Regarding your comments about "they don't go through that," that is not true. Bold faced lie. We go through a specific type of racism. Lorraine Massey was forced to straighten her curly hair at a salon that she worked at, and instead she quit. So she would not look too ethnic (read "partially black") There are other stories in the Curly Girl Handbook of white women with curly hair were told to straighten their hair for job interviews or told that curly hair is not professional. Straightening with a blow dryer for fifteen minutes every morning can not be equated with a relaxer which is what many of us need to achieve this poker straight look that wavy haired women can't achieve by simply brushing their hair. It's no coincidence that a lot of WW start out with curly hair in Hollywood and slowly move to the ideal straight, blonde hair. Again that is another facet of racism that we suffer even more of as black women. The white actress is told to straighten her hair and dye it blonde. We are told we are not right for a part unless it is about a slave or a maid. Black women have been wearing natural hair to work. While weathering negativity, criticism and hurtful comments the entire time. Wearing a weave is a choice. It is a coerced choice. It is easier to wear weave than to process or straighten your hair when you have a particularly kinky texture. You just mentioned white women who have to straighten yet, you don't recognize this problem among your own people? The people that are wearing weaves due to discrimination at work are few and far between. This is opinion and not fact. I take it you haven't been to too many offices where black women work? Most of these women buying $300 wigs, U-part wigs, sew-ins, and all manner of weaves are doing it for style. So, hundreds of years of straightening our hair with items ranging from homemade lye to a hot knife to irons that are for clothes does not find a logical conclusion in just slapping fake straight hair onto our heads? For many of us a flat iron job only loosens our curl pattern unless we crank it up to anywhere form 400 to 450 degrees. Even then, we still have to use a fine tooth comb to chase the iron and must do all this after blow drying our hair as straight as we possibly can. Other races do not need to invest that much time just to straighten their hair,something which you have made clear other races are encouraged to do. So wearing wigs and weave isn't the logical solution to that societal demand on kinkier textures?
For example, most of the women on YT doing wig and weave tutorials don't even have a job. How do you even know they don't have a job?
This is an assumption, yes? Based on the fact it is black women advertising weave on Youtube? I am not even going to touch that
. They are wearing those styles because they want to, We are conditioned ever since childhood to want certain things. If not going natural wouldn't be a journey it would just be the cessation of applying a relaxer. but it takes away from the world recognizing the beauty of our hair when we have someone else's hair. If we have never learned to care for our hair the natural desire will be to hide it. It also takes credibility from the "we want our own hair space" argument when we are wearing hair from another culture. The people who are making the "we want our own hair space" argument are predominantly wearig their own hair. You know they had to go on a journey to healthier hair practices, let go of their discomfort with their hair, learn to care for it. You know, you have heard of it, THE NATURAL HAIR MOVEMENT. The movement that is encouraging us to move away from wigs/weaves etc. Us wearing wigs and weaves constantly does a lot more damage to the natural hair movement than some random white woman being featured on CurlyNikki.com. The natural hair movement is predominantly about being able to wear your hair natural, as in without relaxer, without wigs and weaves, without straightening poker straight. However, we still have the option to relax responsibly Because of our reality Wear wigs and weaves responsibly because of our reality and straighten poker straight responsibly because of our reality. We still cant show up to work in many cases with a wet afro or celie braids. While our counterparts in most cases can fly out of the shower with their hair sopping wet and head to work No product, no shingling, no detangling, no blow drying required. That is an option for others, not us, not at this point. That is why we are having this conversation. Besides, I still say that if Felicity had been more respectful and less glib this whole backlash would have never happened.