Selling Blackness... And Hair Products

When I first discovered the hair chart, it seemed like a great way to identify products and styles that people of certain hair textures could do without altering the natural state of their hair. Now, hair typing is starting to feel just as constricting as perms and straighteners were.

The chart was good for me, in the beginning. Thanks to the 1-4c characteristics, I could finally tell my mother, who thought my hair was nappy because I wasn't using the right products, that my hair texture was permanent and that I’d never look like the curly-haired Black girls in videos and tv shows... and that I didn’t want to. The chart helped me realize that I wasn't doing anything wrong with my hair and that there were other people in the world with similar textures — other than my siblings.

It's important to note that while I was Growing up, I was never allowed to wear my hair out, though I often wanted to. There were two main reasons for that. Firstly, if my hair wasn't braided down, I was open to receiving nasty looks from strangers and familiars alike. Throughout my childhood, I heard many an insult about my hair texture from both adults and children. One time, when I was a teenager, a hairdresser jokingly told me her shop was closed because she didn't want to do my hair (child, how times have CHANGED). The second reason my hair couldn't be left out is that, due to the coarse texture, my hair would kink into itself, causing knots and tangles that were sure to cause me grave pain when it came time to have my hair combed.

Fortunately, my Mother is quite the resilient woman, who mainly did my hair herself and never had it relaxed — though her ow hair was. My hair was mainly braided for the first 15 years of my life, aside from picture-day presses with a hot comb (which would never last more than 24 hours). I believed myself to be some kind of an anomaly because none of my peers or adults around me seemed to have my texture hair. It wasn’t until I was a 16-year-old with heat damage that I began wearing my natural hair out without braid extensions and without straightening it. That's when I began researching hairstyles and products and learned about "4c" kinky hair. The discovery that so many other people had my texture of hair that it had it's own category was comforting, not because I hated my hair, but because it didn't seem like I could relate to any one on that level. No one I knew, outside of my siblings and mother, shared my experiences with having nearly uncombable tresses. My world was small and no one in it was nappy and happy like I was. At first, the hair-chart was a saving grace; it was evidence that I was real and my experiences were legitimate.

However, I have no come to the conclusion that the hair chart is being used to sell products and put people into boxes that they can’t fit in perfectly. It seems like the chart may also be being used as a measure of Blackness for some people. For instance, a woman I know asked me to help her type her hair; I told her that it might be a mixture, but that I'd guess 3b. She was up in arms. She felt insulted because she believed her hair was 4b, she considered anything lower than that could only be attributed to a mixed-race person. If it weren’t a measure of one Blackness, or even worthiness to identify as such, why would any of us be upset about where we lie on the chart? If it were just a simple tool to help us Black people choose the proper products and hairstyles, why would YouTubers spread false information and intentionally mislabel their videos with titles such as “how to grow 4C hair?” The number of videos I’ve clicked on labeled “for 4c hair” and encountered a person who would be typed anywhere from 3a to 4a, but certainly not 4c is alarming. The use of the hair chart makes me question if we have simply abandoned an old system, just to end up confining ourselves to a new system so that we, as Black people, are perpetually uncomfortable.

Personally, I’m done with hair typing. Not only does it feel a little too subjective to be of any further use to me, but it feels like a marketing ploy to pigeon hold me to boxes that I’m trying to break free of. I’ve gathered all of the actual education out of the hair chart that I possibly could, so I think I can move on. As for my new way of characterizing hair? If you were never called nappy-headed as an insult or had your natural hair laughed at as a child, then we’re probably not the same “hair type” — and as long as we understand each other on that level, I say we’re good *shrugs*.