For most of us the way we look is an important part of who we are and how we want people to view us. Our appearances have taken on a very large role in our lives, impacting everything from the kind of mate that we can attract to the kind of job that we can land. We spend countless amounts of hours in front of mirrors just to make sure that we can present ourselves to world in an acceptable manner. Central to that presentation of ourselves to others is our hair. Hair has a massive impact on our self esteem and on our identities as not only individuals but as ethnicities and people. Just by the texture of a person's hair we can make assumptions about who they are, where they are from and what they want you to think about them. We can tell if they are studious, or if they are lazy. We can tell if they are traditionalist or if they are adventurous. We can make up in our minds an entire albeit possibly totally incorrect portrait of a person whom we in-fact know absolutely nothing about.
TV, movies, magazines and just media in general play such a large part in out lives that we cannot help but be shaped by what we see. We spend so much time watching TV and listening to ads that we begin to want what we are told that we want and feel the way that we are told we feel. This manifest itself in everything from the clothes we buy, to the food we eat to what we feel is the right way to behave and what we think is beautiful. Beauty is one of the most subjective concepts we have as human beings so it would be foolish to think that even personal preference is not highly influenced by our society. Whether or not you are attracted to something that society says you should be attracted to or not is still a function of what society has to say. Being rebellious only means that you are choosing to do something opposite to what you are being told to do so what you are being told to do still greatly influences your decisions whether or not you take the advice.
As a black man who grew up in America I often find myself torn between what i feel like i should be attracted to and what i feel like I am actually attracted to. The women who i see on screen and I Identify as beautiful often have a certain set of features. Skin color does not make any difference to me because i have been taught that beauty comes in all colors but i have not been taught that it comes in all hair textures. Despite the ethnic background of an actress one of the most likely things that she will have in common with any other actress is a hair style. It may not be the same color or in the same do but more than likely its long, flowing and straight; it's sort of a prototype for what American Beauty looks like. Even though i consider myself and intellectual who can differentiate what real beauty is from what Hollywood beauty is; when you are constantly bombarded with images of what you should like you will be affected even if minimally. Actresses want to be beautiful so they dress themselves according to what is considered beautiful, and the women who watch them do the same in-turn. In my opinion this has caused more than a generation of Black women to not love themselves enough to be proud of their natural hair. They don't think that men will consider them beautiful so they go out of their way to look the way they think men will like and that sort of thinking gets passed on to their daughters often directly.
Hair has played a large part of some of the cultural shifts in America. black men and maybe men in general are never given the opportunity to fall in love with the natural hair that black women have. As a result unless black women do things like perm their hair to make it straighter and more mainstream; they don't get the attention that they want. This i think is one of the reasons that ruining the hair of young girls is such a major problem in black communities; how can black women expect men to find them beautiful if they don't even find themselves beautiful enough to be proud of their natural hair. Admittedly, black men and men in general are part of the problem because they foster this perversion of what is beautiful. They often don't appreciate that beauty is not a narrow concept but society plays a bigger role in that than most people realize. If we are to really unite as a people and as a nation then one of the first things that we need to understand is the roots of our problems. If we can solve the little issues that divide us and keep is apart then maybe we can solve the big issues also.
