The natural hair movement is a movement that encourages women to embrace their natural hair texture. This movement is nothing new but it has made a strong come back in recent years. In the late 60’s and early 70’s this movement came in the form of the Afro and represented black power. Nowadays this movement is about embracing the way your hair is without chemically altering it. The movement is empowering all women to be themselves.
Going natural isn’t something that you can simply do from one day to a next. This journey called “transitioning” is exactly as it sounds it is the journey that you embark on while transitioning from chemically altered or heat damaged hair to natural hair. Once hair has been chemically altered or damaged by heat it can not be undone. To begin this journey you must chop all of your chemically treated hair off. This is called the big chop.
This movement has grown substantially, over the last few years sales for perm products have decreased by 26%. There are hundreds of youtube channels, blogs, events and books dedicated to this movement. It is important to know that there are different hair types. These hair types range from wavy hair to tightly wound curly hair. This difference in hair types have created a divide in this movement that was meant to unite and empower us. Some believe that the hair movement prioritizes certain curl types, this in part is because of the images associated with it. When you look up natural hair, you are greeted with images of light skinned black women with bouncy voluminous curls but we come in all different textures and other hair types are feeling left behind.
This movement is gaining much more followers in France then the US. They have recently held a conference for natural hair girls and thousands of people came. News stories of girls being told their hair is too big and must be tied back because it is a distraction in the classroom have emerged. The media is taking notice of this divide and have began featuring girls with different hair types in commercials. More products geared towards textured hair have began to emerge. Salons that are specifically for curly hair have been opening around the U.S. Boca Raton is home to one of these salons called curls rock studio.
