Can I Touch Your Hair?

This article is part of our Fall 2020 print issue. See the full, digital version of the issue here.

Most of the women on Elon University’s campus have likely never worried about walking into Target and not being able to find a hair product that works for them. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Elon’s Black students. Aliana Fouse ‘21, Kennedy Boston ‘23, and Trinity Battle ‘23 sat down with The Edge to give us a glimpse into their hair journeys and discuss their experiences with anti-Blackness rooted in hair care.

What is your favorite way to style your hair?

Model Eileena Boyce photographed by Lexie Brooks.

Kennedy Boston: “It just depends on the time of year. If I’m not currently in classes, if I’m not on campus for spring break, winter break, and stuff like that, I usually do box braids. It gives me the freedom to do colors and stuff like that that I can’t usually do. During the normal school year, I usually keep in weave or at least have my own hair flat ironed. My mom works in corporate and something I’ve always seen as I grew up is that she always did the same thing. It’s just something that’s been reinforced in me since I was a kid. I do see people here who have in box braids or dreads and things like that, and I’m like, ‘I could never,’ just because I didn’t grow up thinking that was a possibility, also because the few times I did, kids made fun of me for it in middle and elementary school because kids are cruel.”

Aliana Fouse: “My hair is very versatile. I do like wearing buns because it's easy to do and it lasts at least a week. I like doing twist outs and braid outs. I really like doing that because it stretches out my hair. It’s also a protective style so it keeps my hair and my ends protected from the environment or from getting split ends or snagging. I felt more pressured [to straighten my hair] when I was younger. My first year of high school I went to a predominantly white school so I didn’t really have anyone around me who had curly hair, and also my mom straightened her hair all the time so I didn’t really grow up in a ‘curly hair household’ until my little sister was born. I would straighten my hair every day and when I would wash my hair you could see the effects of heat damage because my hair wasn’t curling up as it naturally would. Now I don’t straighten my hair that much, maybe once or twice a year.”

Trinity Battle: “It’s actually really funny because this might be my favorite style. I wear it year round and it’s really easy. These are called Marley twists or Cuban twists. I also love to wear my natural hair but I recently cut it. It’s called a big chop, and I big chopped. I had 10 inches of hair and then I went down to two. My hair is a lot healthier and my hair is a lot more receptive to products. The thing about natural hair, and Black hair specifically, is that it’s about learning your hair. Your hair has a personality, your hair likes certain products, and you have to go through it all with your hair, and your hair might change. My natural hair journey technically has two parts. Beforehand, it was a lot of protective styling. I wasn’t doing enough, but I was in high school and when you’re a high school student and competing with all these other people for college sports and school plays and all this stuff, the last thing I wanted to deal with was my hair. I made the mistake of neglecting my hair, and Black hair is very fragile and it takes a lot of intense care. Post big chop, I am not applying heat and my hair is a lot more receptive to stylings and twist outs and braid outs and stuff like that. As of now, being a college student, stuff like this [protective styling] is very, very great. It takes me an entire day to install it into my hair, but then I'm done, and now I don’t have to touch my hair for a month. It’s easier to wear my hair out in the summer because I don’t have school or a super demanding job that takes me away from hair care. When you wear your natural hair, it really is about convenience and about what you’re doing and how busy you are and how much time you can commit to your hair. Natural hair is like a plant. If you water it and take care of it, it flourishes. If you take care of the plant, if the plant is well fed, you’ll get a nice, pretty, big thing, but if you don’t take care of it, it’s wilted and it’s dead, it’s dry, it’s brittle.”

Do you have any experiences involving your hair that have really stood out to you?

Boston: “This time in Florida was pretty wild. I’d been in the ocean so I needed to wash the salt out of my hair. I was trying not to get it wet so I wouldn’t have to [wash it], but I got it wet. I was at a Goodwill, and I was like ‘Oh, there’s a beauty supply store across the street.’ I searched up and down the aisles, because every beauty supply is organized differently, and I found a couple products and said, ‘Sure, we can work with this.’ I got to spend the evening washing my hair and waiting for it to dry because I didn’t have a blow dryer or anything on me. That took forever. It was just kind of crazy because I went alone because I was just with two other white people, and I was like ‘I’m fine I’m good. It’s the middle of the day, I should be okay to walk across the street and come back.’ I’m in an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar state, by myself. But luckily, I was okay, nothing happened to me.”

Battle: “I went to a regular school, and I also went to a technical school that was mostly for STEM people, but they had two art programs, and I did the photography one. The two art classes didn’t have uniforms, so we could kind of wear whatever we wanted. This was a day that it had rained, and I was like, ‘Oh, no. I know how this goes,’ so I put on a headwrap and went to the tech center. Because I was in an art class, those teachers were very allowing of us to be expressive, and they were not very strict on enforcing the dress code because that’s how we express ourselves. So, I came in with the headwrap because it was raining, and the principle just so happened to come into our classroom that day, and she kind of yelled at my teacher to tell me to take it off. My teacher pulled me aside and was like, ‘I am so sorry. This is not me telling you to do this. I have been told this by the principal and she is saying you have to take it off.’ So I went into the bathroom and it took me like 20 minutes to do my hair and I come back in and my hair is out. So, I go into the principal's office, and I’m like ‘I want to talk to you about this rule,’ and she starts dancing around the subject, not trying to address it, and finally I’m like, ‘I mean this with all the respect, but this is a dumb rule. I didn’t even have it in my brain to say that it was a racist rule. They have exceptions for people with religious backgrounds, but I told her this is coming from a cultural standpoint. This is just what Black Americans wear. This is a Black thing.”

The closer you can get to the proximity of whiteness, the more acceptable you are in these ‘professional spaces.’ Nothing about my hair is unprofessional. Nothing about my twists, nothing about wigs, nothing about sew-ins, nothing about hair wraps is unprofessional. When it comes to Black hair, it is in our identity because it’s our culture, but also because people make such a big deal out of it. In schools and professional settings, it is absolutely anti-Black and pro-white supremacy, because something that differs from ‘the norm’ doesn’t mean that it is ugly or bad. [Hair] assimilation is a product of going to school or work and being told your hair is unprofessional and being dress coded for your hair. When it comes to what Black women do to their hair, it really is a thing of survival. I think when we let those things go and tell people it is okay to look how you want to look, then it gets easier for Black girls to not grow up hating themselves, or their hair, or their lives. It would make things so much easier if they’re accepted, because you can’t help how your hair grows out of your head— you can’t. And because of our hair, and the special care that goes into it, if I am expected to work at the same level of rigor as someone who doesn’t have to work as hard for their hair, then you should take some level of empathy to what’s going on with me. Don’t tell me if I do come in with my hair in a head wrap because it wasn’t cooperating with me, that I’m unprofessional.

What changes would you like to see in the haircare industry?

Boston: “More diverse hairstyles being talked about and more specific items for different hairstyles being marketed properly in big stores so I don’t always have to go to random stores. As much as I do love beauty supplies, it would be nice to just roll into a Target and find what I need to find without making a completely separate trip.”

Fouse: “I would like to see more diversity with hair textures. I feel like a lot of hair care marketing is towards people with looser curls and that’s not the only curl texture. More representation for tighter curls and different lengths, because not everybody has the longest hair or loose curls.”

Battle: “I wanna see better representation. Definitely letting go of texturism. Even when you go to the Instagram pages that are natural hair pages, I want to see people with different curl patterns. I want to see people who don’t have a curl pattern. I want to see short hair, stuff like that. And it’s crazy, because the natural hair movement was started by type-four haired women, because they wanted to see themselves represented, and then people with looser textured hair were put on the forefront by the media companies. I’d like to see the people who started this movement be the people who get their flowers and get the representation.”

To conclude, Battle leaves you with this sentiment: “Listen to women. Listen to us. Not listening to what society wants us to be but listening to the people who don’t look like what society wants us to be and get an understanding of what we need as a community.”