2024-04-27 13:31:26
When you’re a superstar, wigs come in particularly handy. They allow you to change your look in seconds. They hide styling mistakes and prevent real hair from being damaged by blow-drying, straightening and curling.
Beyoncé has been wearing wigs since she hit the big stages. It’s been so long that there has only been speculation about what her natural hair looks like. Speculations that she left alone. Until now. The 42-year-old launched a hair care line in February that was explicitly intended to be suitable for wigs, but angered many fans. Can products be credible if their developer hasn’t even proven that they work on her own hair?
The singer took the criticism to heart. At least that’s what you can conclude from the video that Beyoncé posted on her 319 million-follower Instagram account on Monday. It shows her washing, caring for and smoothing. Her blonde-streaked hair falls to her waist. A woman shouts from the off: “It’s all natural” – it’s all real. Beyoncé explains: “The stigma around this idea is that people who wear wigs don’t have long, healthy hair.” That’s nonsense. And on top of that, it’s nobody’s business.
Many people straighten their hair for a job interview
For centuries, black women have also been discriminated against for their hair texture. For a long time in many parts of the world they were not allowed to decide on their hairstyles if they wanted to take part in public life. Instead, whites determined what was considered acceptable and proper in their eyes.
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In Kenya, missionaries required black girls attending their schools to shave their hair because they considered it unsightly and pagan. In the East African country and also in other African states such as Uganda, such regulations have persisted in some schools to this day. Similar forms of discrimination still exist in the West: In a recent survey from the USA, a fifth of black participants between the ages of 25 and 34 reported that they had been sent home from work because of their hairstyle. Almost half also said they straightened their hair for a job interview.
The myth of “good hair”
Beyoncé’s mother is a hairdresser. Beyoncé helped out at Tina Knowles’ salon when she was a little girl. So she knows what concerns and desires black women have when it comes to their hair. In advertising for her care line Cécred, she focuses on models with curly and frizzy hair. The feelings of inferiority that many black women struggle with because of their hair are addressed head-on in her song “Sorry,” when she sings about how her lover has something with “Becky with the good hair.” “The good hair” – that’s slang for long, straight hair.
Of course – and Beyoncé shows this with her hair care video – black hair can also be gorgeous, lush and long. The 42-year-old explains that although she has been coloring her hair for 25 years, she has always opted against perms and chemical straightening. Many black women try to meet discriminatory social demands by chemical straightening – the process often causes permanent damage to their hair.
Despite everything, Beyoncé has rarely been willing to show her hair in its natural structure. For performances for her current album “Cowboy Carter” she usually wears so-called “Texas hair”: blonde hair with lots of volume and dramatic, large curls. Her sister, Solange Knowles, does it differently: the singer became known with an Afro.
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