Hair length has served as a status symbol within the Black community for years. This an undeniable truth that, try as we might, we can’t seem to shake.
The length check and hair growth hack videos circling the relaxed and natural hair circuit are just a few of the many digital reminders that Black women, like many other cultures and communities, have been conditioned to equate hair length with feminity and beauty.
For some reason, though, people, inside and out of our community, seem pressed to enforce a narrative that suggests Black women are uniquely obsessed with the length of our hair.
This can be seen in the responses to Sexyy Red’s questionable post regarding her natural hair or in completely unrelated Twitter discourse. Not even Beyoncé and Mama Tina are exempt from the dialogue surrounding this perceived “obsession” with length.
This frame of thinking is not just factually incorrect; it’s harmful. By making it seem that Black women have developed an unhealthy obsession with length out of nowhere, it suggests that we are inherently vain and ignore years of systemic racism that has prioritized proximity to whiteness over anything else.
Black hair types have more coil and curl, impacting how oil travels down our hair shaft, making us more prone to dryness and breakage. So, rather than just being a physical indicator, as it is for other races, hair length also suggests a certain continuity to whiteness.
Having long hair is not a “white” trait, but nothing exists in a vacuum, and we can’t pretend this has not influenced the beauty standards within the Black community.
By posturing as if Black women are the ones enforcing and upholding these standards, we are stifling any real progress toward productive conversations that may help us shed the suffocating skin of Western beauty ideals.
There is nothing wrong with wanting healthy, thick or long hair, and there is also nothing wrong with wanting to unpack what internalized behaviors make us ascribe to certain beauty ideals.
The problem arises when we make false equivalencies and act as if any of the things we do exist in solitude.
These beauty standards did not fall out of a coconut tree and our ideals undoubtedly exist in the context of all in which we live and what came before us.
