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Colorism In African American Women

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Colorism
"Your eyes are blue, but you ain't white! Your hair is straight 'cuz you pressed it last night!" -School Daze
Dehumanization comes in its most rampant form, towards black women, as colorism. A community of African American women stand by with broken self-esteem from a history of colorism creating stigmatism on the ideal body image of an African American female in today's society. The quest for straight hair was often a torturous obsession for the slaves, but it was not just about conforming to the prevailing fashions of the day. Straight hair translated to economic opportunity and social advantage. Because many of the more than one hundred thousand free Blacks in nineteenth-century America were the mulatto offspring of the first African arrivals and their European companions, lighter …show more content…
Young African American girls endure the burning and tingling feeling with every relaxer, each strand becoming weaker by each application. My mother once asked by a previous daycare sitter, why my hair was not coated in the creamy crack that unkinks my coils to which she replied haughtily that it was better to be natural and my self-esteem would flourish (King.) Unfortunately for convenience sake my mom ended up applying relaxers to my hair to maintain its wilderness of new growth. This practice is commonly used to give African American girls and women a more appealing straight-haired Eurocentric look. Prolonged tension on the hair root by certain hairstyles lead to TA, which can over time result in irreversible scarring alopecia. Permanent chemical relaxers (straighteners), waves, and dyes may cause contact allergic or irritant dermatitis, chemical burns, scarring alopecia, and increased hair breakage (Rucker.) Hair relaxing causes chemical burns and unhealthy hair accompanied by the knowledge that the hair a little girl has on her head defines

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