“This is no different from Condoleezza Rice and her visits to the beauty salon for her perms these many years,” says Lester of Arizona State.
“There is a reason that Oprah, Beyonce, Mo’Nique, Patti LaBelle, Tyra, and Queen Latifah haven’t gone the way of Whoopi Goldberg. The reason is that there is clearly a public persona that makes these women culturally less threatening with straightened hair.
“I am not saying that these women are betraying their blackness. I am saying that the pattern of self-acceptance has not made its way into the realm of unstraightened hair.”
Elizabeth Wellington, fashion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, describes Michelle Obama’s hairstyle as “nebulous.”
“It can be the style of a Democrat or a Republican,” says Wellington who is African-American and happens to wear locks. “If she wore her hair naturally, it would freak out segments of America. Her hairstyle is what people think is acceptable, even black people. Locks and natural hair do not carry that kind of cache.”
Despite longstanding negative perceptions about natural hairstyles, prominent black female politicians have sported the look over the years and kept their seats. In the UK, Dawn Butler and her locks have served on the British Parliament since 2005. In the U.S., Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Congress, had a long run with cornrows before going back to a relaxed style. And several other longtime members wear or have worn Afrocentric styles. D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and the late Texas representative Barbara Jordan dared to wear Afros during the 1970s, when the style was widely viewed as a symbol of militancy and an unabashed expression of cultural pride. Norton, who still remains firmly rooted in Congress, has even touted the virtues of wearing natural hair publicly.
“Nothing is more liberating than letting your hair be naturally what your hair is,” she said during a National Public Radio interview several years ago.
The signature natural hairstyle of Cynthia McKinney, the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Georgia, was two thick braids wrapped around her head. Washington Post Fashion columnist Robin Givhan has suggested that McKinney, who is savvy to the politics of black hair, used that particular style to project a certain image.
