black hair wasn’t always seen this way. Our hair wasn’t always included or catered to in the hair care market. Our hair wasn’t seen as “good hair”. So rather than nourish our kinks, curls, and coils, many of us Black women succumbed to the beauty standards of the time. We destroyed the identity of our Black hair with chemicals to favor the straighter textures that were seen as “good hair”.

Still, our Black hair remained strong. It persevered until the time came when the world changed, and people began to see better. To understand that Black hair didn’t need to be altered to be “good”. It has always been perfected the way it is. Black hair has always been beautiful, and that beauty needed to be preserved, not damaged. And so, we resisted these so-called standards with our afros, Locs, braids, and the reinstatement of the Natural Hair Movement.

It didn’t end there though. Black hair still had to persevere some more. Because we realized the beauty of our hair, but the hair care market still refused to see it. So, we had to whip up our own concoctions and create our own products to keep our natural hair strong and beautiful. We had to build our own hair care systems by ourselves because we weren’t given any other choices.

Black hair still had to persist, however. Because even as it received an upgrade in the positive care it was receiving, the damaging elements were leveling up too. Heat styling. Unsafe use of hair extensions. Unsafe administration of dye jobs. Or the failure to give color-treated Black hair the kind of care it really needed. Luckily, our hair didn’t have to remain truly unprotected for too long.

Slowly, the hair care market opened up to us and the genuine needs of our hair. Of course, today, Black hair constitutes one of the largest market segments in the industry that companies wish to profit off. But that’s not the most intriguing of it all. The most intriguing part is that Black hair wasn’t always dealt the same hand that other textures were given. Yet it managed to stand strong, stay resilient, and maintain its unparalleled beauty through it all. Black hair is the real crown. It is real hair royalty!

The history of Black hair is clearly one of evolution, of growth that goes way past hair inches, and of endurance. There is only one fitting end to this history—an end that will propel our strong and absolutely beautiful hair on for years. And that fitting end is the love that we have for our own hair. As helpful as it might be, we don’t really need the rest of the world to love our hair. All we need is to look in the mirror and recognize the resilience and magnificence of our hair by ourselves every single time. And then proceed to cherish every strand exactly the way it is.