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I say yes..based on personal experience.
Even just wearing it wash and wear more often the last couple of years I have noticed it. The comments, the stares. I avoid it if I am meeting a prospective client for the first time. The times when I haven't it has come back to bite me. With a regular client, I'll take a chance and show up for meetings with it wash and wear sometimes. They do look at it but so far none of the regulars have said anything.
- See more at: http://madamenoire.com/94665/natural....AtfDhVqp.dpuf
Even just wearing it wash and wear more often the last couple of years I have noticed it. The comments, the stares. I avoid it if I am meeting a prospective client for the first time. The times when I haven't it has come back to bite me. With a regular client, I'll take a chance and show up for meetings with it wash and wear sometimes. They do look at it but so far none of the regulars have said anything.
Over ten years ago, before natural hair became a huge trend for black women, my older sister Lydia was running around the campus of Spelman College curly and proud. “I was lazy enough to just not get a relaxer. I’d never had to really deal with my hair before on my own, so it was kind of a defacto decision,” she said. But the cultural security blanket of being at a historically black college in Atlanta protected Lydia from the trials of having natural hair around people of other ethnicities, specifically in corporate America.Soon after graduating she started working as one of the few black female engineers at Delta Airlines, where she first encountered an adverse response to her au naturale coiffure. Changes in her natural styles were met with comments bordering on insulting.
“It was like, ‘Oh, your head changed’ or ‘Did you get a hair cut?’ As if I was another person. It was almost like if I had come to work with some really colorful wig when in actuality it was just a two-strand twist.” One co-worker at her second corporate job said she looked like “she stuck her finger in a light socket” in response to one of her natural looks. Eventually my sister, like many black women, decided her best option was to keep her hair pressed to reduce attention on anything other than her work quality.
When I was a child, African-American women like Melba Tolliver, Cheryl Tatum, Sydney M. Boone, Dorothy Reed and Renee Rodgers received national attention for the discrimination they faced while wearing Afro-centric hairstyles to work. While the black community is more accepting of natural hairstyles—now no longer solely seen as a black pride statement—the largely white corporate world isn’t totally there yet. But change is evitable and it hasn’t stopped black women from all walks of life from getting the big chop.
“Hairstyles all depend on your lifestyle, what you want to wear it for and if it suits [you],” said Amanda Charles, a natural-hair stylist at Time Studio in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn. She says her clients run the gamut, from corporate types to artists who ask for different styles to reflect their personality, but also must fit in with a professional setting.
“I’m thinking a lot of people are going to be going natural; a lot of people have been saying their hair is breaking with the relaxer and they just don’t know what’s going on,” Charles said about her clients. “[Both] chemically treated hair and natural hair require regular maintenance to remain healthy, but natural hair is definitely doable for the office and women are just now realizing that.
“It was like, ‘Oh, your head changed’ or ‘Did you get a hair cut?’ As if I was another person. It was almost like if I had come to work with some really colorful wig when in actuality it was just a two-strand twist.” One co-worker at her second corporate job said she looked like “she stuck her finger in a light socket” in response to one of her natural looks. Eventually my sister, like many black women, decided her best option was to keep her hair pressed to reduce attention on anything other than her work quality.
When I was a child, African-American women like Melba Tolliver, Cheryl Tatum, Sydney M. Boone, Dorothy Reed and Renee Rodgers received national attention for the discrimination they faced while wearing Afro-centric hairstyles to work. While the black community is more accepting of natural hairstyles—now no longer solely seen as a black pride statement—the largely white corporate world isn’t totally there yet. But change is evitable and it hasn’t stopped black women from all walks of life from getting the big chop.
“Hairstyles all depend on your lifestyle, what you want to wear it for and if it suits [you],” said Amanda Charles, a natural-hair stylist at Time Studio in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn. She says her clients run the gamut, from corporate types to artists who ask for different styles to reflect their personality, but also must fit in with a professional setting.
“I’m thinking a lot of people are going to be going natural; a lot of people have been saying their hair is breaking with the relaxer and they just don’t know what’s going on,” Charles said about her clients. “[Both] chemically treated hair and natural hair require regular maintenance to remain healthy, but natural hair is definitely doable for the office and women are just now realizing that.
But even with “doable” styles tame enough to wear in corporate America, the awkward explanations and criticisms can be hard for black women to overcome. Times have changed in terms of black acceptance of our natural hair — but whose job is it to educate the ignorant masses about the beauty and elegance of natural black hairstyles? Some black women are teaching corporate America about natural hair acceptance just by being themselves.Simone Slade, an account manager at a large New York City firm, decided to start wearing her hair natural after seeing more senior level women do the same. “I didn’t grow up with a lot of different cultures, so I didn’t really know how my co-workers would receive me,” she confessed. Her initial concern was that they wouldn’t recognize her professional qualities because of misjudging her appearance. So for the first year and a half that Slade went natural, she wore braids, wigs and weaves.
Then Slade decided to let her co-workers fully witness her transition from relaxed to natural hair, in a rare teaching opportunity for the majority culture. When she decided to start wearing her curly hair out, the reactions ranged from questions to blank stares. “I definitely [felt] more comfortable in my own skin, but [it was] a little annoying sometimes because, you know… I’m here to work! I don’t ask about your hair, I don’t do all that. And I just feel like it shouldn’t really be a topic of conversation.” It seems the education didn’t go so well.
But as she continues to flaunt her curls, I must admit I admire her confidence in trying. Although Lydia left corporate America a year ago to become a teacher, she does still get questions about her hair. This time it’s from the black high school students she teaches AP Calculus to in Memphis.
“There is so much of a misconception about African-American women’s hair,” Lydia said of her curious African-American pupils. “Some have never seen someone aside from Angela Davis with an afro, so I love to entertain those questions; if anything it’s a positive conversation starter and I don’t think we get many opportunities to do that.”
Being two years in the chemical-free zone myself, it says a lot when someone can not only love who they are naturally but be honest and open enough to express it to those who want to understand. Like my very confident sister said, the opportunity is there, it’s just up to us to take the job of teaching people about the beauty of our hairstyles. But workers in corporate America need to be open to the information, and learn to be respectfully curiou
Then Slade decided to let her co-workers fully witness her transition from relaxed to natural hair, in a rare teaching opportunity for the majority culture. When she decided to start wearing her curly hair out, the reactions ranged from questions to blank stares. “I definitely [felt] more comfortable in my own skin, but [it was] a little annoying sometimes because, you know… I’m here to work! I don’t ask about your hair, I don’t do all that. And I just feel like it shouldn’t really be a topic of conversation.” It seems the education didn’t go so well.
But as she continues to flaunt her curls, I must admit I admire her confidence in trying. Although Lydia left corporate America a year ago to become a teacher, she does still get questions about her hair. This time it’s from the black high school students she teaches AP Calculus to in Memphis.
“There is so much of a misconception about African-American women’s hair,” Lydia said of her curious African-American pupils. “Some have never seen someone aside from Angela Davis with an afro, so I love to entertain those questions; if anything it’s a positive conversation starter and I don’t think we get many opportunities to do that.”
Being two years in the chemical-free zone myself, it says a lot when someone can not only love who they are naturally but be honest and open enough to express it to those who want to understand. Like my very confident sister said, the opportunity is there, it’s just up to us to take the job of teaching people about the beauty of our hairstyles. But workers in corporate America need to be open to the information, and learn to be respectfully curiou
Who defines "good hair"?
In those days it was straightened. Not sure this fascination that Jamaican grandmothers had about hair but I guess with should save this for the grandmother's thread.
A 'oo you a call 
pon you 
...
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