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You Can’t Touch Solange’s Hair, but You Can Ask to Touch Mine
If you have been natural for any length of time, you have more than likely had someone attempt to touch your hair. Strangers and friends of various races and ages seem to be intrigued by the texture, feel and all-around unexpectedness of black hair. Oftentimes this intrigue is expressed through a stray hand inching its…
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10 Signs You’re Dating a Woman With Natural Hair
Every relationship has its own set of rules, and dating a woman with natural hair can add a few more regulations to the list. We love our hair, and taking care of it plays a major role in our daily lives, which means it may also play a major role in your life if you’re…
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10 Black Hair-Care Products Every Black Person Has Ever Used
Before the days of our enlightened knowledge about black hair, we thought we needed two things to take care of our strands—perms and grease. Grease seemed to be a catchall phrase for anything that wasn’t shampoo or oil. Brands liked to call them hairdressing or conditioner, but we don’t remember them being called anything but…
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Black Men Are Judged for Their Hair Texture, Too, Especially in Politics
With the natural-hair movement in full swing, there have been many productive conversations about the political and social expectations placed on black women’s natural hair. These conversations seem to center on the assumptions about black women who choose to “go natural” instead of chemically straightening their hair or wearing weaves, and their involvement in “the…
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10 Throwback Black Hairstyles We Should Leave in the Past
We all have that one yearbook picture that makes us say, “Man, why didn’t anyone stop me from getting that?” We remember being super on-trend at the time, but looking back, we see that some fads of our youth should be left behind. Even with the resurgence of ’70s, ’80s and early-’90s style in fashion…
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Black People, Please Stop Saying Straightening Our Hair Is Appropriation
Appropriation is definitely a buzzword of the moment. Seems like every few weeks, we get the chance to start pointing fingers at one celeb or another. And with Halloween around the corner, you know the culture vultures won’t disappoint in turning various cultures into costumes for their amusement. The more I write and speak on…
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10 Hairstyles From the ’90s Every Black Man Rocked Back in the Day
If you ask most black men what their style was like in the ’90s, they will reference the hairstyle they were rocking first. Every decade has its list of “it” trends—the ones that instantly transport you back in time when you see them. We polled some of the men in our lives who have been…
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10 Natural-Hair Gurus You Need to Follow on Instagram
Going natural really is about a lot more than deciding to stop chemically straightening your hair. It is about self-love, self-acceptance and finding a community of other women who are on that same journey. A major part of our natural process is discovering healthy, empowered strands to look up to when we are first starting…
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‘Real Sista’: Does My Natural Hair Make Me More ‘Down for the Cause’?
Over the weekend, at a street festival in Brooklyn N.Y., an older gentleman walked up to me and a friend (who also has natural hair) and handed us fliers about a social-justice meeting. While handing them to us, he said, “For my real sistas; I know you two are down for the cause.” I can…
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Locs and Chains: Nothing to ‘Dread’ About Locs Except Discrimination if You’re Black
Do a Google image search for “dreadlocks” and the entire first row of images is of white people—mostly women, the one exception being an image of Johnny Depp in faux dreadlocks as Capt. Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean movies. While not surprising, it seemed very telling that Googling a hairstyle primarily associated with…
