A living archive — Black hair across generations

Featured Expert

Shamilia B

Textured Hair Expert · Founder, I Love My Texture Salon

We talked about the first person who ever touched our hair and what messages they gave us about it. We talked about how our hair is a living archive — a physical connection to our ancestors, our culture, our identity. We talked about how the way we wear our hair communicates something to the world before we ever open our mouths.

And we talked about the grief.

For Black women, hair has never been just hair.

It has been policed. Legislated against. Mocked. And held up as proof that we are either too much or not enough — depending on what the room needed us to be.

In corporate settings, many of us learned early: tame it. Straighten it. Make it smaller. Make it quieter. Assimilate or be invisible. As Chris Rock noted in Good Hair — if it's nappy, they are not happy. And so many of us internalized that. We started treating our own hair like a problem to solve. A liability to manage.

This is why The CROWN Act exists — to make race-based hair discrimination illegal and to name what so many of us have been living. Because it was never just a bad hair day. It was policy. It was systemic.

Recently, I made a decision that surprised even me. I cut it all off.

Not because I had to — but because I needed to. I needed a fresh start. I needed to stop carrying hair that felt like it belonged to someone else's idea of who I should be.

And it felt freeing. Deeply, surprisingly freeing.

But it also came with guilt. Because here in Miami, long lush hair is currency. Girls spend real money and real time to have the length I was literally cutting away. And as a Black woman, there is an unspoken rule: the longer and more "manageable" your hair, the more beautiful, the more worthy you are perceived to be.

I had to grieve that. The idea of myself that lived in that length. The validation I didn't even know I was seeking.

And then I had to let it go. And in the letting go — there was freedom.

But here's what happened recently that drove home why none of this is just personal.

I was at a Dry Bar in downtown Miami when I watched something unfold that broke my heart.

A woman of color sat down for a blowout. Two stylists stood examining her hair and extensions — with the kind of hesitance that told you immediately they were out of their depth. She noticed. She left. And ten minutes later, she walked back in. In tears. Asking for a flat iron to fix the incomplete job they'd done on her hair.

My heart broke for her. Because I have been her. Every single time I walk into a mainstream salon or dry bar, I carry a quiet, invisible weight before the appointment even begins — will someone here actually know my hair? That mental load is real. And it costs us something before we ever sit in the chair.

Now imagine the contrast.

You walk into a salon that was built with you in mind. You don't carry that prayer with you. You don't brace yourself. You walk in with ease — that word, ease, that as one beauty editor put it, "is a concept not generally normalized in the Black community, especially when it comes to getting our hair done." Removing that weight from your mental load frees you to actually be present. To notice the Solange playing in the background — unhurried, intentional, yours. You're greeted with a warm cup of tea. The stylist doesn't hesitate. She reaches for your hair with confidence, with care, with knowledge.

And then someone asks about your sorority. Or growing up in a Greek-lettered household. Or that one step show you still think about. And the conversation that unfolds is lively and real and grounding — the kind that reminds you that you are known, not just serviced.

Caring for every part of our bodies is a radical act. There is something deeply powerful about resting in the hands of someone who isn't overwhelmed by your hair — but celebrates it with care and kindness. Who meets your texture not with uncertainty but with skill and joy. That is what it means to be truly seen.

Shamilia B

Founder, I Love My Texture Salon

Textured hair expert & HerKind community partner

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This is not a fantasy. This is what we deserve — and what spaces like I Love My Texture Salon are actually delivering.

Here's the thing: the industry is slowly being required to do better.

In November 2023, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed Bill S6528A into law — requiring all cosmetology schools in New York State to include textured hair education as part of their standard curriculum and licensing exams. Not as an elective. Not as a specialty add-on. As a baseline requirement for every licensed cosmetologist. The bill was championed by State Senator Jamaal T. Bailey, who said it plainly: "It's not only common sense. It's the right thing to do."

Graduates must now be able to provide services "to individuals with all hair types and textures, including, but not limited to, various curl or wave patterns, hair strand thicknesses, and volumes of hair." This is progress. Real, legislative progress.

And it matters — because we should not have to depend on luck. We should not have to pray.

This is not a story about bad stylists. It's a story about what happens when an industry that profits enormously from Black women's spending — and Black women's beauty standards — fails to actually build for us.

Black women are among the highest-spending consumers in the beauty industry. We are trend-setters, culture-shapers, and taste-makers. And we still walk into mainstream spaces and hope someone will know us.

Our hair is a mirror. It reflects exactly how we are seen — and how often we are not.

This is exactly why HerKind exists.

Not as a club. Not as a networking event. As a space where Black women and women of color can gather, exhale, and be known — without explanation, without apology, without the fear of humiliation or isolation.

We hosted that conversation with Shamilia B because we believe our hair connects us to something bigger than any salon. It connects us to our mothers, our grandmothers, our ancestors who wrapped and pressed and braided as acts of love. Our hair is not a burden. It is a living, growing archive of who we are, where we come from, and who we are becoming.

And when we gather — whether around hair care routines or business strategy or grief or joy — we remind each other of that.