Why It’s Time to Have the Tough Conversation About Self-Love in Natural Hair Spaces
If you’ve spent any time on the beauty and natural hair side of social media recently, you may have come across influencer AmandaUpNext and her video styling her natural, 4C hair. However, it’s exactly how she described her own natural hair that has a lot of folks talking, and us reflecting on why so many Black women are comfortable speaking so negatively about their own hair.
For context, while styling her hair, Amanda referred to her tight, thick curls as “YN hair” and “NBA 2k” hair, which many of her followers took offense to. She later commented that the style took so much arm strength and time, saying, “I’m trying to gentle parent my hair, but I see why I don’t do this.”
The internet backlash was swift, with many users hopping in her comments to call her out for her “self-degradation,” “internalized racism,” and “anti-Black” sentiments. But if we’re really going to have a conversation about it, we have to zoom out and look at how and why she felt so comfortable making those jokes in the first place.
Related: Truth and Myths about Black Online Natural Hair Tips
Describing tightly coiled hair as “hard to manage,” “nappy,” “ghetto,” or any other similar, stereotypical term isn’t new. For generations, Black women with kinkier textures have been taught—from those inside and outside our own community—that their hair is something to be ashamed of, something to tame, something to hide, or something to fix.
Those negative messages, while rooted in systemic racism and Eurocentric beauty standards, eventually found a way to seep into the Black community through media, music, everyday language, and even our own jokes. As a result, many of us now repeat those same ideas without stopping to question their origin or what they reinforce about our own self-perceptions of beauty. When tightly coiled hair consistently becomes the punchline, it’s worth asking whether we’re laughing with ourselves—or at ourselves.
To be clear, this isn’t about policing how Black women choose to wear their hair. Whether you rock your curls every day, wear protective styles, or prefer wigs, that’s your prerogative (word to Bobby Brown). But the language we use to describe our natural features matters, especially when it echoes the same stereotypes generations before us fought (and are still fighting) so hard to dismantle.
AmandaUpNext’s video may have sparked this conversation, but it shouldn’t end with her. If we want the next crop of Black girls to see beauty in every curl and kink, we have to remember that it starts with the way we speak about our own. After all, it’s hard to rewrite the narrative around Black hair if we’re still repeating the same old talking points ourselves.
