How Media Circulates the Politics of Black Women’s Hair
Explained in 3 Images Related to The Hate U Give
*Disclaimer: I want to open this post by sharing that I am a Black woman. It’s important for me to say this because I’m writing about Black women’s hair and it doesn’t feel right to dissociate myself from my own identity. So, when I say “our” or “we” in relation to Black women, I am also inserting myself, my identity, and my own experiences into the conversation. Okay, on with my post…
Black women’s hair is political because it is curled, kinked, and styled on the tops of bodies who are “othered” on the basis of race, gender, and class; and while this is a reality all over the world, I’m focused on what this does to Black women in the U.S. In regards to what I mean by “othered”, the racialized and gendered identities of Black women, and our hair as an identity marker, have been categorized as “different” and “inferior” by the oppressor.
Further, our hair is represented in images that are circulated on social and mass media to reproduce these categories of difference through policing, commercialization, and commodification. For a quick series of definitions: policing refers to the ways in which our hair is monitored and controlled, commercialization refers to the ways that our hair is utilized (and often exploited) for profit, and commodification refers to the ways that our hair is bought and sold.
These processes play out in the 3 images above. On the LEFT, Debra Cartwright, a Black woman activist-artist, drew this illustration and posted it on her Instagram page as a response to the Freddie Gray protests that took place outside of her office in Brooklyn, New York, in April 2015. The image represents a Black woman with a big afro holding a sign that says “End Police Terror” in her right hand, and a Black boy with a big afro standing to her left with his arms behind his back.
Her Instagram post circulated so much that Angie Thomas, the Black woman author of The Hate U Give, and Jenna Stempel-Lobell, the white woman cover designer of Thomas’ book from HarperCollins, were drawn to it. Thomas and Stempel-Lobell reached out to Cartwright to see if she would produce a different version of her illustration for the cover of the book that came out in February 2017, which resulted in the CENTER image. This one shows the author, cover designer, and artist’s version of Starr, the main character in the book. The image represents a young Black woman, who has a fairly small afro with a red bandana in it, holding a sign that says “The Hate U Give” in both of her hands.
After the book and cover image blew up on social and mass media, received several awards, and became a #1 New York Times Bestseller, it was time for Fox 2000 to make a movie advertisement image for The Hate U Give movie that debuted in October 2018. This image, on the RIGHT, also had its fair share of social and mass media circulation, and represents Fox’s version of Starr since Cartwright sold them the rights to her book cover illustration. Again, the young Black woman is holding a sign that says “The Hate U Give”, but her hair is now in box braids with a red hood covering part of them.
When these 3 images of Black women were posted, reposted, liked, shared, discussed, made profit off of, bought, and sold, so were representations of our hair. In other words, when the images built on one another and were circulated, they threaded an example of how Black women’s hair was policed, commercialized, and commodified along the way.
Policing
As you look at the images from left to right, focus on the changes in the women’s hairstyles. You may notice that the big afro turns into a small afro and then into box braids. This is an example of how the hair on these Black women was gradually tamed, straightened, and controlled by Stempel-Lobell and then Fox 2000. Although the goal for the book cover was to parallel Starr’s physical description, it is only when you look close at the movie cover that you see that Starr’s hair is in box braids. At first glance, viewers often think that she has straight hair. In Vulture’s August 1, 2018, interview with Cartwright, she described how frustrated she was with Fox when they told her that they needed to change the character’s hair. I can almost guarantee that was because they thought straight-looking hair would sell more tickets.
It’s a sad truth that Black women all over the U.S. feel the pressure of white Western beauty standards (pin straight, tamed, controlled hair), but it’s even more sad to see these standards play out in the images that we see all over social and mass media. By the time I was in eighth grade and until my second year of college, I wore my hair straight to school every single day but one. I would see images all over the media of white and Black women with straight hair, and those images were reinforced when I looked around at school to see that most of my classmates who identified as girls also had straight hair. The one day in my senior year that I let my curls out, I got way too many hair touches, stares, and questions about how I got it to look like that. Black girls and women deserve to see images of our authentic selves, and of authentic Black character representations, in the media.
Commercialization
In addition to having our hair policed, it was also commercialized in the CENTER and RIGHT images. Stempel-Lobell from HarperCollins and the advertising team for Fox 2000 utilized Cartwright’s images and the representations of Black women’s hair as a means to make financial gain from the book copies and movie tickets for each company. They were successful in that over 850,000 copies of the books were sold as of June 26, 2018, and $31.6 million was made from the movie worldwide as of December 5, 2018. The biggest irony here is that a white male-owned publishing company and a white woman-owned film corporation pocketed a significant amount of money by circulating images of a Black woman’s body and hair.
Commodification
On top of that, our hair was sold when HarperCollins released the book and Fox 2000 released the movie advertisement, and bought by readers, viewers, retailers, buyers, theaters, etc. to have access to the book or movie. When books and movies are circulated, people also buy and resell them. The CENTER and RIGHT representations of Black women’s hair in the 3 images were bought and sold, and again, HarperCollins and Fox raked in a lot of money from a Black artist’s illustration and Black author’s book.
Resistance
However, just because our hair has been policed, commercialized, and commodified in and beyond these 3 images, it certainly doesn’t mean that we have accepted it. Rather, we resist these systems by embracing our natural and protective hairstyles to express our Black beauty, culture, and power. Although I am upset to see the afro shrink and then turn to braids if I put the images side-by-side (because I most likely know Fox’s motive in the RIGHT image), I’m also appreciative that all of the images showcase natural and protective hairstyles.
Seeing images like this are empowering to Black girls and women, and were certainly powerful for me. Remember when I said that I wore my hair straight almost every day from eighth grade until my second year of college? Well now I wear it naturally curly almost every day of the year. (Yes, I straighten it about 2 times per year, but that’s because I like to mix it up, not because I feel bad about it being curly…huge difference.) I feel a sense of pride, culture, and power when I wear my hair curly now, and I think quite a bit of that has to do with the positive images that I was exposed to and conversations that I had as an undergraduate college student.
When little Black girls see authenticity in the representations that they view of themselves in and beyond the media, and have conversations that build positive identity in school and at home, they turn into empowered Black women who exude confidence, strength, style, and beauty in any hairstyle that they want to rock.
My mission is to show Black girls and women that, yes, we can embrace our curls, kinks, and diverse styles despite what is happening around us and despite what anyone else deems beautiful. Our hair is our right, our choice, and our beauty.
