The investigator, curly-haired Taryn Winter Brill, asked five white guys to rate her "hotness" when her hair is straight versus when her hair is curly. The guys were asked to describe her curly pic with one word:
"Frazzled," one said.
"Giddy," said another.
One guy said, wide-eyed, that "she looks like someone who wants to get married, real fast." Um, what? How could curls communicate that?
When they rated her straight pic (much later, not realizing it was the same girl), they said she looked "classy," "pretty," and "nice."
Here you see the underlying stereotypes of curly hair. It's always been tied up with race in my own hair situation, and I forget that every curly girl faces preconceived notions like this. Not from everyone, of course, but it's there.
Jezebel noted that the story was inherently racist. Because it completely ignored race? It seems a better way to isolate the variables, because race adds a whole other can of hair worms... If we see how straight/curly hair affects the way white women are seen, we can understand even better why black women would want the straight-haired look too--why all women do. Maybe? I wonder how much different it would have been if Taryn were blonde and therefore the pinnacle of the longstanding beauty standard when her hair is straight. Do blonde curlies have it slightly better?
Check out one Jezebel reader comment (I'm assuming a black woman): "I always cringe when someone compliments my hair not by saying they like the cut or the color I dye it but because it is straight, followed by some kind of "I wish mine were straight!". I feel like I unwittingly just participated in something racist when that happens."
That person would probably also tell her she looks much "classier" with straight hair, not "frazzled" as she would be with curls. Some people are just ignorant. They believe hair stereotypes. They are "hairists" in the same way other people are racists. Some people are both, but here's my question: can someone be a hairist without being a racist, or vice versa?
Here you see the underlying stereotypes of curly hair. It's always been tied up with race in my own hair situation, and I forget that every curly girl faces preconceived notions like this. Not from everyone, of course, but it's there.
Jezebel noted that the story was inherently racist. Because it completely ignored race? It seems a better way to isolate the variables, because race adds a whole other can of hair worms... If we see how straight/curly hair affects the way white women are seen, we can understand even better why black women would want the straight-haired look too--why all women do. Maybe? I wonder how much different it would have been if Taryn were blonde and therefore the pinnacle of the longstanding beauty standard when her hair is straight. Do blonde curlies have it slightly better?
Check out one Jezebel reader comment (I'm assuming a black woman): "I always cringe when someone compliments my hair not by saying they like the cut or the color I dye it but because it is straight, followed by some kind of "I wish mine were straight!". I feel like I unwittingly just participated in something racist when that happens."
That person would probably also tell her she looks much "classier" with straight hair, not "frazzled" as she would be with curls. Some people are just ignorant. They believe hair stereotypes. They are "hairists" in the same way other people are racists. Some people are both, but here's my question: can someone be a hairist without being a racist, or vice versa?
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