When I began the Curly Girl routine, I didn't really have any idea about just how much it would change my life. Not only has it changed my hair (infinitely for the better), but it has also revolutionized the way that I perceive much of the mainstream beauty industry (I'd like to define mainstream here as being the beauty industry products that we see advertised on TV, read about in magazines, etc). I've developed a skepticism and cynicism that I did not have before, and I believe that I am better for it.
What follows is my own personal rant about curl bashing in the media, the beauty industry, and the marketing techniques used by the beauty industry to get the most money out of people possible and to keep them coming back for more.
There's a whole thread about curl bashing on naturallycurly.com. Every so often, someone will post a video, a blog post, a magazine article, etc that specifically targets curly hair as something that needs to be corrected.
I hate that this sort of attitude (that curly hair is "unruly," "unkempt" and needs to be "tamed) has permeated the minds of people everywhere to the point where it becomes accepted at fact. A quick search of cosmopolitan.com, for example, reveals article titles like "Out of Control Curls" and "Taming Tough Hair." Magazine editors know their audiences very well. Most people who pick up a copy of Cosmopolitan or a copy of Seventeen are young girls. Obviously, their are exceptions, but a good part of the marketing money of these magazines goes toward making the magazine relevant to young girls.
Young girls, like myself in years past, read these sorts of articles, and because people are inherently susceptible to being led to believe almost anything from a "credible" source, they doubt themselves. I think it's really critical that we can identify that the beauty industry is using the mass media to target young girls especially, but women with curly hair in general as well, and tells them that they must buy products and tools that will forever help them be rid of their "out of control" curly hair and give them "smooth and sleek" straight hair.
I cannot stand this attitude. And I feel I'm allowed to say these things because I used to be this way. I used to be a flat iron junkie who thought that my curly hair was ugly and unacceptable. There are articles out there that tell you why your curly hair will turn men away from you forever, and movies and tv shows perpetuate stereotypes that big frizzy curly hair belongs to the geeks and the outcasts; the pretty popular girls will have straight, sleek hair (think Mean Girls, or even The Princess Diaries).
I've been thinking lately about why these attitudes exist in our society. To be sure, they weren't always there. In fact, I'd argue that the straight hair craze, while it comes and goes, seems to have only really emerged in full force in the 60's, when people began widely and regularly using heat to straighten hair.
So why the modern change in hair attitudes? Why the shift away from living with one's natural hair texture? I think it has a lot to do with the coincidence (maybe it's not a coincidence) that when people discovered that they could use irons to straighten their hair, the marketing boom was occurring. Corporations began to pour millions into advertising like never before with the introduction of a tv into the average home. Suddenly, corporations could spread their messages to the masses, and that meant more profit.
If you can advertise a complete transformation, you have an audience. There will always be women with curly hair who want straight hair (and visa versa) and so if you can come up with a product that you can advertise as helping achieve that goal, you can make money doing so.
It seems to me that this simple exercise in capitalism has taken off in the last few decades to where the beauty industry is no longer (if it ever was) there to help the consumer so much as to keep the consumer coming back. Any curly who has straightened knows that the results aren't permament; you will need to buy more heat protectants, more irons, more blow dryers, more creams, more relaxers, etc, etc if you want to be able to have straightened hair frequently. It works to the company's advantage to market that straightened hair is beautiful and desirable and curly hair is not because 65% of the world has curly hair. It's brilliant marketing if you think about it. Tell the majority of the world's population that they need to be completely different from what they are (in terms of hair anyway) and sell them the products that they "need" to achieve "beauty"
It drives me nuts to be honest. It's all about making money in the end. It's the same reasoning behind most makeover shows actively seeking women with "unruly" curly hair, and chopping it off into the inevitable razored bob that gets flat ironed or blown out to sleek "sleek and smooth." (one of any of the thousands of possible examples, although this one is particularly heart breaking because she gets a cut from Lorraine Massey herself). Producers know that curly to straight make overs are more drastic and dramatic than curly to curly or straight to straight makeovers. More drastic makeovers = more viewers = more money
In the end, I've lost any faith I had in the mainstream beauty industry. It seems to me that they too often reject the demands of the consumers (like demands for more natural products) and the needs of the consumers (like a massive mainstream line of curly hair care that rejects sulfates and silicones) in favor of keeping the customers coming back for quick fixes, like silicone serums to "tame" frizz or "damage repairing" serums that just coat the cuticle.
I think the only way to turn around this disturbing chain of events is to create a grassroots movement that tells companies that we do not want their cheap chemical crap. We want actual ingredients that provide real and lasting benefits. That's why I love CG. I see CG as a movement that at its core idea rejects the fake crap (shampoo) that we are told by the corporations that we need to be sanitary. People didn't wash their hair everyday until the 60s and 70s! That's thousands of years of human history without shampoo. So why is it that now if you told someone that you don't use shampoo, they cringe and take a step back? It's because of the mainstream beauty industry, marketing, and curl bashing.
End rant.
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