Hi, I’m Annie,
Alora’s associate beauty editor,
and we just launched its textured,
a column where we explore and untangle all the traumas,
confusions, and frustrations that can come with black hair.
So let’s talk about it. I love this comment
because I feel like we’re so used to seeing conversations
about hair growth and length retention
and just growing your hair long.
As a black woman, some of these styles that we love
are more harmful than we’d like to admit.
This is an issue that I tackled in a story that we just did called
Black Women Are Fed Up with I G.
Hair Stylist.
And it’s just this idea that people know how to do styles really well,
but we’ve kind of neglected the art of really good hair care.
So I definitely considered comments and questions like this
when I was writing and reporting this story.
Your scalp, once it started experiencing hair loss,
actually can’t really, like,
differentiate the difference between, like,
certain types of tension. And so
what we might think is creating more tension on the scalp versus less
based on a specific style,
your scalp can’t really tell the difference
after you’ve kind of started to lose hair
because of all the tension.
So something that I really wanted to emphasize in this story is that
if you are experiencing hair loss
and if you started to see it,
um,
that it’s not enough just to take a break or to try Different styles,
but that your first step should be to go and see a dermatologist.
I think the biggest thing that I wanted
black women to take out of the story,
and something that I personally experienced,
is getting to a place where we can see our hair
as a part of our health and not just a stylistic choice.