Policy, Perms, and A Whole Lot of Product: The Success and Failure of the Natural Hair Movement

As a child of the 2000s, I vividly remember seeing the Dark and Lovely and Just for Me relaxer boxes in the beauty supply store and the smell of Mizani relaxer as it sat on women’s heads at the hair salon. Relaxed and straight hair experienced heightened prevalence during the 2000s as it had in the decades prior among African-American women and girls, from celebrities like Beyoncé and Aaliyah to everyday individuals. Even within the workplace, straight hair indicated a level of professionalism that natural hair or protective styles supposedly did not.

The late 2000s and early 2010s experienced a shift, however, primely aided by the growth of social media platforms that made sharing and creating content and communities concerning natural hair popular and highly accessible. “Going natural” during the late 2000s also stemmed from Black women’s desire to mitigate heat styling and relaxer-related hair damage. Thus, salons and stylists focusing on natural hair care became more prevalent, which also aided in increasing the availability and variety of natural hair care products. It also remains crucial to acknowledge the capitalist effect on the natural hair care industry, which has led to many black-owned hair care companies either “selling out” to white companies, changing product formulas and removing Black women, specifically those with Black textured hair from marketing and advertising focus to broaden appeal for the sake of profit.

While the introduction of anti-hair discrimination acts by various state legislatures to combat natural hair discrimination within schools and the workplace exemplifies how far we’ve come in terms of Black women’s hair, the natural hair movement still has its pitfalls. Evaluating and examining the natural hair movement of the late 2000s and 2010s means confronting longstanding cultural biases involving colorism and texturism within and outside the Black community.

The rise of social media in the 2000s from message boards, blog spaces and social media sites like YouTube and Instagram created communities for Black women to share styling tutorials and product knowledge while often documenting their natural hair journey. The movement originated in pre-influencer content creation on blogs like Afrobella before video-based content creation on websites like YouTube featured notable natural hair content creators like Whitney White and Rachelle Graham. Interestingly, White and Graham started their YouTube channels in 2008, the year that began to mark a steep decline in the sale of relaxers as more and more Black women in America opted to go natural through either the big chop or the gradual process of transitioning. By 2010, 26 percent of Black women had gone relaxer-free, rising to 36 percent the following year. The increased demand for natural hair styling products led to a drive in Black hair care product sales, sparking a boom in the natural hair care industry.

The Black haircare industries that arose during the second natural hair movement marked a sharp increase in accessibility of products designed to maintain Black natural hair. Brands like Carol's Daughter, Cantu and Shea Moisture became more widely available and popular amongst consumers, making it possible for brands like Mielle to flourish. Even brands like Mizani and Dark and Lovely began to sell products meant for natural hair as their perm boxes sat idle on store shelves and in the back of salon supply closets.

After peaking financially from their majority Black consumer base, notable natural hair care brands sold their brand or portions of it to non-Black-owned manufacturing companies. Notable examples include Carol’s Daughter founder Lisa Price selling her company to L'Oréal USA and Mielle founder Monique Rodriguez selling hers to P&G. While some believe these acquisitions are a necessary step to ensure Black financial excellence, it has often come at the cost of the quality and effectiveness of the products themselves. With new acquisitions and shifts in company ownership, natural hair care brands often change formulas and lose focus on Black textured hair individuals within advertising and marketing to gain mass appeal. Shea Moisture — a formerly Black-owned brand now owned by Johnson & Johnson — in 2017 featured an advertisement with one Black woman who had loose, defined curls and two white women, a blonde and a redhead. The advertisement sparked outrage within the Black community and prompted criticism of the natural hair care industries’ treatment of its primary customer base and opened avenues of discussion concerning texturism and colorism within the Black community regarding natural hair.

So, while the Black community celebrates natural hair, it remains one of its most prominent critics. Many women within the natural hair community in online space and in real life face criticism surrounding the texture, color and appearance of their hair from family members to strangers in the comment section. Individuals with tightly coiled hair and undefined curl patterns are often labeled as having “nappy hair” instead of “good hair,” which is looser in texture. While social media websites like Pinterest and YouTube make content for those with various natural hair textures visible, there remains a cultural bias towards kinkier hair textures that exists at the intersection of hair length and colorism. As a result, natural hair movement trends like dyed hair, individuals with loose textures and lighter skin colors were considered more suited for the trend than darker skinned individuals, especially those with tighter and coarser hair textures. People with the latter textures are often criticized in comment sections and considered unkempt and unprofessional when they don’t slick their hair back or baby hairs down. As a community we’ve embraced natural hair and styling, however, much of the preferences and treatment of Black natural women remain rooted within deep seated cultural biases.

In a bid to challenge those cultural biases, the movement has sparked necessary debate regarding standards of professionalism within schools and the workplace regarding natural hair and protective styling. Many Black people, namely Black women, have faced workplace and school discrimination due to wearing braids, afros, locs, and other Black natural styles. In the past few years, many states have passed “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair” Acts to outlaw these discriminatory practices. CROWN Acts serve as a mark of victory for the natural hair and Black liberation movements as it demonstrates a reduction in the stigma surrounding Black existence and cultural expression.

Although, cultural expression no longer finds limitations within the staunch natural or non-natural categories. Black individuals, as a result, increasingly wear their natural hair proudly and others have opted for different styles out of convenience or aesthetic choice. Some even alternate between natural, heat or chemically altered styles. Recently, as the cycle of fashion circles back to the early aughts, sleek and straight hair has seen a resurgence in popularity within the Black community. While other methods like wigs are used in place of relaxers or heat styling one's hair to achieve this look, the early 2020s have seen a resurgence of individuals relaxing their hair. The revival in relaxer usage, as documented by TikTok and other social media platforms, interestingly occurs at a time when published research has proved a connection between perms and health concerns — hair straightening chemicals found in relaxers have heavily contributed to reproductive organ cancers and illnesses predominantly in Black women, thus resulting in several ongoing class action lawsuits and settlements. Many cite exhaustion and difficulty with maintaining their natural hair as a reason for returning to relaxers. Whether through physical exhaustion of detangling and styling or product affordability, keeping up one’s natural curly, kinky, or coily locs can be costly and time-consuming.

When evaluating the success of the natural hair movement and its trajectory going forward, it remains appropriate to highlight the movement’s instrumental efforts in making Black natural hair more visible within and outside of the Black community. The movement broke down antiquated barriers of professionalism and respectability while also aiding in the accessibility of Black hair care and natural hair representation. In the wake of commercial pursuits, however, many of the actions have led Black women to feel rightfully left behind by the industry that they helped make successful. The online spaces serving as platforms for community, knowledge sharing and documentation of many natural hair journeys are also rife with texturism to colorism, often from the very individuals in those communities. The natural hair movement of the 2000s and early 2010s may have worked against challenging the biases and sentiments that made such a movement necessary to begin with. Even still, those biases and stigmas remain present today.

If the failures of the natural movement reveal to us anything, it is that we still have further to go.