For years, Black women conformed to the universal standards of beauty- light eyes, light skin, straight hair. The natural hair movement was created to empower women of color to embrace their natural hair and not to fall into the societal standards of beauty. However, the reemergence of the movement has sparked controversy through its presumed preference for looser hair curls and patterns. Beauty gurus fled to social media platforms such as YouTube, displaying their quick and easy to do hairstyles- such as wash and go's- leading many stranded and with unrealistic perspectives on natural hair and the several different textures among it. Many black girls turn to social media, aiming to maintain achieve hair just like their favorite 'Naturalista'.This misrepresentation of black women causes young girls to feel left out when their hair doesn't look the same as the woman in the video. Fortunately, the number of women with different hair textures are rising to social media, bringing more diversity to the natural hair world. While the number of women purchasing relaxers has decreased by 36.6% between 2015 and 2017, work still needs to be done. The natural hair movement in itself does not accurately represent the versatile hair textures of women of color, it merely provides a similar opposite to the previous universal beauty standards, a fair skinned face with curly hair.
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