How Black women celebrate their natural hair and uproot racialized beauty standards Hair is not simply a biological feature; it's a canvas for expression. Hair can be cut, colored, dyed, covered, gelled, waxed, plucked, lasered, dreadlocked, braided, and relaxed. Yet, its significance extends beyond mere aesthetics. Hair can carry profound moral, spiritual, and cultural connotations, serving as a reflection of one's beliefs, heritage, and even political stance. In Natural, Chelsea Mary Elise Johnson delves into the complex world surrounding Black women's hair, and offers a firsthand look into the kitchens, beauty shops, conventions, and blogs that make up the twenty-first century natural hair movement, the latest evolution in Black beauty politics. Johnson shares her own hair story and amplifies the voices of women across the globe who, after years of chemically relaxing their hair, return to a "natural" style. Johnson describes how many women initially transition to natural hair out of curiosity or as a wellness practice but come to view their choice as political upon confronting personal insecurities and social stigma, both within and outside of the Black community. She also investigates "natural hair entrepreneurs," who use their knowledge to create lucrative and socially transformative haircare ventures. Distinct from a politics of respectability or Afrocentricity, Johnson's argument is that today's natural hair movement advances a politics of authenticity. She offers "going natural" as a practice of self-love and acceptance; a critique of exclusionary economic arrangements and an exploitative beauty industry; and an act of anti-racist political resistance. Natural powerfully illustrates how the natural hair movement is part of a larger social change among Black women to assert their own purchasing power, standards of beauty, and bodily autonomy.
Chelsea Mary Elise Johnson is currently a Staff User Experience Researcher for Trust and Inclusive Design at LinkedIn and is the co-author of two children's books: IntersectionAllies: We Make Room For All, and Love without Bounds: An IntersectionAllies Book about Families. Her work has also appeared in, Sociological Perspectives, Women's Review of Books, Sociology of Sport, Ms. Magazine Blog, and Teen Vogue.
"From Atlanta to Johannesburg Black women are constructing a new body politics as they create and sell products, share techniques, flaunt their locs, and debate who belongs in the natural hair movement. Chelsea M.E. Johnson's Natural explores the meaning and politics of natural hair in the twenty-first century. This nuanced study of the politics of Black women's hair makes important contributions to studies of race, gender and embodiment." * Maxine Leeds Craig, author of Sorry I Don't Dance: Why Men Refuse to Move * "Deftly researched and expressively written, Natural takes readers on a journey across four continents to examine the practices and geopolitics of Black women's hair care. Johnson conducted nearly 100 original interviews, using them to offer fresh insights on topics such as Black femininity, texturism, and the technologies of resistance. This book is a blueprint for studying the natural hair movement in the age of social media." * Tanisha C. Ford, author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul *
