The New Face of Black Feminine Beauty Essay -- Hairstyles Beauty Adver

The New Face of ghastly Feminine sweetie Since the early 1900s, blackened women progress to had a fascination with their hair. More explicitly, they brook had a fascination with straightening their hair. The need to be accepted by the legal age class has caused them to do so. Though the image of straight hair as being reform than coarse hair still hasnt leave the moody community, there has been a surge of non straight hairstyles since the nineteen sixties. draining more congenital hairstyles, which ironically enough include weaves and hair extensions has been considered to be more empowered and more enlightened. However, this image comes with a price, and though it appears the natural hairstyle movement has advanced Black women, it has actually set them back. The color of the ad is buste in browns, earth tones. The signifier in this ad is the colorless sketch drawing of a woman that takes up one foliate of the two-page ad. She is a symbolic, versus an iconic sign, becau se the images that lead people to assume the picture is of a Black woman ar learned, symbols such as thick lips and the expression her hair looks, not straight lines, but dotted. The signified is a Black woman, with natural hair, presumably pretty. The next part of the ad, and as evenly important as the first, is on the second page. Large, in bold, is the word by nature. Beneath it are the words If citrus sheen fell on shimmering braids and soothing mist sustenancessed short twists. How lovely would that be? It has the feel of a poem, and the different shades of brown add to the artistic feel of the page. The artistic feel is important, because it adds the idea of a woman with natural hair as being both bohemian and sophisticated. Beneath the poem is an introduction to the mathematical product. It emphasizes the products natural ingredients, things that seem as though they would be better in a salad dressing than on ones hair. However, these ingredients are important. First, the emphasis the naturalness of the product in turn emphasizes the natural province of the projected audiences hair. Secondly, its use of Americanized products instead of typical African products (olive oil versus jojoba oil) separate this ad from the typical natural hair care product ads. This ad is geared towards a new type of Black woman, one who is more interested in a connection to otherworldliness and art than to Africa. The actual... ...ce political and socially, the harsher the beauty myth is used against them. In this case, the penalization for rebelling against the majority culture by adapting a subversive hairstyle, the thinner you have to be in order to still be considered beautiful. Furthermore, meagreness in the Black community is difficult to achieve. Typically, Black body structure, food and eat culture doesnt easily result in thinness. This is the price Black women pay for this new expression of self. The new face of Black effeminate beauty comes wit h a price. It alienates nearly half of those in the culture that dont fit the standard. While the hairstyle challenges the majority culture, the newfound search for thinness that comes with the hairstyles returns Black women to the confines of White beauty standards. The ideology that natural hairstyles lease enlightenment came from the Rastafarian tradition. However, what new ads and cultural myth discount is the spiritual dimension that the Rastafarians placed on their hair. Natural hair doesnt spurious immediate spiritual or intellectual wisdom. What at first seems to be the advancement of Black women, shows the backwards regression of Black beauty.