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Running Head: VISUAL DOCUMENTARY SOCIAL MEDIA AND NATURAL HAIR

Brittney Seals

A Visual Documentary on the Natural Hair Movement in Social Media

More Than a Fro

John Carroll University

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Statement of Topic

This capstone project is a short film about the recent Natural Hair Movement that has

swept almost every media outlet in the past few years. In this film, I gave a short history of black

hair before and after slavery. This film explores how the construction of Eurocentric beauty

standards in western society has subjected black women as the other compared to white

women. Dark skin and nappy hair was deemed ugly in American society because of the fierce

racism that has plagued America since the first African was stolen from the shores of west Africa

and made a slave (Jefferies & Jefferies, 2014; Banks, 2000; Oyedemi, 2016). Media has played a

huge role in preserving that image during and after slavery to keep black people at a

psychologically inferior state (Jefferies & Jefferies, 2014; Banks, 2000; Oyedemi, 2016). This

film presents facts and personal accounts of how those images have effected black womens

sense of self identity and beauty. Although some people would argue that racism has died and

America has entered a post racial society, women who have felt the need to straighten their kinky

hair in order to assimilate to Eurocentric beauty standards and be taken seriously in this country,

have an opposite story to tell.

I have conducted interviews with black women who have had natural hair all their lives

and women who are going through the transitioning process, from having relaxed hair to natural

hair. During the interview process I asked the women if their experience in society has been

different because of how they wear their hair. I also asked women if they know about the history

of black hair and if they understand why black women have started a culture of hair straightening

instead of embracing their natural look. Also during the research process, I analyzed how this

was not considered a movement until mainstream media began to represent more black women

with kinky hair in commercials, TV shows, and other television broadcast productions. The
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Natural Hair Movement in media started as a grassroots movement by black women on social

media that were vlogging/blogging, tweeting, and posting on other various social networks about

natural hair care and the importance of black women owning their nappy hair instead of

repressing it with chemicals and heat.

A specific content area that I have addressed in this project is based on a philosophical

argument made by Lorraine OGrady in her essay Olympias Maid: Reclaiming Black Female

Subjectivity. Her focus is on how the identity of the black woman has been erased after they

were colonized by Europeans and art (or media) plays a large role in reconstructing how people

see black women and ultimately how black women see themselves. Many black women have

internalized the belief that their natural hair is unruly and ugly because that is what has been

perpetuated in media. It was not until black women began to write their own narrative about

black hair being beautiful that it started to become popular in mainstream media. For years, black

women were denied the right to represent themselves in media because the media production

industry has been dominated by white males historically (OGrady, 1992). Now that there is

more representation in media of black women wearing their hair natural, it is becoming

normalized in black communities and around the country. Social media has given black women

the platform to make this possible.

Being a communications major, I have learned that media plays a huge role in how

people see the world around them. My Branding class showed me that companies and even

people make certain decisions about how they are shown in media in order to influence a certain

belief about their brand. For example, I was assigned to analyze the brand of John Carroll

University and during my research I learned that everything down to the school colors are

dedicated to forming a brand positioning in the minds of consumers. When the John Carroll
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name is attached to something people automatically think of the Jesuit mission of social justice

because that is how the brand is represented in media. This same concept can be applied to how

black hair is viewed in the media, however, black women did not brand the way they are

represented in media. Colonizers have created the image of black women in the media with an

agenda to hold them to an inferior position which is an argument I will discuss further in my

project.

A few of my classes in philosophy were also based on how art, photography, and different

forms of media has influenced cultures and perceptions all over the world. Recently, I learned in

my Documentary in Film and TV class that the first forms of film that became extremely popular

were propaganda. For example, Nazi Germany used film to gain the support of the German

population. Communist propaganda made people believe that this system would save Germany

from its severe economic downfall. It also fueled the Holocaust by creating negative perceptions

through derogatory images of Jewish people. It is important to understand that media gave a

platform for this huge social movement to happen although it was a tragedy, it shows that media

can fulfil a negative agenda if used in that way. With this knowledge I will apply it to how the

connotation of natural hair on black women was turned into something negative because of

racism in American society.

Purpose and Significance

This topic is important because social media has given black women the ability to reclaim

their subjectivity by allowing them a way to create their own image. According to author

Adreana Young (2016) from Editor & Publisher, Over the last six years, the number of

(smartphone) users [internationally] has grown from more than 62 million users in 2010 to more

than 207 million this year. That number is expected to rise to nearly 237 million by 2019.
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(Young, 2016). Eighty one percent of Americans have or used to have, social media accounts

according to Statista (2016). This popular medium has given a multiplicity of people the ability

to connect with one another from different cities, states, or countries. It provides unfiltered

opinions and micro-scale accounts of large events and movements happening around the world.

It gives a perspective beyond what is portrayed on the news. This new medium is taking all

media through a drastic transition once again.

Black women have utilized social media sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter,

by writing online blogs about hair care and making video blogs, called vlogs of tutorials on

how to do different hairstyles that are catered to women with tightly coiled hair. Their goal is to

spread confidence within the black community about their natural hair texture and dismantle

generational erasure of African American hair textures through chemical relaxers and damaging

hot combs.

Many people in America do not understand the significant role hair can play in a persons

livelihood. That is only because not many people in America have been turned down from a job

because of their hair or have been sent home from school because their hair was unruly and

distracting. These are situations that black women in America know all too well (Banks, 2000).

Black women are born with hair that holds a history of negative stereotypes attached to it. They

are taking it upon themselves to challenge Eurocentric beauty standards and dismantle

internalized hatred of black hair within black women.

This project is important to my professional goals because it will outline a future film

project I plan to work on extensively. This capstone project will provide me with background

research and a treatment I will need to continue with pre-production of an actual documentary

film. I will gain more experience planning shoots, directing, and creating a vision for video
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projects. Also, I will have the chance to exemplify the skills in video editing I have gained in

Adobe Premier Pro.

Going natural has been a great learning experience for me. During this process, I have

connected with myself and my culture more than I ever have in my life. The Natural Hair

Movement has influenced a great awakening for myself and many other black women across the

country. I would like to share this experience with people who may not be familiar with black

hair and are curious and with other black women who are also going through the same struggle.

Hopefully this project will show them that they are not alone in this journey. I want this project

to show gratitude to the women who started the social media movement and continue to uplift

and push positive images of black women with natural hair.

This topic is significant because black women possess two identities that are oppressed in

American society; their race and their gender. As women, they are subjected to abide by

unnatural American beauty standards which are problematic for all women. Inauthentic images

of women that are pushed in the media can put social pressure on young girls and women to want

to change the way they look. These images are also racialized, meaning the ideal beautiful

woman in American has light skin and straight hair. This leaves black women out of the realm of

American beauty at birth. They inherit features such as dark skin and tightly coiled hair that are

consider not beautiful at birth. I think it is amazing that there is a push to normalize black hair.

For so long it has been made invisible because black women began straightening their hair and

their daughters hair. The Natural Hair Movement is an attempt to reconnect with what has been

generationally pushed out of African American culture (Jefferies & Jefferies, 2014).

This topic is also significant because it shows the power of social media images.

Perspectives can be changed by the right media tactics. As social media become more popular
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there is more discussion amongst people about different social issues in America. Social media

provides much more diverse perspectives than mainstream media. People can create content that

is more relatable to groups outside of the majority demographic unlike mainstream media where

networks will promote and air certain things based on success in ratings. Later in this proposal I

will talk about how the Natural Hair Movement began to change its audiences perspective of

natural hair and how this started to change images in mainstream media. It also changed how

ethnic hair care brands market their products and the sales for permanent relaxers began to

decline.

Literature Review
To understand why hair is a key point in discussing the marginalization of black women it

is important to take note of the deep history behind African American hair. Most of the research

that I have done to prepare for this documentary involved looking at how black women were

represented in western art and contemporary media. Past research on this subject often suggest

that whiteness is the blueprint for western beauty standards, and the features of black people

were a symbol of their subordination (McLean & Rudman, 2016; Oyedemi, 2015; Jefferies &

Jefferies, 2015; Nelson, 2010). Media representation give European features a halo effect,

which suggests that what is beautiful is good and what is ugly is bad Naturally kinky black hair

has had a long-standing reputation of being ugly, dirty, and unkempt from misrepresentation of

black women in media caused by racism (McLean & Rudman, 2015). The documentary Good

Hair (2009) directed by Chris Rock challenged the dominant belief that black hair is inherently

ugly and needs to be fixed. Rocks examination of good hair and bad hair in his

documentary gives a visual narrative to a method of racial subordination that is harder to detect
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than Jim Crow laws. It is not unconstitutional to internalize implicit messages of racism through

aesthetics.

Toks Oyedemi (2016), argues in his academic article that bias against black hair is as old

as America itself (p. 539). African culture was immediately erased as they were brought over to

be slaves during the Atlantic Slave Trade. African American people had no choice but to

assimilate and adopt European ways of life in order to survive during and after slavery. Many

black people internalized the belief that their natural hair was unacceptable, further erasing kinky

African hair from American society (Oyedemi, 2016; Banks, 2010). Black women straightened

their bushy afros in order to strip themselves of some of the blackness that would prevent them

from obtaining jobs and being able to support their families (Banks, 2010)

The belief that African hair is unruly and unacceptable has been internalized by black

and white Americans. Historically blackness was thought to be animalistic in America. Black

hair was described to be closer to sheeps wool rather than human hair because of its texture

(Oyedemi, 2016). The idea that African people were more like animals rather than humans

justified their exclusion from the American inalienable rights of freedom and liberty that were

promised in the Constitution. These same notions of dehumanization are persistent today in the

implicit appearance stigmas that white people have about black women who wear their natural

hair (Oyedemi, 2016).

At the time that Chris Rocks Good Hair documentary was made, in 2009, chemical

relaxers or perms were a very popular practice in black communities among many women and

some men. Rock interviewed women in hair salons around the country to find out why women

use these harsh chemicals to relax their natural kinks and curls. Many of the women he spoke to

admitted that their notion of good hair was relaxed and straight. He learned that many black
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women risk their health by using these relaxers in order to straighten their hair and assimilate to

beauty standards in America.

In a study by Laurie Rudman and Meghan McLean (2015) using the aesthetic Implicit

Association Test (IAT), it was found that the African American experience in America is greatly

affected by appearance stigmas things that are assumed because their appearance is associated

with certain notions or beliefs. It was found that black and white Americans associated white

people with attractiveness more than black people on the aesthetic IAT. Participants in the study

favored black women with chemically relaxed hair over black women who wore their hair in its

natural state and believed that relaxers were useful for the attractiveness of black women.

(McLean & Rudman, 2015).

Appearance stigmas influence minority groups to adopt western ideal aesthetics (light

skin, straight hair, European facial features, etc.) as preference (McLean & Rudman, 2015)

because they are constantly represented in media as the beauty standard. Anything outside of that

is considered as the other, or not attractive. Black people are born with features, such as dark

skin and kinky hair, that are associated with negative stereotypes and notions of ugliness (Good

Hair, 2009). This has resulted in black women constantly looking for an antidote for their

problematic hair.

Chemical relaxers or perms contain sodium hydroxide that can be extremely dangerous,

but it will permanently straighten a black womans kinky hair. The Good Hair documentary

showed black women and girls as young as 6 years old in hair salons getting their hair

chemically relaxed to obtain what they believed to be good hair. This cultural violence against

kinky hair has been persistent though many generations of black women. I was 7 years old when

my mother first put a chemical relaxer in my hair. However, now that the natural hair movement
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has revolutionized how black women see their hair in popular culture today, my 7-year-old

cousins do not even know what a chemical relaxer is. According to an article on the CNBC News

website by Nana Sidibe, chemical relaxer sales have gone down 34 percent since 2009.

Jeffries & Jeffries (2015) investigated a play called Funny House of the Negro written by

Adrienne Kennedy and the documentary Good Hair directed by Chris Rock in this article

Reclaiming our Roots: The influences of media curriculum on the Natural Hair Movement.

They argue that the dominant culture in America have had the authority to create images in

media over time. As we know, America has had a horrific past when it comes to racism and

discrimination against African American people. In the beginnings of media production black

people were either not represented at all, or represented in a very negative and stereotypical light

(Jefferies & Jefferies, 2014).

Media texts are multiple forms of commercials, public service communication,

including radio, television, and internet programs, box office films, advertisements, and so on,

that intend to indirectly convey representations of the world to the world (Jeffries & Jeffries,

2015). Media play a huge role in representing things in the world that you do not usually have

access to. If the only perspective that you have of a group of people comes from what is

represented on TV and other media outlets your perspective can easily be manipulated about that

group of people. The appearance stigma that black women were given in America comes from

media disregarding the beauty of their natural hair and maliciously redefining it as bad hair to

keep blackness inferior to whiteness (Jefferies & Jefferies, 2015).

Lears (1985) used a theoretical framework inspired by Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramscis

concept of cultural hegemony, which suggests that a dominant culture imposes norms of society

in a way that coerces their subordinates to bandwagon the dominate social way of living (Lears,
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1985). Images produced before media was readily available to a multiplicity of people, were

controlled mostly by white men (Nelson, 2010). Since white people have been the dominant

culture in America since the 1700s, Jefferies & Jefferies (2015) analysis of Kennedys and

Rocks visual media pieces shows what happens when black people are given access to the

means of production a medium that allows them to represent themselves to mainstream

audiences. In the play, Funny House of the Negro Kennedy explores the reasons why identity

formation for African Americans remains in a state of unrest, with stereotypes being major

contributor to this constant state of flux (Jefferies & Jefferies, 2015, p. 163). Like the recent

natural hair movement that young black women have started on social media, both of the pieces

that Jefferies & Jefferies chose to examine were groundbreaking in questioning the culture of

discrimination against black hair. It forced black women think about why these stigmas about

their hair exist.

Recent work on the Natural Hair Movement also challenge the popular negative

perceptions of black natural hair. Phelps-Ward & Laura (2016) talk about how young YouTube

bloggers are taking over the conversation towards natural hair by promoting self-love, black hair

care, and counter narratives to the dominant discourse produced by mainstream media that

emerged from racial discrimination in toward black women and their hair (Phelps-Ward, Laura,

p. 808). Since the Natural Hair Movement is such a current concept, there has not been much

academic work done on how it hair revolutionized how black women view themselves and how

people look at natural black hair.

The current natural hair movement owes much of its success to social media. Phelps-

Ward and Laura (2016) spoke to a 17-year-old girl who made a YouTube documentary

emphasizing the importance of answering developmental questions that are hard for black girls
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to get answers to because their culture was erased during slavery. YouTube blogs such as this one

are important because they center the lived experiences and perspectives that black girls have of

themselves which are not always present in mainstream media or within the academic literature.

During a focus group of African American girls, it was found that when girls reported strong

identifications with their race that did not align with Eurocentric culture, they also reported

increased levels of self-confidence, which served to promote positive body image (Phelps-

Ward, Laura, p. 810). When black girls have a stronger racial identity, and are not always trying

to imitate a Eurocentric standard of beauty promotes black women and girls to embrace their

own beauty.

I plan on adding to the current state of knowledge in this topic by emphasizing the

importance of social media to the impact of the natural hair movement. A big part of research

that I think is missing is how the ability to produce media has spread to common people and

added more prospective to mainstream media. The Natural Hair Movement started as a

grassroots movement and worked its way in to pop culture from going viral on social media. My

research questions are:

Q1: Is the Natural hair movement about something bigger than just hair?

Q2: Has the Natural Hair Movement given black women the ability to reclaim their subjectivity?

Q2: Is social media

Research Plan

To make this documentary I used multiple resources from the Center for Digital Media in

the Grasselli Library. I used lighting panels depending on-location, external microphones, and

cameras. So far I have been producing this documentary without the help of a crew. I plan to
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schedule a date to shoot b-roll footage at a hair salon with hair stylists that specialize in natural

hair on Mayfield Road called So Curly, So Kinky, So Straight. I must produce consent forms

for everyone that agrees to be on camera. During this time, I will conduct on location interviews

with clients asking them the following questions: Is your hair natural? If not, when did you start

straightening your hair? If so, have you worn your hair natural all your life? If you have not been

natural all your life, when did you make the transition to from straight hair to natural hair? How

was your natural hair journey? Why did you decide to go natural? (Or for women who have

always been natural.) Why did you decide to not permanently straighten your hair? Finally, I will

ask the women will they permanently straighten their childrens in the future? Why or why not?

I chose these questions because in the hair salon, I am aiming to show the results on the

recent Natural Hair Movement. This scene will tell a story of how this social media movement is

currently shaping the beliefs about black hair held by black women. I will also interview a few of

the stylists that work in the salon. They will be asked the following questions: What is good hair?

How is your job different from that of any other hair stylist? How long have you been a hair

stylist? About how many or your clients have natural hair? About how many have straight hair?

Have you observed a difference in these numbers over time? About how many perms do you do

in a month? Has this number changed overtime? What is the transitioning process? How does it

affect your clients? What advice do you have for black women who are struggling with their

hair?

Since these women are most familiar with natural hair, I can ask them more detailed

questions about natural hair. In this segment, I want to dig into their knowledge about what is

needed to maintain healthy natural hair for black women. Sometimes, depending on the financial

situation, when black women are making their transition from having chemically straightened
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hair to all natural hair, they get help from these hair stylists. Therefore, they are more than

qualified to inform my audience about the transitioning process and the emotional journey many

women face while going natural. This is a scene of the documentary that I have not yet finished

this semester.

I conducted a series of interviews with different groups of women. I spoke to the founder

of Blossom to Beauty hair blog, Victoria Webster. During this interview she old her story about

how she got started and how she was inspired by the natural hair movement. She gives the

audience context to the Natural Hair Movement in social media. I would like to interview white

women about their hair to show the contrast between how black and white women feel about

their hair. I will also ask white women some of the same questions that I ask black women about

their hair earlier in this paper. Like; how much time do you spend on your hair a day? How often

do you visit the hair dresser? How much money do you spend your hair a month?

I have also interviewed 5 black women who are going through the transitioning process

and women who have had natural hair all their lives. I will asked these women to explain the

Natural Hair Movement and explain how it has affected their lives. The women who have

chemically straightened their hair at some point in time have knowledge of what it feels like to

internalize Eurocentric beauty standards. They can spoke on how these standards of beauty

shaped the way they view themselves and their ideal of what beautiful hair is supposed to look

like. Transitioning women, like myself, also spoke on how the Natural Hair Movement has made

them question dominant standards of beauty in America that have devalued black hair and helped

them see the beauty in their natural hair.

The women that have been natural all their lives can speak on the experiences of black

women before the Natural Hair Movement in social media became popular. One of the women
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that I interviewed is my aunt, Kimberly Johnson, who lived through the first Natural Hair

Movement in the 60s and 70s. In her interview, she went into detail about the difference between

the two movements. During the interview filming process, I realized that my sociology professor

was very knowledgeable on the subject and he agreed to be interviewed for the documentary. He

spoke about the historical trauma that black people have faced because of their hair texture. He

gave context to a lot of the research that I have already done. I would also like to interview Dr.

Malia McAndrew, who is a history teacher in the Women and Genders Study department here at

John Carroll, so that she can give a brief history of how media exploited the image of black hair

throughout history. She can also speak on how images played a huge part in furthering the racial

divide in America. Images in media have also stirred up huge social movements by altering

peoples perspectives. I would like to ask her if she sees remnants of that in the current Natural

Hair Movement where the women who participate in it combating the old images and ideas of

black women with natural hair being ugly.

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Treatment

Working Title: More Than a Fro

Logline: Black women are using various forms of social media as a platform to construct and
embrace their own image, which was historically erased by racial discrimination, by starting the
grassroots Natural Hair Movement.
Introduction of Characters:
Zakiyyah Malik (Zak)- She has been natural all her life. Her mother used to get relaxers,
however, she did not relax Zak nor her little sisters hair. She believes that her mother saw the
damage being done to black womens self-esteem from perpetual hair straightening and that is
why her mother chose not to straighten her childrens hair. Zak admits that she was insecure
about her natural hair texture growing up. She admired girls who had long straight hair because
that was all she saw on television when she was a little girl. Zak educated the audience on the
uniqueness of black hair and she loves getting her hair done because of how versatile she can be
with styles. She talks about how the natural hair movement is inspiring to her because it provides
more representation of black women with kinky hair like hers. Zak is the character in the film
that provides context of black hair culture and how it differs from white hair culture. This shows
the importance of diversifying beauty standards in the media because one image does not fit the
multitude of women in this country.
Naudia Loftis- She has just recently done the big chop. She is still not fully content with this
drastic change that she has made to her hair. She talks about how her family is also indifferent
about the change because it is something that they are not used to seeing. Naudia expresses that
she has gone natural because of the harm that was done to her hair from harsh chemical relaxers
she used to straighten it. She says that the natural hair movement has provided her the courage to
change her hair ritual and get rid of the damaging chemicals. Since she did not want to go
through the long process of transitioning, she chopped all her permed hair off. She believes that
she is getting more support from her friends here at John Carroll because we are understanding
of how oppression of the black identity has caused internalized hate within the black community
towards their own hair. She hopes that her family back home will understand that she has made
the best decision for herself and learn to accept it as she is still learning to accept herself.
Victoria Webster- She is the CEO of Blossom 2 Beauty hair blog and she went natural about 6
years ago. Her role as a beauty blogger is vital in the natural hair movement because without
women like her, it would not exist. She gives product reviews for black natural hair, she teaches
women how to do different styles, she also gives suggestions on what type of product would be
best for different types of hair textures. She uses her natural hair journey as a source of
inspiration for other women who are also going through the process or interested in learning
more about the importance of the natural hair movement.
Christina- Another woman who has been inspired by the natural hair movement. She talks about
how she has learned lot of her natural hair methods from YouTube blogs. She speaks about the
trouble that she had excepting her natural hair because she went natural before it was widely
accepted.
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Whitney- She went natural 3 years ago. Whitney speaks about how she is seeing natural hair
being normalized in the media and it is inspiring. She thinks that soon, natural hair will be the
norm in the black community and little girls will not be begging their mothers to perm their hair
like she did.
Kenneth Chaplin- He has a PhD in sociology and teaches here at John Carroll. His role is to
speak on the historical role of hair in the black community. He explains that there is a history of
black people being discriminated against because of their hair and this has caused them to
internalize a hate for their own hair texture.
Act I: The opening will set the foundation of the entire documentary by portraying the
difference between how black women and white women are shown in mainstream media. There
will be a montage of black women talking about how this has effected the way they see
themselves.
Act II: The interviewees telling their natural hair journey stories and showing pictures of their
growth since they went natural. During this part where the audience will see how difficult the
process of going natural is. It will explore how much money black women spend on their hair
during the transition process and other trials and tribulations. Hair plays an important role in
shaping a persons identity and many women who go natural feel that they go through an identity
crisis during the process. During the middle of the movie the audience will also learn more about
the history of discrimination against black hair in America. I spoke with sociology professor Dr.
Kenneth Chaplin about systematic issues that affect how white people perceive black hair.
Act III: The climax of the story will be the characters saying how they have been inspired by the
natural hair movement and how it is changing the way that mainstream media represents black
women. They will tell their own stories of how they have accepted their identity at the end of
their natural hair journey. The closing scene will portray current image of black women rocking
their natural afros in commercials, tv shows, movies, and magazine covers.
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References

Banks, Ingrid (2000). Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women's Consciousness. New

York: New York University Press. 197pp.

Gabbara, P., & Bobo, M. (2017). Beauty Unwrapped. Ebony, 72(5), 43.

Halloway, J. (September 8, 2016). The Natural Hair Movement: A Fight for Your Right to Curls.

Glamour: News and Politics. Retrieved February 6, 2017 from

http://www.glamour.com/story/the-natural-hair-movement-a-fight-for-your-right-to-curls

Jeffries, R. B., & Jeffries, D. (2014). Reclaiming Our Roots: The Influences of Media

Curriculum on the Natural Hair Movement. Multicultural Perspectives.16(3), 160-165

Jones, Mikala (Producer & Editor). (March, 2017). Black womens hair throughout history

[Documentary]. United States: Buzzfeed Motion Pictures. (2mins 11secs).

Nelson, C. A. (2010). representing the black female subject in western art. New York.

Routledge.

OGrady, L. (1992). Olympias Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity. Lorraine OGrady.

Retrieved February 6, 2017 from http://lorraineogrady.com/writing/olympias-maid-1992-

1994/

Oyedemi, T. (2016). Beauty as violence: beautiful hair and the cultural violence of identity

erasure. Social Identities, 22(5), 537-553.

Rock, C. (Producer), & Stilson, J. (Director). (2009). Good Hair [Documentary]. United States:

Chris Rock Entertainment and HBO Films. (50mins)

Robin J. Phelps-Ward, Crystal T, Laura. (2016). Talking back in cyberspace: self-love, hair care,
and counter narratives in black adolescent girls YouTube vlogs. Gender and Education.
28(9). P.807-820
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Saro-Wiwa, Z. (2012). Black Women's Transitions to Natural Hair. New York Times. p. 1.

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