Without being considered a racist, can anyone, preferably black, tell me why I’ve started, in the last 10 years, so many black women starting to have Klingon Hair?
I watched Blind Date last night to spot this lovely black girl, sporting this great swatch of shining dome of a forehead, exposing around one quarter if her scalp. I noticed the receding hairline among black woman some years ago, and first thought it might be because of the actual physical qualities of the black hair, being brittle and all. I assumed that the black stylists shaved the little ‘beard,’ which often appears as hair along the edge of the scalp breaks off from styling.
This usually shows up when these girls pull their hair back in a straight style, like to braid and bead it. Do black women have a naturally higher, receding forehead? Do they do this deliberately? Is half bald a fashion statement? I never noticed it much until around 10 years ago and now it is very noticeable. Does it have something to do with the black male initiated style of shaving their heads bald?
uh, the first paragraph should read ‘started spotting’ so many black girls … . Sorry.
Your question asks “Is there a gene in black females that leads to balding that others don’t have?” (black males, white females, etc.) The quick answer is “no”. The explanation is a bit longer.
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It seems darned unlikely that this gene, if it did exist, would have just been “produced” (mutated, whatever) and spread very quickly “in the last 10 years.”
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Your question asks if there is a gene that black femals have that non-blacksdon’t have, if this genet can be responsible for such “Klingon Hair.” This presupposes that there is a genetic difference between races. Every person on this earth shares the same basic building blocks of cells, DNA. This does not mean that we all have the same DNA (much to O.J.'s chagrin). You can think of it as one enormous pool of genes from which you get to choose a bunch when you make your DNA. Everybody can draw from the same pool, black female and non.
“Wait a gol-darn minute!”, you say. “Are you telling me that there is no difference between black people and white people (disregarding others)? Nonsense! Why you can just look and see the differences!”
I’m not saying that there are no differences, but there are no genetic/genotype differences that define to what race one belongs. Sure indigenous peoples of Northern Europe tend to be fair skinned and have light hair and people from middle Africa tend to have dark skin and dark hair, but this does not make them black or white. It’s a tough concept because it’s very counter-intuitive.
I’ll let the illustrius cheese-maker-wannabe drop in and explain it much better than I.
You only explained part of my question and, BTW, there are genetic differences in bodily form, just as there are differences in all races. Like the gene which causes skin color, racial hair (colors, texture, durability) and forensic scientists know that African American hair is distinctly different from Caucasion under the microscope. However, that does not exclude anyone from the genetic pool called human. Male patterned baldness has been proven to run in certain racial families – more diffused families than color and that once the genetic pool of the family is diluted, the pattern begins to decrease. So, there could be a possibility of a racial family within the black race having a high tendency to loose hair among females as starting to take higher occurance.
Years ago, it was noted that certain clusters of caucasian, elderly women started showing major hair loss, verging on baldness.
Black women tend to style their hair with harsher chemicals, and their is a tendency to pull the hair back tightly from the front hairline. It is a casual observation, but it does lend itself to a receded hairline.
The constant pulling on the front hair line can cause permanent hair loss.
Women do experience some hair loss naturally, and the front hairline, as in men, is somewhat sucespetible.
Do not discount the point I made above. Tight braiding and puling the front hair back tightly over time will cause permenant hairloss.
Also, hairloss is more noticable in people with dark and or kinky hair.
When you combine all the factors (chemicals, pulling hair back, dark/kinky hair), it is not surprising that black women appear to you to have a a hair loss issue.
Take a look at professional ballerinas of all races. They will also tend to have the receding hairline, a result of pulling their hair back so tightly day after day for years at a time.
Pulling the hair back so hard it falls out is called “Traction Alopecia”. Tight braids will cause this. That’s all I have to add.
Naw, you just made that up! You mean there’s really a name for that? Are you pulling my leg? That’s amazing. No, really. Are you sure you aren’t just making this up?
I hope I’m not walking into some wierd inside joke or something, but a quick google search reveils that Traction Alopecia is, in fact, the name for this, err, condition.