Is black women's hair harder or more complicated to style than white women's hair?

In My Humble Opinion
21

We don’t know that the manager actually used the phrase "“ethnicity fee.” The fact the various news sources have been very careful to point out that this is an allegation might be a clue. It’s entirely possible that this is a salon with an advertised “supercheap haircut” charge, and plenty of little extra charges and this woman is angry about the little extra charges.

Black hair is, as far as I know, one of the main sources for the phrase “it’s a black thing.” Certainly, it’s the reason for the term good hair. In black comedy clubs, you hear a lot of jokes about the children of mixed-marriages having to suffer the horror of having a white lady do their hair.

Black hair is very different from the average head of white or Asian hair. In my high school experience, when a black girl wanted to try a new style, it was an all-day adventure just to get it there. A white girl could do something totally new in a couple of hours. Except for Bernadette, who was Irish and couldn’t even get a comb through her thick, curly hair. None of us, black white or Mexican, could.

Incidentally, a stylist once told me that bald men were hard to style. Especially if they have fat necks. His exact words might have been something like “I’d rather perm a half-dozen old ladies than just do a trim on Wilfred Brimley!”

22

How silly to charge one person more than another because the hairdresser don’t know what s/he’s doing! If it were me, and a hairdresser told me s/he was charging me more for a basic cut/trim than other folks because s/he thinks my hair’s more difficult to work with, then I’d get right up and take my business elsewhere because I ain’t going to let someone who don’t know what they doing touch my hair. Hmpffh. I think much depends on how experienced the hairdresser is with working with different hair textures. It ain’t difficult to give a person be s/he black, white, or Asian a hair cut provided you approach the hair in the right way.

Now hold on a minute. Black folks’ hair ain’t necessarily fragile unless it’s been either dyed and/or chemically straightened, what folks call getting their hair “relaxed” or getting a “perm.” In that process, a lye-based agent that breaks down the peptide bonds in the hair is applied. The hairdresser then straightens the hair, and once the hair is straightened, the lye-based agent is washed out to prevent further breakdown of the peptide bonds. The hair is then weaker than it once was before, and it cannot return to its former curly state. Thus, it is permanently altered. I believe a weaker solution is used generally in perms that folks with straight hair get to make their hair more curly. The peptide bonds break down, the hair is curled, and the solution is washed out to prevent further breakdown of the peptide bonds. When the hair is removed from the curlers, it’s permanently curly.

But I digress. Otherwise, depending on diet and health, black folks’ hair is actually quite strong. I can attest to that because my mother has broken many a comb trying to comb my hair! Some of y’all brothas and sistas out there know what I be talkin’ ‘bout too. If it didn’t happen to you, you may know someone what did. Black folks’ hair generally can withstand excessive amounts of heat from a hot comb–a comb heated to a certain strength that is used to comb nappy oiled hair–hair that is curled in tight spirals–straight. If someone with straight hair tried to use a hot comb even if they oiled they hair good, it’d probably burn their hair right off. Of course, I don’t know why someone what got straight hair already would need to be using a hot comb for.

As far as Asian hair goes, I remember talking to a Vietnamese friend who was complaining that the barber hadn’t cut his hair right. He said that his hair is straight and coarse, and it has to be cut at a certain angle so that it will lay right. But again, that’s not so difficult for a barber/hairdresser to do, is s/he knows what s/he’s doing.

Now mind you, I ain’t done no physics experiment to test the tensile strength of a black, white, or Asian person’s hair, but I actually think that if that experiment is done, it may not reveal much since hair textures vary according to individuals and what they’ve done to their hair. If someone knows something to the contrary, then I wouldn’t mind seeing the actual research.

I could bore y’all some more about differences in hair textures and approaches to cutting hair, but y’all get the gist, I hope. :slight_smile:

23

Any woman who’s been to a sleepover with girls of different races and ethnicities can tell you that there are some significant differences between the hair of various types of people.

I happen to be a woman with straight hair - stubbornly straight hair, I might add, with folicles that laugh at curlers, hairdryers, and once even shrugged off a perm - who, at times, wears multiple braids. Comparing with women who have typically “African” hair, my hair is MUCH harder to put into a neat braid and it tends to unravel over the course of the day. Indeed, I’ve heard gasps of horror from such women over the notion that when I wear multiple small braids I must re-braid my hair every day. Because it just won’t stay in the braids overnight.

Black women who have tried braiding my hair also have many complaints about it - one of the reasons those black women can “bang out” hairstyles so quickly on their children is that their hair tends to stay where you put it - mine slithers away (yes, that word was used once).

On the other hand, nappy hair can stand up and do things my hair will never be able to do no matter what chemicals, gels, and mousses you goop into it.

Different hair lends itself to different styles. Even “simple” styles can be surprisingly difficult to achieve. A “simple” blunt cut, for instance, takes some precision to achieve a neat and tidy edge, and for the hair to fall properly into place. If it’s long it may also require some awkward stances on the part of the stylist because most stations are set up with the idea that hair is relatively short. Getting a proper blunt cut on waist-length hair may require the stylist to bend over, kneel or find a low stool to approach the problem from the proper angle.

Some of the hairstyles sported by the sisters ARE quite complicated, take time and skill to do properly, and probably are worth more than certain other hairstyles. But that has to do with the work involved - there are other black hairstyles that don’t require as much effort by the stylist and should not cost more.

Putting just a wave into Asian hair can be just as much a struggle as cornrowing a blond European or straightening African hair. I can see that a person might specialize in certain techniques for a particular type of hair, and that that type of hair may tend to be found in people of a particular ancestory. I would not be surprised if I walked into any random salon in, say, Kenya, and was told “the woman who does white hair isn’t in today”. Would that be a bigoted statment? It depends on the context. Did I ask for a hairstyle/treatment not normally used on most of their clients? Or for for something simple and common to just about everyone? If my sister, who has extremely curly hair, walked into a salon in Tokyo, would she pose a problem to hairdressers used to naturally straight hair?

Here in America, with so many different ethnicities, plus all the folks of mixed background, a hair stylist needs to be familar with just about everything. But charging someone extra just because they’re black is out of line. Yet, as is typically with these sorts of stories, we don’t really know all the details. Could this be a case of bigotry? Sure - and I’m positive it does happen. But I’m not sure it happened in this case.