I commonly hear black people talking about ‘good hair’, for example  “got that coolie hair” and ‘bad hair’, such as “got that nappy hair”, “need a relaxer” etc and it makes me question why or how we have become so brainwashed into a ‘the lighter the skin the better you are’ mentality, that we tend to view  BLACK  people with BLACK features, such as big lips (even though this is now a ‘trend’), wide noses, dark skin and afro/kinky hair negatively?. Some people may link this mentality back to slavery where the lighter skinned slaves were allowed to work indoors and the darker skinned slaves had to work outside in the fields.

Although most of the time when I hear people talking with this mindset, it’s unintentional and they don’t realise it or mean to sound anti-black, it shows how used we are to being fed ‘the further away from black you look the better you are’. While mainstream media european beauty standards can be blamed for this, I believe that we ourselves who think like this also need to change our views. How can we come together to fight issues such as racism when there’s prejudice and discrmination within our own community?

As this is predominantly a hair blog I am going to speak a bit on relaxers. Relaxers are commonly used among the black community to straighten out our hair making it more ‘manageable’, if this works for you by all means carry on but who said your hair wasn’t manageable in the first place? As relaxers are strong chemicals I hate seeing them put in children’s hair and personally believe that there are other ways to help make black hair easier to manage such as learning about natural hair care, correctly moisturising and loving the kinks and curls that grow out of your scalp. When our natural hair won’t do something we want it to do such as lay flat, we tend to see a problem with this and reach for a relaxer rather than learn to love what our natural kinks and curls will and won’t do.

‘Good hair’ should be viewed as healthy hair and not limited to a looser curl pattern or silkier texture of hair.

Chris Rock and Tyra Banks have both spoke on the ‘Good Hair’, ‘Bad Hair’ controversy.

Click here to watch Chris Rock’s ‘Good Hair’ documentary trailer.

Buy Chris Rock’s ‘Good Hair’ documentary on DVD here.

Click here to watch part 1 of Tyra Banks ‘What is Good Hair’ show. Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 are also available on Youtube.

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