Why Is Hair Important?

"Hair is a language, a shield, and a trophy."

Our hair tells our story.  It is a tapestry of our life experiences and the core of our identity. We often focus on what we can see,  or rather what others can see. We rarely focus on how our hair makes us feel. There are countless policies, protocols and practices that specify what socially acceptable hair does not look like. When certain hairstyles are excluded from policy and practice what message are we sending to those around us. Do these policies or practices create a safe space?

We sat down with Rohina Hoffman to explore the idea of identity and hair. A fine arts photographer, Hoffman explores the human experience through cultural, generational, and social subject matter to name a few. Hoffman produced Hair Stories, a multimedia pictorial of women of all ages, races, and cultures telling their hair story.  When asked what she learned in producing Hair Stories, Hoffman stated, “I discovered that hair is a language, a shield, and a trophy. Hair is a construct reflecting our identity, history, femininity, personality, our innermost feelings of self-doubt, aging, vanity, and self-esteem.”

As a child what were your impressions of hair? The women in my family wore their hair “clean and neat, out of their face,” it conveyed “seriousness and that one is studious.” Hoffman admits that she is not sure that neat hair actually conveys that one is studious. 

What could organizations, corporations, and schools do to promote positive social identity for all hair types? “First, is creating a culture where people do not feel like they have to alter their outer appearance to fit into an environment and second, be intentional about inclusion.  Hoffman describes an ongoing evaluation and reevaluation of culture to measure inclusiveness.  For a school that may be a dress code or extracurricular activity uniform, for a corporation it may be restriction on certain hairstyles, for a commercial landlord it may be a restriction on how guests must be dressed to be served, in each situation it would be Hoffman’s advice to investigate whether policy or practice includes people or excludes people, because “no one wants to be singled out.”

This idea of hair as a function of necessity and efficiency is at the core of why society feels entitled to define socially acceptable traits for hair. The truth is the identity it creates is just as important if not more than its function. While we know hair is a subject matter of science and its most basic or first use was primitive in nature, too warm the body, but we must also accept that as our society has evolved so has the usefulness of hair. The evolution of the usefulness of hair necessarily requires the expansion of social norms around hair.

Hoffman’s work is an excellent example of how hair is a part of our identity. Hoffman uses her own human experience to explore the subject matter of hair.  Hoffman knew that hair kept appearing in her work, she may not have not known why, but as a researcher she followed the question. In producing Hair Stories she allowed others to unpack the story of their hair identity thereby offering them a space to heal or celebrate should they so need it.  

Whether we like to admit it or not, hair is part of our identity, and just like we expect LifeLock to protect us from identity theft,  we should expect organizations, schools, corporate America, businesses, state legislatures and so forth to create spaces where everyone’s identity is protected, one bundle, one loc at a time. Join us in supporting the re-filing of Texas House Bill 392, The CROWN Act. We are collecting your stories around hair discrimination, sound off in the comment section below!