What happened to the natural hair movement?

This is the longest break I have ever taken from my blog and I hate it! Trying to find the discipline and balance as a 23-year-old trying to live her life, as well as figuring out her future is hard as hell. Even though I had to take a pause on some of my hobbies I’m glad to be back.

If you are familiar with Living-Lex you know that hair is something I love to talk about on my blog. I usually like to talk about trends but today I want to talk about the natural hair movement.

The Comeback of the natural hair movement

Do you guys remember when natural hair was making such a comeback years ago? Youtube videos were circulating around the web of women revealing their big chops and TWAs. It was actually very inspiring.

As someone who for years never knew what her actual hair looked like outside of its relaxed straight state, these videos were exciting. When I was younger, I hated sitting crossed-legged in front of my mom as she slapped sulfuric goop on my new growth, but I couldn’t wait for the end results. I loved to see my kinky strands smooth out unnaturally long past my shoulders and swish as I walked passed by people, but I was getting tired of my hair’s fragility, amongst other things. A lot of my beauty was attached to my hair. It took a lot of growing up to realize that wasn’t true.

Pictures of black women wearing their curls looked so freeing and healthy. I remember 2017 going to my best friend’s house with a pair of scissors and we kept chopping away until I looked like this.

There was no turning back at this point. I spent hours every week at the beauty supply store, trying to decipher the perfect products that would give me the look I wanted. Little did I know there was only so much I could do while my hair was still “transitioning” (a person who has naturally curly hair moving away from relaxed hair or straightening treatments)

Let’s start with texturism and Length…

The industry for decades depicted beauty as straight hair rooted in Eurocentric standards. This of course naturally kicked out marginalized groups. So what did we do as black people? We straightened, texturized, and relaxed our hair so that we weren’t ostracized. Back in the 60s, the natural hair movement was more a political statement, a way to defeat this stigma. The big afros were coming back into style with political groups like the Black Panther Party reaching their peak. When the natural hair movement revitalized again in the late 2000s, many people joined with expectations of what their hair could be. However loose, defined curls were not in the cards for everybody.

Now let’s be honest with ourselves about this unspoken hair hierarchy. What’s deemed most beautiful was and still is looser hair patterns such as this

Rather than this…

There might have been a few YouTubers I remember, like Chizi Duru and NaturallyPhillo who had coarser type 4 hair and making huge traction on social media. But less Afrocentric hair continued to be put on a pedestal even during the revival of the natural hair movement. The YouTubers with the looser curls were usually the ones that had the increased followings and influence. Although a lot of these influencers typed their hair as 4b-C. The lack of representation of coarse, shorter, less-defined curls continued to be apparent.

Even though I stopped relaxing my hair years ago my obsession with length never went away. I still hated to see my curls shrink to my ears straight out of the shower. I would look in the mirror with my face scrunched up ready for whatever protective style was next on my list.

Now the Fall of the natural hair movement

Not gonna lie, there were a lot of things that caused the fall of the natural hair movement. I want to say obviously the lack of representation for more Afrocentric textures but also the amount of work that came with it.

There became too many rules. I was seeing so many trends and warnings on social media that were telling me different things about what was right and wrong for my hair. There was the ban on Cantu products, then the prohibition of eco-style gel, etc. I felt at that point just this “trend” of natural hair was becoming more work than I signed up for.

As the natural hair movement continued to burgeon, so did the growth of protective styles such as wigs, braids, etc. When a lot of women began to realize that they couldn’t get their hair to look a certain way, their hair remained hidden.

Nowadays I am even seeing the comeback of relaxers, tape-ins, etc because black women as a collective are tired of the pressure to manipulate their hair into something it isn’t.

What Now?

I don’t think the natural hair movement is dead, but as a community, we have definitely spotted flaws when it comes to inclusivity.

At the end of the day, I am not knocking down what people are doing with their hair. I believe now we are at that point in our lives where it’s really just hair! We should do whatever to it as long as it makes us feel good about ourselves!

Whatever we choose to do, I still believe we deserve to feel beautiful in our natural hair, especially after years of being told we are not.