Black Men Care About Their Hair — It's Time Movies And TV Did, Too

By Jessica McKinney


the opening time Trevor Jackson remembered seeing Black men’s hair represented in any way on screen was Gregory Hines’s medium afro in Bojangles, the 2001 biographical film about tap-dance legend Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. The actor in particular stood out to Jackson due to his multifaceted career; his hair just so happened to be a famous feature.


Nevertheless the Grown-ish actor also admits he “never really saw much” diversity whenever he was growing up — either in casting, or in any “look” an actor was given. “Whenever I did visualize Black gentlemen, I never really saw their hair be anything other than its organic pattern,” he remembers now.


segment of that lack of diversity likely stems from the fact that, up until recently, it was rare to be able to see Black boys on screen in major Hollywood assignments at all, and the data are still dismal; a 2018 report by the UCLA College of Social Sciences noticed that only 12.5 percent of roles in the best films released in 2016 were portrayed by Black people. So it’s a little bit of a chicken-or-egg scenario: You can’t exactly analyse the nuances of Black hair, if there really is no Black hair to be found.


There were, although, the bright spots: In the 1970s, Superfly was noted for its hair risks, particularly with its lead character, Youngblood Priest, who'd permed hair with tapered sides. Nearly 20 years later in 1995, Living Single’s second season garnered attention for an episode in which the character Kyle Barker, played by Terrence C. Carson, wrestled with the restraints his dreaded hairstyle put on his career as a stockbroker. (In February 2019, the New York City Commission on Human Rights finally issued new points that ban discrimination in the workplace, school, or public spaces, based on a person’s hair.) And Ice Cube’s Barbershop series, which originally launched in 2002, focused on the male barbershop experience and used humor to highlight the politics that conspire within that structure.


According to Khal, the Deputy Editor of Pop Culture at Elaborate Networks, Barbershop “definitely helped bring that aspect of black life to the culture. A barbershop is a place where you could speak freely and really deal with issues inside the community.” People who have been to Black barber and aesthetics shops knew this before the movie came out; what changed was the way it was represented in front of a mass audience. That mainstream reflection was revolutionary at the time, and entirely bankable; the full film franchise has since grossed over $230 million in the course of its four-movie run.


That there really is cash in Black hair stories should surprise no one; a recent report put the valuation of the organic hair industry at $2.5 billion — but crucially pointed out all of the ways in which mainstream brands often fail to prepare products that serve that audience. (That’s what occurs as soon as people who don’t know a thing about organic hair run your development labs.) However as increasingly Black people move to wear their hair organic, or otherwise opt against the limiting mandates of white aesthetics standards, Hollywood is racing to keep up.


In the 1980s, Lisa Bonet and Tempestt Bledsoe wore their hair in dreads and organic updos. Though she was animated, Rugrats’s Susie Carmichael wore her afro-textured hair in three braids with barrettes. And in the years since then, characters in shows like How to Get Away With Murder and BET’s Being Mary Jane center scenes specifically on hair, as a way to emphasize an emotional character arc; the actors Viola Davis and Gabrielle Union have both removed wigs or weaves to reveal another facet of their character’s identity and emotional palette. In Netflix’s Nappily Ever After, Sanaa Lathan’s Violet cuts her long, straight hair off soon after her boyfriend of two years fails to recommend to her. The pivotal head-shaving scene – in which Violet goes by way of the emotions of crying and then letting out a sigh of relief about her bald head – highlights the emotionally-rich connection she has with her hair and demonstrates the pain she feels from her failed romance.


What’s clear is that the actors who play these characters don’t take that representation lightly. “I’ve never worn an afro in any efficiency or for a character,” Marsai Martin, who starred in and wrote the 2019 comedy Little, told Teen Vogue. “And any time As soon as I was able to make such a strong character where she can do whichever she wants, I wanted her to wear her organic hair and be confident. No one can take her down — all of that could be in her hair.”


That sort of representation also matters to Black males. “The reason why [Youngblood Priest] was so iconic was because he was such a masculine guy although he had such feminine hair,” Jackson, who played the character in the 2018 reboot, says. “You could visualize that abstractness in his image. He’s a pretty boy, nevertheless he’s also very monstrous any time it comes to things being handled.”


there really is, although, still a long way to go, for both Black females and boys alike. Kathia Woods, a film and entertainment critic, points to the hair Samuel L. Jackson has worn while in his career. “Seeing him play Nick Fury in Captain Marvel, [his wig] still looks like a peak,” she tells MTV News. “You’re looking at it and you’re like, ‘We know that’s not your hair.’ However that’s the point; we’re not supposed to be thinking that. We’re supposed to be engrossed in his character.”


Khal agrees. “It’s either the Black dude on-screen has a plain haircut or he’s looking a little bit bummy,” he says. “Or they just didn’t take the time to capture how this character is represented with hair.” This oversight, he adds, doesn’t often happen to white characters.


The lack of attention to detail any time it comes to showcasing Black men’s hair perhaps stems from the current aesthetics consumer market. According to a recent study by MocoSpace, Black ladies drive household spending decisions; 84 percent of those purchasing most of the personalized care and/or aesthetics products for their families. In addition, 56 percent of Black girls shop for hair products.


Those information are compounded upon by a regular misconception that haircare is a woman’s pastime. According to New York entertainment critic Alfonso Francois, showcasing men’s grooming on television, or anywhere for that matter, “goes against the grain of masculinity, which is so rather revered in pop culture and society. If there’s a story about a guy’s hair journey, it’s like, OK, is that erring on the side of femininity? If it is, people aren’t interested in seeking those stories out.”


Nevertheless Black boys do care about grooming, both in the mainstream and in their personalized lives, and they’re urging others to care too.


“You have males that wear locs. You have boys that wear braids. You have boys that are bald. That requires maintenance,” Woods notes. “I think it’s just understanding that males do care about their appearance and just honing in on that.”


Whether it’s manipulated into protective styles, taking up space as an afro, cut short, or not styled at all, black men’s hair symbolizes an extension of their identity – who they are and what they are experiencing emotionally. And then some gentlemen are taking it upon themselves to break down gender boundaries and share how their hair stories can be the structure of male character development and on-screen narratives.


“Hair resembles a lot [about] an individual,” Demesio Sango, a grooming specialist based in Riverside, California, tells MTV News. “Hair has habitually been a representation of your individuality. It’s a segment of your character, your demeanor, your being. Your hair says more about you than your dress code. Your hair says more about you than your voice.”


Black men’s hairstyles can also mark significant emotional and mental trends in their personalized lives. Just as several people manipulate their hair based on their emotional state and experiences, some Black boys experiencing lows in their lives view their hair as a symbol of trauma.


“There have been times where I have been in dark places, and I didn’t desire to interact with anyone, so I wouldn’t comb my hair,” Marvin, a content manager at Billionaire Gentlemen Club in New York, explains. “I would let my beard grow wild. I’d grow the hair, although I wouldn’t keep it tidy. It’s sort of like a ‘stay away’ warning.”


Justin Winley, an actor and model from Harlem, New York, once shaved his hair off while in a key moment in his life. “I was at a place where my hair felt like it was holding all of that stuff in. It seemed like my head was heavy,” he says right now. “It felt like all the residual, emotional stuff that I had been through in the past few months was just sitting on me. Shaving my head felt like a group kind of liberation from that.”


Black boys have been learning their hair textures, trial and error with styles, and incorporating hair care into their day-to-day routines for years. Still, those practices have nevertheless to create it to the big and small screens. So whose responsibility is it to take real, male hair stories and put them there?


“The truth is, there aren’t several black showrunners that are working now. Certainly, it’s growing in numbers, although most of them of showrunners now are white, so I don’t think it’s going to be on their radar,” Sumiko Wilson, a writer who works in the industry, says. “I don’t think we can tack it onto one particular person in the production process. It should funnel through each person. If you’re going to go out of your way to cast Black characters and tell Black stories on screen, ensure you are also investing in making sure that the hair is on point. [Make] sure there really are hairdressers on set that are accustomed to dealing with Black hair. And that’s such a naked minimum, nevertheless that doesn’t happen all of the time.”


Jackson also noted that actors some days have a mention in costume or hair changes depending on the role and kind of movie. “If you’re the lead, you have a little bit more say,” he says, yet adds that anyone should feel like their look accommodates them do their best work. “In group to carry a role or a movie, you’ve got to feel comfortable."


And some of the control falls on the audience. “Make sure that [the box office] understands that you really fuck with this person for whichever reason,” Khal says. “If [Hollywood] sees cash is being generated or funneled into a particular thing, the aim is that they they'll flock to that and add more of that into the mix.”


obviously, there really are more advantages than monetary increase in seeing Black hair represented on screen. Jackson watched Prince in Purple Rain “like 20 times;” the late icon’s 1984 efficiency, as well as Anakin Skywalker’s fashion in Star Wars, inspired him to grow a rat tail.


“I was like, yo, I cannot give a F about what anyone has to mention about me telling my story," the actor says now. "The tail just sort of resembles the growth and the ability to stand on your own two feet and mention no, or mention yes and have it be what I want.”