ABSTRACT
Impact of Black women’s hair politics on bodily health: a historical essay by Melodie Davis-Bundrage, Katalin Medvedev, and Patricia Hunt-Hurst. The chapter traces health within black beauty history from pre-slavery to the twenty-first–century Natural Hair Movement, in order to highlight a concern for health within black beauty culture. Black women have been oppressed and discriminated against because their head hair has not matched society’s standards of the white beauty ideal and was thus devalued. Severe damage to overall bodily health has been proven to result from the use of hair products. This chapter explores the health beliefs of Black women and consumer behaviour patterns towards hair products.
