Senior year of college was my hair year.
Perhaps it was the uncertainty of the future.
Perhaps it was the knowledge that whatever that uncertain future held, it would probably require dress pants.
The fact that Rihanna was in herUnapologetic-era probably didnt hurt.
It was also very on-trend.
Tumblr and Pinterest were flooded with images of young women, mostly white, with long, pastel waves.
Byrdie
On white girls, its fun and edgy; on us, its ghetto.
What struck me thenand, honestly, nowis that she wasnt necessarily wrong.
Going even slightly over felt like it could throw my entire social standing in flux.
C Flanigan /Getty Images / Byrdie
Yet still, up until that point, I had never actually challenged respectability politics within myself.
What better way to convey sexuality and deviance than to adopt that which is associated with Blackness?
So while we are re-examining, we’ve still got a long way to go.
Joe Kohen / Contributor / Getty Images
Not everything washes out as easily as pigmented curl cream.
Wolcott VW.Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit.
Univ of North Carolina Press; 2001.
2018;23(3):163-179.
Strings S.Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia.
NYU Press; 2019.
