In today’s society having weave, hair extensions, wigs, or fake hair has become a social norm. This not only applies to women of color, but women in general. Weave, hair extensions, and wigs have been used dating all the way back to 3400 B.C. during the reign of Cleopatra. They would use horse hair, lambs wool, wash it, dye it, then use beeswax to glue it on to the scalp of the women, and even some men. A lot of hair styles have always leaned towards straight and wavy/curly hair as being a European beauty standard. In the slave days, if you had lighter skin and curly or wavy hair, you had a greater chance to be a house slave, which despite the name, was a more desirable job. If you had kinky, nappy hair and dark skin you were put out to the fields as a field slave, which was the least desirable job. Black women used weave, hair extensions, and hair relaxers to tame the kinkiness of their hair and to fit the beauty standard of having sleek, tamed hair. When Nicki Minaj was first coming into the ‘game’ of Hip-Hop, she was known for her wigs and different colored weaves. She used them as to express her feelings through the different colors of her hair. People thought of her as a clown or weird because the colorfulness wasn’t exactly what was portrayed in Hip-Hop, but it made a staple in Hip-Hop and made her more memorable.
Some women see a problem with weave, hair extensions, and wigs as not being able to express their blackness enough. Plus, to maintain hair and keep it look nice and real is unrealistically expensive. Some weaves can cost up to 500-600 hundred dollars for a nice human synthetic hair. Some women have their natural hair damaged by wearing sewing-ins (a type of weave) for too long, it causes edges to be damaged, and can even result in patches of hair falling out. These past couple of years, women have been ditching the weaves, wigs, and hair extensions to have their natural hair grow. Companies like Shea Moisture & Hair-finity have made products that will help increase hair growth by combining different oils & vitamins that react together that increase the length and quality of your hair. They have become extremely popular, not only with black women, but all types of people struggling to grow their hair out. It’s refreshing to see people ditching the faux hair and going au-natural.