Black Hair Matters: Black Hair as a Political Statement Assignment | Essay Help Services

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The topic of my research project is black women and their hair. Hair can be a political statement, and Black women have had to struggle with this issue for years and continue to struggle today. When we discuss Black politics, we do not normally think that our appearance can be a political statement or a political detriment. Black hair in particular, makes a statement, draws criticisms, and make others uncomfortable. Please use the outline I have provided that serves as how the paper flows. The paper must be 1100-1200 words based on the outline, which is the material extracted from my four article reviews. The paper MUST be typed and properly formatted using MLA style. Please make sure that there are in text citations (author and page#) AND FOLLOW THE OUTLINE PROVIDED. The intro paragraph and the conclusion must be limited to 100 words. There’s a reason why I did that, a well-developed paragraph is about 100 words. The tricky part will be the thesis statement. The thesis, which should encompass 3 or 4 of the key points, you’re going to have to be a little bit creative there because you don’t want to list all 8 key points. You have to really think through how you want to present this and how you want to frame it

Review of Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry by Tiffany Gill (University of Illinois Press, 2010)
In Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry, Tiffany M. Gill provides a compelling analysis of how black beauticians found agency during and after the Jim Crow era of the early to mid-twentieth century—a time when black women faced immense racial, gender, and class opposition. Women generally conformed to the “cult of true womanhood,” where they were expected to be pious, submissive, thrifty, and domestic. Yet, black beauticians negotiated their identities as black businesswomen and expanded traditional notions of womanhood by including their entrepreneurial activities as part and parcel of black women’s respectability and duty to the race. Gill essentially argues that the black beauty industry was a unique site for the cultivation of black women’s activism toward racial uplift. Moreover, the convergence of beauty, business, and politics informed the identities and activities of black women in distinct ways throughout the twentieth century.
Gill suggests that the black beauty industry was one of the most lucrative and respectable fields for black women to enter, at a time when the highest profession most black women could expect to attain was either teaching or nursing. She traces the activities of black beauty professionals primarily during the early 1900s (the “Gilded Age of Black Business”), the Great Depression years, both world wars, and the cold war era. Gill makes three critical observations: (1) beauty salons provided one of the few spaces available for black women to engage in political activism; (2) black beauty culturists displayed their activism on personal, community, and international levels; and (3) black beauty professionals provided meaningful educational and economic opportunities for black women. While black beauty businesswomen negotiated a complicated space as beauty professionals and activists, they represent a venerable collective among the larger number of blacks who agitated for economic and political rights.
Black beauticians, or “beauty culturists” as they called themselves and were called by their constituents, were “businesswomen in the purest sense
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who owned and operated salons, others were workers in salons, while still others engaged in hair work independently in their own homes or apartments.” Furthermore, “they all shared a common professional identity and considered themselves businesswomen,” or beauty professionals (4). They began organizing as early as 1900 as more women joined the ranks, and they created women’s business clubs comprised of nurses, seamstresses, and beauticians, among other professions. Black beauty culturists gave speeches at black business conferences on issues confronting black businesswomen and encouraged more women to try their hand at business ventures (14). In 1916, Madam C. J. Walker initiated the development of what became the Walker Hair Culturists’ Union, which sought to “demonstrate the financial and political clout of Walker agents” (45). In 1920, a group of beauty clubs merged to form the National Beauty Culturists’ League (NBCL) and convened their first conference that same year (47). Madam C. J. Walker also established the National Negro Cosmetic Manufacturer’s Association to mobilize black manufacturers against competition from white companies whose sole interest in black beauty culture was economic exploitation (48). Black beauty culturists continued to create organizations throughout the 1950s and 1960s that challenged segregation in the beauty industry as well as federal and state laws that affected their businesses.
Gill also demonstrates how black beauty salons served as meaningful institutions in the black community, which served as unique spaces for black women to develop agency and assert their leadership. Beauty salons provided black women an alternative to menial labor (for example, as domestics, washerwomen, factory workers, etc.) and presented the opportunity for economic independence. Although relying heavily on secondary sources, Gill convincingly argues that salons owned by black beauty professionals constituted one of the few solvent black institutions that lasted throughout the turbulent decades of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War era. Black beauty culturists maintained a certain level of autonomy and independence over their businesses, a luxury not afforded to many other black entrepreneurs and business owners during the time.
Gill explains how beauty salons represented the only black enterprise where both production and consumption were exclusively controlled and operated by black women, which afforded them the agency to agitate for racial uplift and civil rights free from white interference (2). During the Great Depression, other black-owned businesses like grocery stores, banks, insurance companies, and clothing stores fell to the more financially stable white-owned businesses. Yet, black beauty culturists held a monopoly over
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fall 2012 / black women, gender, and families 101
the black beauty industry, and, rather than decline during this tumultuous period, it actually expanded (61).
As a result of their automony, black beauty culturists had the capacity to engage in the black freedom struggle on several fronts. They participated in large numbers in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. They led the drive to sell war bonds in the black community during World War II and allowed their beauty schools to be used as servicemen’s centers for black troops (80). In addition, black beauty culturists used their salons as places for political organizing, disseminating information on voting and becoming involved in the black community. Black beauty culturists were also among the first teachers of the Highlander Folk School’s Citizenship Education Program, a program that helped many African Americans become literate and registered voters (108).
Black beauty culturists reached international audiences as they tried to improve the conditions of black beauticians throughout the diaspora—particularly in the Caribbean and Central America. They traveled to Europe in the 1950s in an effort to seek professional validation by the European beauty industry in order to solidify their standing as legitimate beauty culturists in the U.S. On one particular voyage to Haiti, a group of black beauty culturists in the United Beauty School Owners and Teacher’s Association (UBSOTA) offered twenty-one scholarships to Haitian women to attend beauty schools in America (88). Indeed, black beauty culturists in the U.S. set the standards of black beauty throughout the African Diaspora. Through their international involvement, black beauty culturists essentially provided financial support and encouragement for black women to become economically stable and independent.
Black beauty professionals like Madam C. J. Walker and Annie Malone provided meaningful educational opportunities for black women at a time when both secondary and postsecondary educational opportunities for black women were limited. They created independent beauty schools and collaborated with black educational institutions to implement beauty culture into their curriculum as a practical vocation for black women. Black beauty professionals not only introduced black women to a path to economic independence, but they also ensured their own economic survival through the recruitment of black beauty school graduates as sales agents of their products and services. Without question, business moguls like Walker and Malone demanded respect for the work of beauty culturists, raised the level of dignity and professionalism associated with beauty culture, and opened the door to unprecedented economic opportunities for black women.
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Subsequent to their emergence as a viable political and economic coterie, black beauty culturists faced both intra- and interracial barriers in establishing themselves as professional businesswomen. They achieved the status of professionals despite this opposition. Booker T. Washington initially barred any form of meaningful access for black women entrepreneurs like Madam C. J. Walker with regard to the National Negro Business League (NNBL), while white businessmen tried to control the manufacturing side of the black beauty industry. White women also marginalized black women by denying them positions on the state governing boards of cosmetology and subsequent formal recognition as beauty professionals. Notwithstanding, black beauty culturists were instrumental in desegregating both the beauty industry and its governing boards and in becoming credentialed, licensed beauty professionals.
Tiffany Gill provides a notable contribution to black women’s labor history. Although Gill makes a persuasive case for black women’s activism in the beauty industry, she appears hesitant to place black beauty culturists and the hair-care industry they created squarely within the historical legacy of the devaluation of a uniquely black aesthetic. Specifically, black beauty culturists helped perpetuate European concepts of beauty as the standard for black women that we see evident even in the current period in, for example, the burgeoning market of chemical relaxers, wigs, weaves, and hair-straightening devices. Several important critiques of the black beauty culturists during the black freedom movement reveal the complexity of their lives as both activists and beauty culturists. While not diametrically opposed or mutually exclusive, these identities did present a paradox. On one hand, these black women challenged the imposition of white hegemony through their economic and political activism. Yet, on the other hand, they conformed to European conceptions of beauty through their hair-care systems and products. It is important to acknowledge the activism of black beauty culturists in aiding black women to become economically independent, while also recognizing how in many ways their activities belied the ideology of racial pride. Ultimately, Gill’s study enables us to understand better the negotiations black beauticians made in empowering black women physically, politically, and economically.
Tamara L. Hoff, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
102 tamara l. hoff
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