Preach it! 
Yay for curls! 
The results!
11 curly
31 straight
This survey was carried out on people from the African continent, specifically exculding people from the Indian subcontinent, who are browner, and have naturally straightish or wavy hair.
I excluded males with bald heads, defined as men with their scalp visible. No females were bald. 
So, the question still stands - do black people generally like straight hair? (Because, as some have said, it is a personal preference, after all. But then, white people generally like straight hair, even if some of them want to be rasta, mon)
C’mon, TabbyCat. C’mon, get yourself out of that corner, sweet kitty kitty. C’mon! kissy noises and treat fake-out
Seriously. Some like it, some don’t. Some like it on themselves, some like it on others. That’s about the best answer you’re going to get. Your own numbers show that.
I don’t think the generaliztion of “white people generally like straight hair” is valid either. It’s completely up to the whim of fashion. Right now, thanks to Og and Jennifer Aniston, straight hair is pretty popular on white chicks, and has been for about 10 years. Back when I was in high school, it was spiral perms and teased, curly mall hair all the way. We’d actually spend well over an hour each morning with a curling iron curling already chemically curled hair! (Gawd, if I never smell White Rain hairspray again, it will be too soon.)
Curls rock. You straight-haired girls are just jealous 'cos our hair has more personality than yours.
Absolutely. I’ve always been drippingly jealous of naturally curly hair. I’ll completely cop to it.
Then again, all my curly haired friends are seethingly jealous of my ass-length straight hair, so there you go.
I used to be like that. Then I learnt to embrace my curliness…
I’m going to shut up now, before I completely hi-jack this thread with my own curly-haired agenda.
Your ideas interest me strangely and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
In other words - You are me and I claim my €5.
[Hijack]
My most interesting experience as a college writing tutor was working with a student from Japan who was taking a gender studies course. For her final paper in the class, she was writing about the white beauty ideal in Japan, something I’d never even considered.
Apparently–and she traced this back to WWII, although she wasn’t sure if it went back any further–commercials for beauty products in Japan regularly featured white women, even though the voiceover and everything would be in Japanese and the products would be intended for Japanese women. She talked with her mother and grandmother, both of whom immediately agreed that white women were far more beautiful than Japanese women. The student herself believed the same thing, even though she was writing a paper on how bizarre the belief was.
Of course, the student was incredibly pretty, and I had a small crush on her, so that I looked forward every time I worked to her coming in :). I suspect she knew, and I hope my bafflement with her thesis even as I worked with her was helpful.
To bring this back to the thread, monstro, I learned from her that it’s not just in America that this ideal holds. It seems pretty ridiculous, but lots of things about sex are pretty ridiculous.
Daniel
Yep. My SIL always hopes their kids will grow “tall” white noses like my brother has. His nose is sort of on the… large side. Additionally, she’s often commented on the “tallness” of my nose, and the smallness of my face, and the whiteness of my skin - and I’m pretty sure she’s not just being friendly - she really seems to think the pale, tall-nosed thing is more attractive than the Japanese thing.
Additionally, she spends hundreds of $$ on perms each month to make her bone-straight Asian hair curley. Go figure.
Seconded.
I wish I could braid my hair into little bitty tiny braids and just leave it in for a long time. No washing it every night, no fussing with it in the morning, just shake my head and go. Plus they look SO cool.
Can you clarify this? I’m not following what you’re trying to say. I mean, how does this differ from black people in any country?
I think generally one wants what one doesn’t have. I said generally, people. Thus it follows that a majority of black people would admire straight hair to some extent.
My sample set, consisting of one black woman who recently cut my hair, told me she admired my mostly-straight brown hair (with the slight wave that gives you cowlicks but no body.) Meanwhile there’s a black woman at my work whose good friend is a hairdresser and she comes in with a new elaborate hairstyle every couple of weeks and I BURN with jealousy. Go figure.
I think she eventually quit, and not just because of the hair thing.
This happened at my first office job as well, and I am “white” (European and “white” Puerto Rican) and I have naturally BIG HAIR. A great asset in the 80’s let me tell you But when layered my hair can stand out in large curls easily three inches off my head.
At my first job, my boss walked by and said “You have to do something about your HAIR!”
I sat there puzzled, and was like “what? this is the way it is…”
She told me, TOLD me, to tie it up.
After that I had to wear my hair in a bun everyday just to keep it under control, so I wouldn’t get The Look.
No, I meant I’d found people who didn’t realise that there were any black people in the UK. A whole different level of ignorance.
However, I’m mystified by your suggestion that ‘black people’ is a political term. It’s a social description.
I have heard horror stories of black Americans living in Asian countries. Apparently it takes some of them months to find somebody who is willing to risk attempting cutting their hair. Quite an understandable reluctance on the part of the barber too, if you think about it. A lifetime of cutting dead straight hair, and then a bloke walks in with the tightest of curls.
I think I’d ask 'em to just shave it.
Oh yeah! C’mon, we’ll form the Curly Heads Are Cool Club. I wish my hair was even curlier so I could have an afro. I dig that Foxy Brown look.
To further your hijack, I can’t count the number of straight haired women that apporach me and ask, “Is your hair natural?” “Yes.” “I wish I had hair like that.” I confess, I do break out the straightening iron about every other month.
In the interest of fighting ignorance, I would like to point out that the Indian subcontinent isn’t part of the African continent whether or not you include it in a survey of Africans…
(It’s a part of Asia)
NB. If you meant you were specifically disincluding people of South Asian descent who had immigrated to Britain or were the children of Afro-Indian immigrants, then carry on.
It’s a political term in the U.S. because up until recently, black was an official legal class with a different set of rights than all other Americans, referring specifically to a group of people with an actual common background who have no other nationalities to claim. It wasn’t just some meaningless physical descriptor. That’s why it mystifies ME that the UK would import the term when it doesn’t mean anything over there. What does a Jamaican have to do with a Senegalese? Are they considered as coming from the same ethnic background over there?
Heh, well according to crazy ol’ me, there are no black people in any other countries. Everywhere else, a person of African descent is either an immigrant (or his descendant) or a native.