“when I entered the music industry with curly hair I couldn’t help but notice that I was surrounded by images of straight hair: on TV, in movies and in real life” – Leona Lewis
This is true, growing up I hardly saw any advertisements that included women of colour with natural hair. Adverts often featured white women with beautiful straight hair and this ranged from shampoo adverts to any other advert that ultimately featured women with straight hair.
“Hair advertisements make claims on black cultural identity and on women who have natural hair, in order to sell hair products” – Evan Jacobs. Thus, most adverts that are represented in the media convey the idea that long flowy hair is a source of beauty and that flowy hair is a socially acceptable appearance and natural hair is not. However, when natural hair is depicted in adverts it is depicted as being the ‘essence of African beauty’ and that is often illustrated by the Afro, which is often used on adverts. Particularly in adverts that would advertise natural hair products, would revolve around the narrative regarding the difficulty in managing natural hair only to encourage viewers to buy a particular product.
The natural hair brand SheaMoisture says that there are representations of women of colour with natural hair in the media, however they are a specific type of women – a light-skinned women with loose bouncy curls. Still there is a lack of representation of black women in adverts. From watching adverts about natural hair, the representation is often of women are light-skinned that have perfectly loose curls, however excluding the representation of other women who embrace their natural hair because all women’s experiences are different when it pertains to their natural hair. “But for all the influence and power black women harness, it seems we’re still fighting to see ourselves fully and accurately represented in advertising and on social media—even the kind made for and by us.”
“You grab the brush and gel and pull your back into the tightest ponytail you possibly can to contain your unique hair in a bun – hiding a piece of who you are in order to fit into a picture of what others seem to see as perfection” – Alicia Keys
The media persuades consumers and viewers into an ideological system that provides an unrealistic representation of how things should be. These ideologies that we as consumers are presented with encourage a certain type of expectation that is embedded in the media. The media serves as powerful sources of knowledge in influencing women’s styling and hair care maintenance which is done through using celebs to provide an ideal image that women should aspire towards.
“For all the power black women harness, we’re still fighting to see ourselves accurately represented in advertising.” – SheaMoisture
Brown Girls Chronicurls: 