Natural afro-hair - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Afro-textured hair is a term used to refer to the natural texture of Black African

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

hair

Hair

Hair is a filamentous biomaterial, that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class....

that has not been altered by hot comb

Hot comb

A hot comb is a metal comb that is used to straighten moderate or coarse hair and create a smoother hair texture.-Overview:...

s, flat iron

Flat Iron

Competitor for CanadaFlat Iron was a Native American lacrosse player who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics for Canada.In 1904 he was member of the Mohawk Indians Lacrosse Team which won the bronze medal in the lacrosse tournament.-References:...

s, or chemicals (through perming, relaxing

Relaxer

A relaxer is a type of lotion or cream generally used by people with afro textured hair, which makes hair less curly and also easier to straighten by chemically "relaxing" the natural curls...

, or straightening

Hair straightening

Hair straightening is a hair styling technique which involves the flattening and straightening of hair in order to give it a smooth, streamlined, and 'sleek' appearance. It may be accomplished by using hair irons and hot combs, chemical relaxers, Japanese hair straightening, or Brazilian hair...

).

Each strand of this hair type grows in a tiny spring-like, corkscrew

Corkscrew

A corkscrew is a kitchen tool for drawing stopping corks from wine bottles. Generally, a corkscrew consists of a pointed metallic helix attached to a handle. The user grips the handle and screws the metal point into the cork, until the helix is firmly embedded, then a vertical pull on the...

shape. The overall effect is such that, despite relatively fewer actual hair shafts compared to straight hair, this texture appears (and feels) denser than its straight counterparts. Due to this, it is often referred to as 'thick', 'bushy', 'coarse' or 'wooly'.

For several reasons, possibly including its relatively flat cross section (among other factors), this hair type also conveys a dry or matte appearance. Its unique shape also renders it very prone to breakage when combed or brushed. The members of many post-Columbian Western societies have typically used adjectives such as "kinky", "nap

Nap (textile)

Primarily, nap is the raised surface on certain kinds of cloth, such as velvet. Nap can refer additionally to other surfaces that look like the surface of a napped cloth, such as the surface of a felt or beaver hat....

py", or "spiralled" to describe natural afro-textured hair. More recently, however, it has become common (in some circles) to apply numerical grading systems to human hair types. One particularly popular version of these systems describes afro-hair as being 'type 4' (as opposed to the straight type 1, wavy type 2 and curly type 3); with the subcategory of type 4C being the most exemplary of the afro texture (Walker, 1997) But, it should also be said that afro-textured hair is difficult to categorize because of the many different variations it has from person to person. Those variations include pattern (coils, springs, zig zags, s-curves), pattern size (watch spring to chalk), density (sparse to dense), strand diameter (fine, medium, wide) and feel (cottony, wooly, spongy)

Structure

There are differences across ethnicity in the structure, density, and growth rate of hair. With regards to structure, all human hair has the same basic chemical composition in terms of keratin protein content. However, Franbourg et al. have found that Black hair may differ in the distribution of lipids throughout the hair shaft. Afro-texture hair was not as densely concentrated as other phenotypes. Specifically, the average density of Afro-textured hair was found to be approximately 190 hairs per square centimeter. This was significantly lower than that of White people

White people

White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

's hair, which, on average, produces approximately 227 hairs per square centimeter.

Further, Loussourarn found that Afro-textured hair grows at an average rate of approximately 256 micrometers per day, while that of White people grows at approximately 396 micrometers per day. In addition, due to a phenomenon called 'shrinkage', Afro-textured hair that is a given length when stretched straight can appear much shorter when allowed to naturally coil upon itself. Shrinkage is most evident when Afro-hair is (or has recently been) wet.

Evolution

See Main Article: Hair.

Afro-textured hair may have initially evolved because of an adaptive need (amongst humanity's hominid ancestors) for protection against the intense UV radiation

Radiation

In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...

of Africa. Subsequently (and/or additionally), because the relatively sparse density of Afro-hair, combined with its springy coils, results in an airy, almost sponge-like effect, the resulting increased circulation of cool air onto the scalp may have served to facilitate our hominid ancestors' body-temperature-regulation while they lived in the open savannah. Further, Afro-hair does not respond as easily to moisture/sweat as straight hair. Thus, instead of sticking to the neck and scalp when wet (as do straighter textures), unless totally drenched, it tends to retain its basic springy puffiness. In this sense, in addition to the above-listed causes, the trait may have also been retained/preferred among many equatorial human groups because of its contribution to enhanced comfort levels under warm conditions. Finally, sexual selection based on visual and/or tactile socio-aesthetics may have also and/or further contributed to this trait's ubiquity in certain regions.

Continental Africa

Historically, afro-textured hairstyles were used to define status, or identity, in regards to age, ethnicity, wealth, social rank, marital status, religion, fertility, manhood, and even death. Hair was carefully groomed by those who understood the aesthetic standard as the social implications of hair grooming was a significant part of tribal life. Dense, thick, clean and neatly groomed hair was something highly admired and sought after. Hair groomers possessed unique styling skills allowing them to create a variety of designs that met the local cultural standards. Hair worn in its loose state was not the norm, and usually left the impression that an individual was filthy, mentally unstable or in mourning.

Ethnic groups from regions all over the continent evolved diverse ways of forming afro-textured hair. It was common practice for the head female of the household to groom her family's hair, teaching her craft to her daughters. In some cases, an elder would facilitate the transfer of hair grooming skills seeing that many members of her family inherited and mastered the craft.

In many traditional cultures communal grooming was a social event where a woman could socialize and strengthen bonds between herself, other women and their families. Historically, hair braiding was not a paid trade as it has evolved into a multi-million dollar business in places like the United States and Europe. An individual's hair groomer was usually someone whom they knew closely. Sessions included shampooing, oiling, combing, braiding, twisting adding accessories. For shampooing black soap was widely used in places like West and Central Africa. Additionally palm oil and palm kernel oil were also popularly used for oiling the scalp. Shea butter

Shea butter

Shea butter is a slightly yellowish or ivory-colored fat extracted from the nut of the African shea tree . It is widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer, salve or lotion. Shea butter is edible and may be used in food preparation...

has also been traditionally used to moisturize and dress the hair with a yellow variety being popular in West Africa, and a white variety in East Africa. In North Africa Argan Oil

Argan

The Argan is a species of tree endemic to the calcareous semi-desert Sous valley of southwestern Morocco and to the Algerian region of Tindouf in the western Mediterranean region. It is the sole species in the genus Argania....

was applied to the hair and/or scalp for protection against the arid environment and intense sun. Hair grooming of afro-textured hair was considered a very important, intimate, spiritual part of one's overall wellness, and would last hours and, sometimes, days depending on the hair style and skill required. Diversity in, and experimentation with, afro-textured hair styles was the norm up until the European slave trade, and the height of the Arab Slave Trade, penetrated sub-Saharan Africa.

Oceanic, Asian, Polynesian and Melanesian people

Trans-Atlantic slave trade

Diasporic Africans in the Americas

African diaspora

The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...

have been experimenting with ways to style their hair since their arrival in the Western Hemisphere well before the 19th century. During the approximately 400 years of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...

that forcibly extracted over 20 million people from their indigenous homes, chaining them to sell as human capital, the beauty ideals pertaining to their own natural hair changed drastically. The visibility, and pride, seen in pre-colonial Africa regarding the afro-hair texture became sparse. Imported slaves were mostly young, generally between the ages of 10 and 24. Upon arrival to the Americas, slaves lacked the skills, tools and ability to meet local aesthetic standards. The issue was most particular to women. Furthermore, there was no time for hair grooming as slave masters worked their subjects 12–15 hours a day, 7 days a week. The barbaric and desperate social climate left slaves with little concern for grooming and personal well-being. The carefully crafted combs and tools available for hair grooming in their homeland were no where to be found in the new world. American slaves wore matted and tangled locks, instead of the well maintained, long, thick and healthy tresses worn by their brethren left in Africa.

To resolve this, slaves began using sheep fleece carding tools to detangle their hair which resulted in wide spread scalp diseases such as lice and dandruff. Slaves invented remedies for disinfecting and cleansing their scalp such as applying kerosine or cornmeal directly on the scalp with a cloth as they carefully parted through the hair. In the fields, Male slaves shaved their hair and wore hats to protect their scalps against the sun; female slaves wore scarves

Scarf

A scarf is a piece of fabric worn around the neck, or near the head or around the waist for warmth, cleanliness, fashion or for religious reasons. They can come in a variety of different colours.-History:...

and handkerchief

Handkerchief

A handkerchief , also called a handkercher or hanky, is a form of a kerchief, typically a hemmed square of thin fabric that can be carried in the pocket or purse, and which is intended for personal hygiene purposes such as wiping one's hands or face, or blowing one's nose...

s. The aesthetic norm for house slaves was to appear neat and clean. The men sometimes wore wigs mimicking their white masters, and even wore hairstyles resembling theirs, while the women plaited and braided their hair. Women with long and/or wavy hair were prone to becoming objects of jealousy by the master's wife and were often forced to cut their hair, making them look less feminine.

When the 19th century arrived, new laws were passed that enabled slaves to set aside Sunday

Sunday

Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. For most Christians, Sunday is observed as a day for worship of God and rest, due to the belief that it is Lord's Day, the day of Christ's resurrection....

as a day for attending church, socializing and styling each others hair. The women, who wore their hair bound in cotton rollers all week, would remove their scarves, allowing their curls to hang past their shoulders. With more time to spend on hair grooming, slaves further invented and evolved their techniques. Men began using axle grease to straighten and dye their hair. Cooking grease such as lard, butter, and goose grease were used to moisturize the hair. A hot butter knife was sometimes used, afterwards, by female slaves to add curls to their locks.

Overloaded with the suggestion that straight hair was more acceptable than natural, kinky/curly, hair textures slaves and freedman began exploring solutions for straightening, or relaxing, their tresses. One toxic solution was a mixture of lye and potato which burned the scalp upon contact. Among whites and African-Americans alike, those with lighter skin and 'straighter' hair textures were better embraced socially, and were offered the luxury of upward mobility. Afro-textured hair was often referred to as 'wool', along with darker skin tones, this physical characteristic was generally seen as something bad that 'needed to be fixed'. During the mid-19th century afro-textured hair was basically outlawed in New Orleans. While in public, African-American women with kinkier hair textures were to cover their hair with a scarf.

Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade

After 1860s some African-Americans continued to straighten their hair in order to conform with mainstream beauty ideals. In early Euro-American society, black women adopted the social behavior of their white counterparts in order to thrive or merely survive. This practice also aided in thwarting mistreatment and legal and social discrimination. Some women, and an even smaller number of men, lightened their hair with household bleach. A variety of caustic products that contained bleaches, including laundry bleach, designed to resolve afro-textured hair, became available following emancipation (between the late 1890s and the early 20th century). More prevalent became the use of creams and lotions, combined with hot irons, in order to straighten the hair. Although the black hair care industry was, then, dominated by white-owned businesses, Annie Turbo Malone

Annie Malone

Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone was an African-American businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist. In the first three decades of the 20th century, she founded and developed a large and prominent commercial and educational enterprise centered around cosmetics for African-American...

, Madam C. J. Walker, Madam Gold S.M. Young, Sara Spencer Washington and Garrett Augustus Morgan revolutionized African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

hair care by inventing and marketing chemical (and heat-based) applications to alter the natural tightly curled texture. In 1898, Anthony Overton

Anthony Overton

Anthony Overton , a banker and manufacturer, was the first African-American to lead a major business conglomerate. In 1898 he established Hygienic Manufacturing Company and produced a number of goods, including the nationally-known High Brown Face Powder, which was "the first market success in the...

founded a hair care company that offered saponified coconut shampoo and AIDA hair pomade. Men began using pomades, and other products, to achieved the standard aesthetic look. During the 1930s, conk

Conk

The conk was a hairstyle popular among African-American men from the 1920s to the 1960s. This hairstyle called for a man with naturally "kinky" hair to have it chemically straightened using a relaxer , so that the newly straightened hair could be styled in specific ways...

ing (vividly described in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination...

") became an innovative method in the U.S. for Black men to straighten kinky hair; whereas, women at that time tended to either wear wigs, or to hot-comb their hair (rather than conk it) in order to temporarily mimic the same straight style without permanently altering the natural curl pattern. Popular until the 1960s, the conk hair style were achieved via the application of a painful lye, egg and potato mixture that was toxic and immediately burned the scalp.

Black-owned business in the hair industry secured jobs for thousands of African-Americans. These business owners gave back heavily to the African-American community. During this time hundreds of African-Americans began owning successful beauty salons and barber shops offering permanent and hair-straightening as well as cutting and styling services. Media images conditioned to perpetuate European beauty ideals, even among African-Americans represented. African-Americans began sponsoring their own beauty events, with the winners, wearing straight hair styles, adorned various black magazines and product advertisements. Portrayal of traditional African hair styles, such as braids and cornrows, in the media was associated with African-Americans who were poor and lived in rural areas.

It has been debated whether hair straightening practices arose out of a desire to conform to a Eurocentric standard of beauty. Supporters of the second process believe that the same prejudice that viewed lighter skin as preferable to darker, held that straight or wavy hair (i.e. "good" hair) was preferable to tightly curled hair, and that this prejudice originated not from African Diasporic peoples but from European slaveholders and colonizers as part of the rhetoric used to support slavery and racially-based social class stratifications. Some claim that the dominant prejudice for Eurocentric ideas of beauty pervades the western world. Further, the tendency to judge people, especially women, based upon their physical appearance speaks to the fact that this issue is especially poignant for African American females. In other words, it is a clear example of an inherent, interlocking

Intersectionality

Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by Kimberlé Crenshaw . Intersectionality is a methodology of studying "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations"...

conflict that Black women face with Western norms that involves both race (i.e. the fact that the natural afro-hair texture of sub-Saharan African descended peoples deviates starkly from the global 'norm'), and gender (i.e. the fact that the disproportionately strong need for women to be physically 'beautiful' is heavily marketed to all Westerners, and is thus reinforced by men (and women) of all races).

The rise of Black pride

The civil rights movement

Civil rights movement

The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...

and black power

Black Power

Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...

and pride movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. created an impetus for African Americans to express their political commitments and self-love by the wearing of fairly long, natural hair. This contributed to the emergence of the Afro

Afro

Afro, sometimes shortened to fro and also known as a "natural", is a hairstyle worn naturally by people with lengthy kinky hair texture or specifically styled in such a fashion by individuals with naturally curly or straight hair...

hairstyle into American mainstream culture, as an affirmation of Black African heritage, that "black is beautiful," and a rejection of Eurocentric standards of beauty. It has been used in songs, as a symbol of Black African heritage, notably in I Wish

I Wish (Stevie Wonder song)

"I Wish" is a hit song by Stevie Wonder. It was released in 1976 as a single and included on the album Songs in the Key of Life. Written and produced by Wonder, the song focuses on his childhood...

by Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder

Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...

. By the 1970s natural hair had evolved into a popular hairstyle.

Over the years, the popularity of natural hair has waxed and waned. Today, a significant percentage of African American women elect to straighten their hair with relaxers of some kind (either heat or chemically based). This is done despite the fact that prolonged application of such chemicals (or heat) can result in overprocessing, breakage and thinning of the hair.

Nonetheless, over the past decade or so, natural hair has once again increased in popularity with the emergence of styles such as cornrows, locks

Dreadlocks

Dreadlocks, also called locks, a ras, dreads, "rasta" or Jata , are matted coils of hair. Dreadlocks are usually intentionally formed; because of the variety of different hair textures, various methods are used to encourage the formation of locks such as backcombing...

, braiding, twists and short, cropped hair, most of which originated in Ancient Africa. With the emergence of hip-hop culture and Caribbean influences like reggae music, more non-blacks have begun to wear these hairstyles as well. There has been a boom in marketing hair products such as "Out of Africa" shampoo to African American consumers. Slogans that promote a pan-Black African appreciation of Afro-textured hair include "Happy to be nappy," "Don't worry, be nappy," as well as "Love, peace and nappiness."

Controversy over natural Afro-textured hair in the United States

Although there has been a reemergence in the popularity of natural Afro-textured hair, it is still widely perceived by African-American women that straight hair is viewed as more professional. Women who feel pressured to straighten their hair for reasons related to this perception cite the fact that many high-profile professional Black women still straighten their hair. There are, of course, very prominent exceptions, including: Ursula Burns

Ursula Burns

Ursula M. Burns serves as chairwoman and CEO of Xerox. She is the first African-American woman CEO to head a Fortune 500 company. She is also the first woman to succeed another woman as head of a Fortune 500 company...

, the first Black CEO of a Fortune 500 company and Leah Ward Sears

Leah Ward Sears

Leah Ward Sears is an American jurist and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Sears was the first African-American female Chief Justice in the United States...

, the first Black Chief Justice of a state court in the United States.

In 1971 Melba Tolliver

Melba Tolliver

Melba Tolliver is an American journalist and former New York City news anchor and reporter. She is best remembered for her defiant stance against ABC owned WABC-TV when she refused to don a wig or scarf to cover up her Afro in order to cover the White House wedding of President Richard Nixon's...

, a WABC-TV correspondent, made national headlines when she wore an afro while covering the wedding of Tricia Nixon Cox, daughter of President Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

. The station threatened to take Tolliver off of the air until the story caught national attention.

In 1981 Dorothy Reed, a reporter for KGO-TV

KGO-TV

KGO-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, based in San Francisco, California...

, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco, was suspended for wearing her hair in cornrows with beads on the ends. KGO called her hairstyle "inappropriate and distracting." After two weeks of a public dispute, an NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...

demonstration outside of the station, and negotiations, Reed and the station reached an agreement. The company paid her lost salary and she removed the colored beads. She returned to the air, still braided, but beadless.

A 1998 incident became national news when Ruth Ann Sherman, a teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn

Bushwick, Brooklyn

Bushwick is a neighborhood in the northern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood, formerly Brooklyn's 18th Ward, is now part of Brooklyn Community Board 4...

, introduced her students to the book Nappy Hair by African American author Carolivia Herron

Carolivia Herron

Carolivia Herron is a Jewish American writer of children's and adult literature, and a scholar of African-American Judaica.-Personal life:She was born to Oscar Smith Herron and Georgia Carol Herron, in Washington D.C....

. Sherman, who is white, was criticized by parents of black children, who thought that the book presented a negative stereotype.

On Wednesday, April 4, 2007 radio talk-show host Don Imus

Don Imus

John Donald "Don" Imus, Jr. is an American radio host, humorist, philanthropist and writer. His nationally-syndicated talk show, Imus in the Morning, is broadcast throughout the United States by Citadel Media and relayed on television by the Fox Business Network.-Personal life:Imus was born in...

referred to the Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

women's basketball team playing in the Women's NCAA Championship game as a group of "nappy-headed hos" during his Imus in the Morning
Imus in the Morning
Imus in the Morning is an American radio show hosted by Don Imus on Cumulus Media Networks , and simulcast for television on Fox Business Network....

show. Bernard McGuirk

Bernard McGuirk

* Bulleted list itemBernard J. McGuirk is the executive producer of the Imus in the Morning radio program. He was born and raised in the South Bronx, New York, where he also worked in his younger years as a taxicab driver...

then compared the game to "the jigaboos versus the wannabes," alluding to Spike Lee

Spike Lee

Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983....

's film School Daze
School Daze
School Daze is a 1988 American musical-drama film, written and directed by Spike Lee, and starring Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell-Martin...

. Imus apologized two days later, after receiving criticism. CBS Radio canceled Don Imus' morning show on Thursday, April 12, 2007.

During August 2007, American Lawyer Magazine reported that an unnamed junior Glamour Magazine

Glamour magazine

Glamour magazine means:* Glamour magazine, a U.S. publication aimed at a predominantly female readership* a girlie magazine aimed at a male readership featuring photographs of women...

staffer did a presentation on the "Dos and Don'ts of Corporate Fashion" for Cleary Gottlieb, a New York City law firm. There was a slide show where the woman made negative remarks about black women's natural hairstyles in the workplace, calling them "shocking," "inappropriate," and "political." Both the law firm and Glamour Magazine issued apologies to the staff. However, natural afro hair texture continues to be an issue in US workplaces.

In 2009, Chris Rock produced Good Hair
Good Hair
Good Hair is a 2009 American comedy documentary film produced by Chris Rock Productions and HBO Films, starring and narrated by comedian Chris Rock. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2009, Good Hair was released to select theaters in the United States by Roadside Attractions...

, a film which addresses a number of issues pertaining to African American hair, including the styling industry surrounding it, the acceptable look of African American women's hair in society, and the effects of both upon African American culture.

Natural black hair in other diasporic black populations

See Main Article: Rastafari Movement
Rastafari movement
The Rastafari movement or Rasta is a new religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, which at the time was a country with a predominantly Christian culture where 98% of the people were the black descendants of slaves. Its adherents worship Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia , as God...

Natural black hair styling

Because of the highly politicized nature of natural black hair in the United States of America and the intersectional

Intersectionality

pressures faced by black women in particular, the care and styling of natural black hair has become an enormous industry. Throughout the United States, there are a number of salons and beauty supply stores that cater solely to clients with natural afro-textured hair. Online forums, social networking groups and web-logs have also become enormously popular resources for Blacks in the exchange of styling ideas, techniques, and hair-care procedures.

There are a number of specific hair-styles that are commonplace in the canon of styles for natural Black hair, many the result of the experimentation of African slaves in the Western colonies. The afro

Afro

is a large, often spherical growth of afro-textured hair popular in the Black power movement. The afro has a number of variants including the "afro-puff" and a variant in which the afro is treated with a blow dryer to become a flowing mane. The hi-top fade
Hi-top fade
A hi-top fade is a style of haircut where hair on the sides is cut off or kept very short and hair on the top of the head is very long . The hi-top has been a trend symbolizing the Golden Era of hip hop and urban contemporary music during the late 1980s and the early 1990s...

was common among African-American men in the 1980s and has since been replaced in popularity by the Caesar hair cut

Caesar cut

The Caesar cut is a men's hairstyle with a short, horizontally straight cut fringe. The hair is layered to around 2-5 cm all over. It is named after Julius Caesar, whose images frequently depict him wearing his hair in such a manner....

. Other styles include plaits or braids, the two-strand twist and basic twists all of which can form into manicured dreadlocks if the hair is allowed to knit together in the style-pattern. Basic twists include finger-coils and comb-coil twists. Dreadlocks, also called "dreads," "locks" or "locs," can also be formed by allowing the hairs to weave together on their own from an afro.

Manicured locks - alternatively called salon, or fashion locks - alone have a large variety of styling options that involve strategic parting, sectioning and patterning of the dreads. Popular dreadlocked styles include cornrows, the braid-out style or lock crinkles, the basket weave and pipe-cleaner curls. Others include a variety of dreaded mohawks or lock-hawks, a variety of braided buns and combinations of basic style elements.

Natural hair can also be styled into bantu knots, which involves sectioning the hair with square or triangular parts and fastening it into tight knots on the head. Bantu knots can be made from both loose natural hair as well as dreadlocks. When braided flat against the scalp, natural hair can be worn as basic cornrows or form a countless variety of artistic patterns.

Other styles include the "natural" (also known as a mini-fro or "teenie weenie afro") and "microcoils" for close-cropped hair, the twist-out and braid-out, "brotherlocks" and "Sisterlocks," the fade and any combination of styles such as cornrows and afro-puff.

It is important to note that an overwhelming majority of Black hair styles involve parting the natural into individual sections before styling. Research shows that excessive braiding, tight cornrows, relaxing and vigorous dry combing of afro-textured hair can be harmful to the hair and scalp. They have also been known to cause ailments such as alopecia, balding at the edges, excessive dry scalp and bruises on the scalp.

Keeping hair moisturized, trimming ends, and using very little to no heat will prevent breakage and split ends which are all important for the care of natural and even relaxed hair.

Structure

Evolution

Continental Africa

Oceanic, Asian, Polynesian and Melanesian people

Trans-Atlantic slave trade

Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade

The rise of Black pride

Controversy over natural Afro-textured hair in the United States

Natural black hair in other diasporic black populations

Natural black hair styling

See also