essay about hair love

“Hair Love” is a powerful short film about family and illness

Sony Pictures Animation | YouTube | Fair Use

This adorable story won this year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. A haircut is never “just” a haircut.

Women know this very well: we change our hair color to feel more “ourselves,” to shout to the world something we have inside—to sometimes delude ourselves that by lightening our hair color we can wash away other things. We get a haircut or new style to turn the page, as if everything we want to forget, together with our precious hair, would stay on the hairdresser’s floor.

Because yes, hair is sacred, and we only change it when we need to recognize ourselves again when we look in the mirror. Thinking about losing our hair—something so frivolous and yet so decisive for our identity—disconcerts us. It’s something that even men hate—and they fight with baldness problems much more than we women!

When it’s an illness that takes away your sense of dignity, your identity, and makes you start all over again, it’s even more painful: at least, if we still had our hair, we could think of styling it, coloring it, cutting it, and trying to rediscover ourselves in that mirror where, instead, we can’t recognize ourselves anymore.

Thinking about our hair in such a difficult moment is something so trivial and silly, the last on the list of “real” problems.   Yet, an animated short, which has also become a book because of its success, reminds us that even something apparently frivolous, like taking care of our hair, can be a gesture of love.

“Hair love” (which received the Oscar last night in the Best Animated Short Film category) reminds us how trivial things are not so irrelevant, and that behind what seems to be only the aesthetic whim of a little girl with seemingly untameable hair, there is much more. It tells us that when we are suffering—the one thing that knocks everyone down, the one thing that takes away our desire to do even the everyday activities that are hardly even meaningful for us when we’re healthy—it’s precisely in those little things that we can start again.

The short made me think that often, for those who are ill, it’s pleasing to see that we, their family and friends, are well, that we aren’t neglecting those simple details such as styling our hair. It helps the sick people stop feeling guilty and worrying about us and the pain and inconvenience their condition might be causing us. We owe it to them, then.

Taking care of ourselves is a simple tangible sign behind those words, “everything’s fine,” “we’re managing, don’t worry,” which often don’t sound at all convincing if we don’t show it in our actions.

Family and illness are delicate issues, especially when they involve a mother, but this colorful video made by Matthew A. Cherry and co-produced with Karen Rupert Toliver with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter has hit the nail on the head: we can’t help anyone feel better if we neglect ourselves.

A hair tutorial, a little hairspray, and some hairpins seem like nothing, but often they are enough to remind us that, even if you can no longer recognize yourself when you look in the mirror, even if you are ashamed of that hairless head, even if you can’t understand why and accept it, I still see you. No, it’s not just hair: it’s life waiting for you out there, made of simple everyday things, those that now seem far away and lost, those you strive to return to without giving up. We’re waiting for you, and in the meantime, we love you, and we still see you for the beauty that you are.

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• Baby & Toddler
• Social Development

The Inspirational Story Behind the Oscar-Winning Short, Hair Love

Representation and inclusion are two of the most important topics of conversation you can have with your little one. Often, we turn to children’s books to explain the importance of acceptance those who are different from us and the value of leading with love. One such book is Hair Love , published in May 2019 and written by former NFL player Matthew A. Cherry. He adapted the book into a short, animated film, and, over the weekend, that film won an Oscar.

Hair Love is an almost 7-minute film that shows an African-American father, Stephen, learning how to style his daughter’s hair. It starts off with an adorable young girl with a mop of curls named Zuri. She excitedly gets up and gets dressed before figuring out how to tackle styling her hair. The film shows her looking at beautiful hairstyles and remembering the ones her mom used to make for her, but she can’t figure out how to recreate them herself. After an adorable, but unsuccessful attempt, she goes to her dad for help.

Though her dad is equally perplexed by how to recreate the styles, he loves his daughter and uses a video Zuri’s mom made for help, eventually successfully recreating his daughter’s desired style. While the film uses very little dialogue, it speaks volumes through its animation of the love all parents, but, specifically black fathers, have for their children.

According to an interview with the New York Times in August of last year, Cherry wanted to see more representation in animated films, as well as combat negative stereotypes. “I wanted to see a young black family in the animated world,” he told the outlet. “Black fathers get one of the worst raps in terms of stereotypes—we’re deadbeats, we’re not around. The people I know are extremely involved in their kids’ lives.”

To make the film, the former athlete created a Kickstarter campaign, raising over $284,000 from several donors—including Bruce Smith, the writer and director of The Proud Family , and Everett Downing Jr., a Pixar animator who worked on the films Brave and Up .

The film “offered the chance to create subtleties and specificities that you normally don’t get in African-American animated characters,” Smith told the New York Times in the interview, with Downing adding, “I donated to the Kickstarter campaign the first week. I felt a connection to the material. Bruce is a dad, I’m a dad: We’re black dads bringing that experience onto the screen. The character’s not trying to be a bad*ss or a clown, he’s sharing a moment with his family.”

Please note: The Bump and the materials and information it contains are not intended to, and do not constitute, medical or other health advice or diagnosis and should not be used as such. You should always consult with a qualified physician or health professional about your specific circumstances.

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HAIR LOVE Tells A Heartfelt Short Story About Black Hair

Hair Love is truly a modern-day creator’s dream come true. The animated film—written, directed, and produced by Matthew A. Cherry—went from being a Kickstarter funded project in 2017 to a children’s book and a 2020 Oscar-nominated short film. The story about an African American father learning how to do his daughter’s hair is full of heart and available for fans to watch online.

Hair Love is a quick watch that clocks in just under seven minutes, but it tells the intricate tale of Black girlhood, our relationship with our hair, family, loss, and resilience. The clip starts with an adorable little girl named Zuri who is getting ready for her day. She takes off her bonnet and reveals her crowing glory of wonderfully thick hair.

Zuri scrolls through a few instructional videos on her mom’s vlog page with several styles before settling on specific style. She thinks back to her mom doing the same style on her hair before trying to follow the video’s step-by-step instructions.  Of course, the task of creating several twisted buns doesn’t go over so well.

It’s a cool scene that conveys the incredible versatility of Black hair and the struggles that many young girls faced while trying to experiment with styling their own hair. The only difference is girls like me didn’t have YouTube videos to rely on back in the ‘90s.

Sony Pictures Animation/YouTube

Zuri’s dad comes in to see the impending disaster before deciding to put things into his own hands. Of course, his confidence quickly gets squashed when he sees a dresser full of hair products and combs and the mountain of hair on his daughter’s head. He tries to take the easy way out but the little girl is not having it. As he reaches to make the first part in her hair and de-tangle a small section, he envisions himself in a battle with a giant tower of hair.

He thinks he has it tamed with a few hair ties but it breaks loose and wins the fight. He tries the hat again but his daughter starts to cry and run away. He eventually sees the end of a video with Zuri and her mom. The mom encourages the listener to try hard and do it with a little love. He starts the video over and follows every single step, finally perfecting the desired style before they visit her mom in a hospital.

The ending is a tearjerker where the mom, who has lost her hair, gains a boost of confidence about showing her uncovered head to her family before they embrace. Hair Love is such an interesting short because 1) Zuri’s mom is the only person who speaks (voiced by Issa Rae) and 2) so many topics are covered in a limited time span.

Sony Pictures Animation

For example, Zuri’s mom felt a major loss not only as she deals with an undisclosed diagnosis but also loses her hair. A Black woman’s hair is often a major part of her identity and self-expression that can be styled in so many ways—cornrows, Bantu knots, twists, puffs, sew-ins, Afros, and braids to name a few.

But, for this mom, it was also a way to connect with others and educate them via her videos. A part of her love language and connection with her daughter was the time she spent styling her hair, which she can’t do anymore because of her illness. Losing her hair means losing a part of herself as well as an activity that makes her heart soar. But, Zuri’s photo of her mom is a reminder that this woman is still amazing and bald is beautiful too.

Hair Love also showed a tender relationship between a dad and his daughter. He’s forced to step outside of his comfort zone and do something he’s relied on her mother to always do—hair care. Zuri’s dad realized how much a Black girl’s hair means in terms of her self-esteem and gained a new appreciation for the time and effort it takes to style kinky and curly hair.

But even for viewers who aren’t Black, Hair Love is a heartfelt story about love and stepping outside of your comfort zone, even when it’s scary. It’s certainly watching over and over again to feel all the loving feels.

Header Image: Sony Pictures Animation

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Oscar-Winning ‘Hair Love’ Is More Than Just an Animated Short, It’s a Celebration of Black Hair in Every Iteration

Director Matthew A. Cherry said in his acceptance speech that Hair Love was "born out of wanting to see more representation out of animation, but also wanting to normalize Black hair." Cherry also mentioned The CROWN Act in his speech. An acronym for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” CROWN seeks to prohibit discrimination based on hair style and hair texture. It was first written into law in California, and states like New York and New Jersey have since adopted it. The New Jersey law went into effect in December 2019 , one year after the wrestling match where New Jersey high school wrestler Andrew Johnson's dreadlocks were forcibly cut off ; Deandre Arnold, a Texas high school student who was suspended for refusing to cut his locs, attended at the 92nd Annual Academy Awards as Cherry’s guest .

The film opens with a scene of the little girl excited to get up, put on her pretty pink dress, and take on the day. Her excitement diminishes the second she sits in font of a mirror and pulls off her bonnet, revealing big, rambunctious curls. She lets out a sigh, knowing the battle she must complete before stepping out the door. It's a feeling every Black woman has felt before. Knowing how hard it's going to be to get your hair looking presentable, because your hair is either done or not done—there is no middle ground. "Bed head" is not a style, and a "messy bun" is not an option. Unless your hair is in braids or buzzed short, it's rare to have a true I-woke-up-like-this moment.

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The heart of the film lies in fear surrounding this little girls hair. We see her father afraid to style it, imagining that he and her curls are dueling it out in boxing ring. When treated with fear and ignorance, her hair is combative. But once her father takes his time, works with a little love (and a lot of leave-in conditioner), her hair becomes malleable, and turns out beautifully. ( Hair Love is also a book that should be on every child's reading list.)

Once her hair is styled, the girl and her father go to visit her mother, who is in the hospital with an illness that caused her to lose all of her hair. The little girl gives her mother a portrait of her bald head topped with a crown, reminding us that though our hair is so inextricably linked to our identity, it cannot, and should not, define us. As big and overwhelming as Black hair may seem, it's not something to fear or police. It's meant to be celebrated in all of its glory.

Read why t his writer always wears her natural hair in protective styles, and the right way to brush your hair, according to its texture .

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Review: ‘Hair Love’ and docs stand out among 2020 Oscar-nominated shorts

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This year’s Oscar-nominated shorts batch is the usual mixed bag of globe-spanning stories, with seriousness outweighing softness.

The animation category is a quintet of clever two-handers about bonds new and old, perhaps tenuous but usually healing. There’s the unlikely connection a tough stray kitten makes with a chained pit bull (Rosanna Sullivan’s “Kitbull”), the way changing textures and art references depict altered domestic reality for a dementia-suffering painter (Bruno Collet’s inventive “Memorable”), and how a woman’s memory of her father’s impassivity transforms a hospital visit (Daria Kashcheeva’s rough-hewn puppet-motion entry “Daughter” ).

Childhood memory kicks off Siqi Song’s stop-motion-with-felt gem “Sister” too, but his recounting of a younger sibling’s annoying habits masks a grimmer truth about growing up in China. The standout, though, is on the sweeter end of things: The small “a” and large “A” Afrocentric dad/daughter comedy “Hair Love” from directors Matthew Cherry, Everett Downing Jr. and Bruce W. Smith, truly a case of affairs of the (literal) head meeting matters of the heart by way of your funny bone and tear ducts. It’s quite the charmer.

The live action shorts aren’t as sturdy in matching emotions and ideas with execution, but they have their moments. Yves Piat’s “Nefta Football Club” puts a donkey wearing headphones in the desert path of two soccer-loving Tunisian boys, and gets an agreeably pointed punchline out of how its cargo is used. Marshall Curry’s “The Neighbors’ Window” starts with tart voyeuristic humor about exhausted new parents and the younger, exhibitionist couple across the way, but falters when it reaches for a bridging poignance. There always seems to be a nominated short about a tense phone call, and this year it’s Delphine Girard’s peril scenario “A Sister,” which loses steam as it goes, but nevertheless feels rattlingly of the moment as a glimpse inside a common danger.

Most effective as complete works are Bryan Buckley’s arrestingly photographed docudrama “Saria,” which finds nourishing sisterhood amongst girls planning a bold escape from a hellish Guatemalan orphanage, and Meryam Joobeur’s anguished family tale “Brotherhood,” about a hard-headed Tunisian father struggling with his oldest son’s return from fighting in Syria with a burqa-wearing wife.

On the nonfiction side, this year’s short documentaries explore grim subjects with a variety of tones. Carol Dysinger’s “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl),” about a school in Afghanistan, pushes too hard in selling its education-plus-fun uplift, playing like a pamphlet or zoo attraction more than a fully engaged film. And as affecting as the story of Missouri battle-rapper-turned-activist-congressman Bruce Franks Jr. is, Smriti Mundhra’s and Sami Khan’s sensitively drawn portrait “St. Louis Superman” is that rare instance of a subject seeming to demand longer, deeper treatment.

Yi Seung-Jun’s “In the Absence,” on the other hand, is a full-on devastating account of the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking off the coast of South Korea, unfolding like a waking nightmare of inept, callous and negligent disaster management that only got worse for the ferrygoers, their families, and the civilian rescuers who stepped in when nobody else would. From the you-are-there footage taken on the day to the attempts to seek justice in the aftermath, it’s a mind-blowing reminder of why accountability for bad-acting authorities should be at the core of any functioning society.

The plight and perseverance inherent in migration informs both “Life Overtakes Me” and “Walk Run Cha-Cha.” The former, directed by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson, explores a peculiar illness occurring in Sweden in which refugee children, traumatized by the insecurity of their migrant status, mysteriously enter a catatonic state. Coolly haunting scenes of coping families with eerily listless children against the beautiful, snow-covered Nordic countryside suggest a storybook danger straight out of David Lynch’s head, but one that’s impossibly real and heartbreaking.

Laura Nix’s equally artful, full-of-feeling “Walk Run Cha-Cha,” meanwhile, presents us with an inspiring immigrant couple whose 40-year love story from war-torn Vietnam to the ballrooms and dance studios of Southern California is the never-ending happy ending, the kind that sees painful memories, present-day joy, and what lies ahead as all part of the same dance. The steps require work, but the routine’s your own, and the right partner makes all the trouble so very worthwhile.

2020 Oscar Nominated Shorts

Not rated Running times: Animated program, 1 hour, 25 minutes; live action program: 1 hour, 44 minutes; documentary program, 2 hours, 40 minutes Playing: Starts Jan. 31 in general release

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My Decades-Long Journey to Curls

“My hair’s growth these years, much like mine, has been stunningly imperfect.”

When my daughter was 5—an age many parents will recognize as the peak of their children’s vulnerability to the Disney-industrial complex—she started asking me to straighten her beautiful curly hair. A girl in her Pre-K class had the sort of shiny cornsilk hair that is particularly appealing to young girls; a kind of hair my daughter ironically portmanteau’d into “belong” (blonde and long), and increasingly requested to emulate with each passing day.

“Your hair is beautiful the way it is, my love,” rolled out of my mouth with regularity, and I went about my days buying up little accoutrements that might support this thesis. An 18-by-24-inch poster of Diana Ross for her bedroom wall. Hot pink Denman brushes. Late ‘80s beaded hair ties from Goody, like the ones from my childhood, which slide swiftly out of straight hair but cling lovingly, assuringly, to textured hair.

Because yes, as a woman of biracial white and Afro-Caribbean lineage, my hair is also extremely curly. Not that my daughter would have known this at the time. The hours of labor and management that I put toward beating it into straight, limp submission each week masked even the slightest hint of texture, and she, who will be 11 this fall, had no idea that I had been performing this straightening ritual on myself since almost exactly her age.

Soon after she began asking for straightened hair, Tracee Ellis Ross launched the haircare line Pattern. Earlier that year, we had watched Mixed-ish together, a sort of TV-bonding attempt to help my daughter understand what it was like to grow up mixed race before the internet. As most people understandably do, she immediately fell in love with Ross, and I used this love as a springboard to playing with curly hair products. I ordered the entire line, I hung the marketing materials on her bedroom wall, and I showed her videos of grown women talking about their long journey to embracing and understanding their curls. It was, in its most innocuous form, a propaganda war on my part, fueled by a deep desire for my daughter to feel pride in her curls, her culture, the way her own hair grew out of her head.

Millimeter by millimeter, it grew back—first, with trepidation, clearly demonstrating an absolute lack of trust in my ability to just let it be.

I will always have time to take care of your hair , I told her, as we spent combined hours in the bathroom washing, detangling, leave-in-conditioning, gently drying, over and over. Your hair is beautiful exactly the way it is , I would say, and like most other things I say to her, I realized I was also talking to myself. And slowly—then very suddenly—she grew to love it.

When I was her age, on the cusp of my first relaxer appointment (after a hard won battle with my mom, a homeopath with a thick, majestic mane that even other white women envy), all I wanted to do was be free. My curls were variegated, heretic, like no one ever quite made a decision on what I was supposed to look like before they sent me to this earth. Caring for my hair had caused such discord in my relationship with my mother—and my own self image—that by the point we reached that salon chair I think we were both just trying to escape. I envisioned a result that would make white girls stop telling me my hair looked like Brillo and would finally transform me into the small Mariah Carey I knew myself to be. A butterfly, if you will.

It did not. Instead, it launched a many-decades-long, thankless side hustle of managing and maintaining my own hair to an obsessive degree. I gelled it to my head, pushed down the breakage, spent my after-school job money on product, and flat ironed every last drop of life out of it. I had neither escaped, nor was I free.

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I recently learned the term “presentism,” or the tendency to interpret past events through modern day values. It’s important to note that while many women still choose to relax their hair—and all people should feel free to do as they wish—in the mid-to-late ‘90s a regular relaxer, a blowout, and a flat iron, for many, felt like less of a choice and more of a foregone conclusion. It was not an indicator of self loathing as some love to call it today, it was a commonplace, practical, and fashionable solution. Through today’s eyes, when I remember emerging from the salon with fresh lye burns all over my scalp without batting an eye, I am horrified. But while I was in there, the other chairs were never empty. I was one of countless women with textured hair on a quest to flatten ourselves into a manageable oblivion.

When the natural hair movement started taking hold in the early 2010s, it did cross my mind that my hair was rehabilitatable, and I started experimenting with chopping off some of the lifeless inches at the ends. I considered the idea of going fully natural and all that it entailed: doing The Big Chop, switching up my products, making time and space to find out what my hair actually looked like after all these years. And shortly into this experimentation, I became pregnant with my daughter.

By the time she was born, any dream I had of having the time and space required to explore my natural hair disappeared when I unexpectedly became a solo parent. My weekly wash and straightening meant not having to think about my hair for the rest of the week, allowing me to work and care for a child. And I clung to that wash ritual extra hard, because that one moment each week was my single instance of self care. When everything around me felt very tenuous, there was a surety in the management of my hair. The routine was a life raft.

Two years ago, after successfully training my daughter to embrace and adore her curls, I was ready to let go. So much had happened in order to get me there, including blending families with my partner, which meant I found myself more resourced for time and support than I had ever been before as a parent.

At the start of that summer, I stopped all straightening and heat treatment, cold turkey. At first, there was not much difference; decades of abuse had trained my hair not to step out of line even if offered the chance. Millimeter by millimeter, it grew back—first, with trepidation, clearly demonstrating an absolute lack of trust in my ability to just let it be. I was irritated by how slowly it transformed, even though I realized that when you do nothing but beat something down for the majority of its natural born life it might take a while for it to feel safe enough to reveal its true self again. I realize now I was mostly irritated because its slow growth highlighted my sense of shame in how cruel I have been to my hair all these years.

So I stayed the course. I wish the story was that a few months later my hair became the sort of natural mane that dreams are made of. The process has been, at best, profoundly uncomfortable. Halting treatments on my hair opened the door to confront every insecure feeling I have ever had about my looks, some so vain and embarrassing that I felt like less of a person for even feeling them. In this process, I’ve felt messy and unprofessional, less sexy; like my cloud of hair takes up too much space, like I am not holding up my end of the bargain by having perfect straight hair or perfect curls, but rather some Frankenstein hybrid. I am still too chicken shit to do The Big Chop, and my hair is high maintenance. It demands attention, forethought, care.

Its growth these years, much like mine, has been stunningly imperfect.

In this process, I’ve felt messy and unprofessional, less sexy; like my cloud of hair takes up too much space, like I am not holding up my end of the bargain by having perfect straight hair or perfect curls, but rather some Frankenstein hybrid.

“Look under your straight hair, mommy!!” I started hearing. “You have beautiful curly hair, just like me!” This was my first summer of natural hair. We had arrived on the Amalfi Coast to some of the hottest humidity I’d experienced in my life, the air like soup, thick and boiling. In every year of my life prior, I would have been worried about sweating out my straight hair.

Stepping into the Tyrrhenian Sea was the only relief from the heat, and I waded out to my customary chest-deep position; preserving my straight hair has always been more important than submerging myself in water for recreational purposes. At this moment, I stood with my daughter clinging to me and edged out a little deeper, until it reached my neck, and a little deeper, until it lapped at my chin.

Then a wave came, submerging us both momentarily, and when we were above again, I laughed and wiped my face, my hair soaked. The next wave pulled us out, and we swam, fully submerged, the sea floor nowhere to be seen. The cool, salty water on my scalp felt otherworldly, like being incorporated into nature for the first time ever. The salt burned my eyes, my ears filled with water. I knew I would look a mess afterwards and for the first time in my life it did not matter to me at all.

Two years in, I am still uncomfortable, self-conscious, parading about trying to project a confidence I don’t honestly have. But something amazing has happened. My hair has begun to trust me. Now, down to my jaw, my original curls (all three patterns of them) are back, a little stronger and a little more insistent with every passing week. I’ve traded my heat tools for new gels, conditioners and oils, and I long for my weekly wash as a ritual the same way I used to long for the ritual of straightening.

I will always have time to take care of your hair , I tell myself, in my combined hours in the bathroom washing, detangling, leave-in-conditioning, gently drying, over and over. Your hair is beautiful exactly the way it is . And, years behind my own daughter, I have started to believe it.

This story appears in the 2024 Changemakers Issue of Marie Claire .

Anja Tyson is a twenty year fashion industry vet who specializes in developing purpose and values-driven businesses through communications, culture, and sustainability. In addition to her work in fashion, beauty and wellness, she sits on the advisory boards of non-profits involved in food justice and aid for families and children. She is a writer and a mother, and her mail gets delivered to Manhattan but her heart will always live in Brooklyn. 

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Last updated July 7, 2023

Every piece we write is researched and vetted by a former admissions officer. Read about our mission to pull back the admissions curtain.

Blog > Essay Advice , Personal Statement > College Essay About Hair: Dos and Don’ts

College Essay About Hair: Dos and Don’ts

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Kylie Kistner, MA Former Willamette University Admissions

Key Takeaway

As an admissions officer, I read quite a few essays about hair. After all, hair can be an important part of your identity for a lot of reasons.

At best, college essays about hair can reveal vulnerable insights into an applicant’s life.

But at worst, college essays about hair can be boring, cliche, and inauthentic.

Let’s go over how to write yours the right way.

Effective Ways to Approach a College Essay About Hair

To put it simply, good college essays about hair are in reality about a lot more than your hair.

Hair becomes a mechanism for telling a meaningful story about your life, and there are two main ways applicants tend to do this.

How your hair relates to or symbolizes another significant aspect of your identity

Hair can be symbolic, religious, political, and more. It can be a significant part of people’s daily experiences in a way that goes way beyond looks.

Maybe you want to write about your experience wearing a hijab. Or perhaps you have an illness or condition that affects your hair. Or maybe you want to write about not being able to cut your hair because of your upbringing, or even the process of coming to terms with your hair texture as it relates to your identity.

There are so many directions a good college essay about hair can take. Relating your hair to a deeper aspect of your identity can be a great way to draw out meaning and reveal important insights to admissions officers.

How hair has been part of your close relationships

If you had long hair as a child, you probably know the pain of having a loved one brush through a knot in your hair or tie a ponytail too tight.

Hair can be a way you relate to those around you.

Whether you fondly remember your grandma braiding your hair or you always connected with your dad because you were the only two in the family with curly hair, using your hair as a way to talk about a close relationship can be an impactful college essay topic.

But as with any college essay that relates to another person, just be sure to keep the ultimate message of the essay on you, not the other person.

Bad Ways to Approach a College Essay About Hair

Like any popular college essay topic, there are wrong ways to write about your hair.

So what makes an essay about hair a bad personal statement ?

It doesn’t reveal any genuine insights that give admissions officers more reason to admit you .

Let’s say you’re applying for a competitive engineering program. You have great supplementals, solid activities, and an outstanding transcript. But you decided to write your personal statement about what it’s like to have curly hair.

Admissions officers breeze through your application—it looks promising. When they get to your personal statement, though, things fall flat. Your personal statement was a good read, but it doesn’t sway the admissions officer in your favor because it doesn’t give them any insight into why you’d be a good addition to their engineering program. They end up voting to reject you.

Avoid the following two approaches to prevent this story from happening to you.

Simple description of what your hair is like

Curly, straight, frizzy, sleek, short, long, voluminous, thin—there are so many ways to describe hair. The topic can actually make for fantastic material for creative writing.

But too many applicants start and stop with a description of their hair. They explain what it’s been like to have hair of a particular type, color, or texture. They might even detail the journey of coming to terms with their hair. But they leave it at that.

Unfortunately, that’s not enough for a college essay.

If you want to write about your experiences with your hair, be sure to connect them to a deeper part of your identity.

Surface-level account of a challenge you had with your hair

Maybe you were bullied because of your hair. Or maybe you finally got the courage to change your signature style, and it didn’t go well. Maybe you got gum in your hair and had to cut it all off and felt lost without it.

Those sound like impactful moments, but they alone aren’t strong topics for a college essay.

When challenges stay on the surface level, they leave admissions officers asking, “So what?” So what if you go gum in your hair? So what if you changed your signature style and had to wait a couple weeks for people to get used to it?

Connecting your hair to a deeper part of your lived experience answers the “So what?” question up front. Don’t leave your admissions officer guessing.

Your hair should be a tool you use to talk about a deeper part of yourself or your experiences. Staying at the level of looks isn’t enough.

That’s why it’s critical that you use the right approach.

It’s all about creating a seamless application narrative , one that shows admissions officers exactly why you’d be a great addition to their campuses.

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Embracing My Natural Hair Is a Form of Resistance

I wasn't raised to see childhood as a collection of innocent memories. At a young age, I was trained to treat the world like an opponent. Each day I left the house, my parents were sending me to battle with the hopes that I would not become the next Emmett Till or Breonna Taylor. In the morning my mom would help me get ready for school — wake me up, pack my lunch, and do my hair .

"I want hair like the white girls!" I would say, as my mother's comb made its way through a large Afro puff. I continued to complain about how I wanted straight hair like the other girls at school. Finally she conceded, and we visited a hair salon a few months after my seventh birthday. The stylist spun me around in a plush chair to face the mirror. Normally my reaction to getting my hair done would have been "I wish I looked different." But something changed that day. I looked in the mirror at my straight hair and saw an entirely different girl — a girl who thought she loved herself. As we headed home, I couldn't sit still. I wondered how my friends from school would react to my freshly pressed hair. How long would my hairstyle last? Could I be this beautiful forever? When we got home, I headed down the street to play at a neighbor's house. My neighbor and I spent the entire afternoon in front of the mirror pretending to be white girls. In my mind, we were powerful big girls who could run the world — as long as we learned how to dress, speak, and look like white people.

When I got back home, my hair was no longer straight. I cried and begged my mom to take me back to the hair salon. For the next 10 years, I would go to the salon every Friday to get my hair straightened.

On the outside, I was a confident and educated Black woman who had the world at her feet. My mom and her friends also got their hair straightened, and I was encouraged to visit the salon as much as possible. I have been struggling to manage my hair during quarantine, seeing as salons have closed and I have relied on getting my hair done for most of my life. But the closing of salons makes me think about how much I depend on my hairstyle to feel any sense of value and worth as a Black woman.

I know what hair represents for Black women. It represents freedom. The freedom to choose, a freedom that most Black women were introduced to in the mid-20th century. But straightening hair is an expectation for the Black woman who balances two worlds; one that embraces the Black woman fully and another that expects her to shift and mold in order to progress in the workplace.

Today, my mom and I both sport natural hairstyles, but our short haircuts aren't a political statement. They are an expression of love — a declaration to the world that says "I love myself without living through the white gaze." Natural hair comes in all different forms: it curls, it sways, it bounces, and sometimes, it breaks. And even though we live in a country that refuses to love us back, we refuse to break.

Choosing to wear my hair the way it is alongside my mother is the most powerful and healing form of Black self-love.

Self-love is an act of resistance that means more than ever. Open Instagram and see a constant stream of footage of police beating protesters and driving through crowds. Click on the Facebook app and find out that another unarmed Black person has been killed. What we don't hear about between the protests and police shootings are ways for Black people to heal during these difficult circumstances. Between the sound of smashed glass and cries of "hands up, don't shoot," there is a deep foundation holding Black people together. Black women, with all of our strength and perseverance, uphold an entire race and have done so since Black people first arrived in North America. The news does not show the hundreds of Black women who peacefully protest while sporting braids, locs, and short natural cuts. We love ourselves, and in the middle of all of the chaos, our stories go untold.

Choosing to love ourselves without apology is one of the greatest acts of resistance. But, most of all, choosing to wear my hair the way it is alongside my mother is the most powerful and healing form of Black self-love. That day when my mom took me to get my hair straightened changed the course of my life forever. I was able to learn how deeply white people impact my perception of self.

After the officers who shot Breonna Taylor were not charged , it's no surprise that I felt pressured to assimilate to the white gaze at such a young age. Still, I continue to have hope that one day, Black children won't have to worry about being killed by the police for carrying a toy gun. I may not be alive to see that day, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't recognize the mountains and hilltops my ancestors had to climb to get me where I am today. When I put my hands through my natural curls, I see the dense cotton fields of Georgia. I see the faces of hundreds of slaves who worked fields from sunrise to sundown. But mostly, I see someone who deserves to be loved, even if the country where she lives does not love her back.

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Narrative Essay About My Hair

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Published: Jun 13, 2024

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Artfully Bald: Detangling The Beauty Of Black Women With Alopecia

It was Saturday night on Broadway, and I had just twirled myself into the wings at the end of the first big number in Act 1 about becoming a woman (as imagined by—surprise!—white, straight, cisgender male writers). I took my featured role as Donna Summer, our beloved disco queen, very seriously. I strived to replicate her aura with my technique, my stage presence, and by working a heavy, voluminous feathered-and-flipped wig.   

Each time I moved through the costume change after the feature, I always had a really bad attitude. The attitude, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, always showed up at the same time and in the same place: the wig room.   

Growing up as a little Black girl with alopecia on the southside of Chicago at the beginning of the millennium, rooms full of wigs were glimpses into what I imagined heaven to be like. Gorgeous, goddess-like wigged women on window wrap posters would welcome me into beauty supply houses, each with a warm “smize” as uniquely textured as their hair. I’d wander away from whichever woman of the house I tagged along with to frolic between the fragrant aisles of oils, styling gels, and relaxer kits toward the back, where the wigs were.

There, the floors and walls would be lined with rows of styrofoam figureheads that fashion themselves into an altar of Black beauty. I would stand with my widening bald spots, receding hairline, and overwhelming exhilaration amidst the heavenly choir of plastic busts that sing the gospels of beauty to me. Each wig in the room would perform a unique tune that would drown out the echoing sounds of the little Black girls in my grade who would bully me about my alopecia.

By high school, my mama and aunties became my tagalongs to those wig rooms, encouraging me to define my own beauty. As a fledgling artiste, this meant making a spectacle of my condition as self-defense: wearing funky (sometimes questionable!) wigs with shocking textures, intimidating colors, and elaborate styles. Just as my peers’ eyes began adjusting to one look, I’d spin the block with a whole new do. My wigs started talking back. The creativity and pubescent angst I alchemized with those wigs empowered me to shave off what was left of my natural hair underneath them, knowing it wouldn’t grow back.

I moved to New York as an upperclassman at NYU and started making friends among my artsy peers who all had unique aesthetic expressions and validated my own. It finally felt normal to escape uptown after class and spend hours in Harlem beauty supply wig rooms, plucking baby hairs off of whichever lace wig caught my eye that week. For the first time, I felt like I blended in, and I owed that sense of acceptance to those wig rooms I grew up in.

But for the first time in my life, on that Saturday night on Broadway, at that point in my show (much like that point in each of the shows I’d performed in before), in that salon chair, in that wig room— an attitude snuck up on me. And a really bad one at that.  

The skillful wig tech efficiently fished through my mountains of waves for strategically camouflaged hairpins and delicately removed them and the wig. I overheard dialogue from the farce scene happening onstage over the loudspeaker, and the “comedic” bit revved up to a joke with a one-word punchline— an answer to a question in a complete sentence:  

“Alopecia.”

It was always followed by faint, meek-bodied laughter. I thought these speakers are supposed to tell me where we are in the show, not call me a ‘bald-headed hoe’ , I thought to myself with disgust. I choked on a triggered chuckle with the rest of the underwhelmed audience as I stared at my bald head and beat face in the mirror.  

I knew why I was straining to laugh. Does anyone else? 

Cracking farcical jokes about alopecia is ableist misogynoir at its finest. As an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss, alopecia is not simply an aesthetic difference; it is a disability, particularly in a social context, and one that disproportionately affects Black women and femmes.

As the sound waves from the infamous 2022 Oscars “slap-heard-round-the-world” rippled through our community, I had a virtual exchange with one of my heroes, Sonya Renee Taylor , a consequential leader and writer who is also a Black woman with alopecia. Following her astute analysis on social media of the trauma that contributed to both Chris Rock’s violent gibe on Jada Pinkett’s alopecia and Will Smith’s violent slap in response, I felt compelled to ask Sonya about her inclusion of ableism in the discussion— defensive about my difference being labeled a disability. 

In response, Taylor brilliantly offered, “Disorders and diseases are often disabling and using the social definition of disability, one is disabled by a society that is organized to exclude or marginalize them based on a condition or circumstance deemed non-normative. So in a society that deems hair as normative, as tied to femininity, and tied to access and privilege, not having hair would be disabling.”

Upon digging deeper into disability justice frameworks and my lived experience, I know now that alopecia deserves advocacy as a disability because it is a clinical difference that contributes to our social marginalization. Jokes about alopecia are always dusty anyway because making fun of people’s bodies is never appropriate. Period. The ableism of those jokes adds a layer of dustiness. And when it comes to Black girls and femmes with alopecia, yet another layer of dust settles deeper into its connotation of misogynoir.

Black women and femmes have the highest rates of alopecia globally. A 2016 study of about 5,600 Black women found that nearly half experienced hair loss. More Black, Latinx, and Asian women have alopecia areata, or bald patches in the scalp and face, compared to white women. The American Academy of Dermatology found that the number one cause of hair loss in Black women is central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia (CCCA) , primarily affecting those with darker skin tones. What sets us apart from other demographics is that 1 in 3 Black women experience traction alopecia, which develops from prolonged pulling and stretching of the hair. I hesitate to label this as “self-inflicted,” as these styles can be driven by societal pressure to conform to beauty standards.

That may not be the only societal strain that contributes to our statistics. I’m sure many of our genetic diagnoses are linked to cultural histories of systemic abuse and trauma. I recently saw a video of a young girl from Gaza, distraught as the stress from the terror of the bombardment caused her to lose everything, including her hair. It deepened my solidarity as it reminded me of the parallel impact that oppressive societal circumstances have had on Black femme bodies, turning physiological stress responses into trauma genes that are passed down through generations. Unfortunately, the erasure of these generational histories and clinical cases in the diaspora make this hard to study.

I find our statistics ironic since most of the violence I’ve faced as a Black girl with alopecia has been by the hands of other Black girls. Growing up in predominantly Black environments makes this experience less miraculous, and the concept of being an object of their projections of internalized misogyny and anti-Blackness doesn’t challenge me; we are all conditioned in internalized misogynoir.

What is curious to me is that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that many grown folks never grew out of keeping the consequence of my disorder—specifically being “bald headed”—out of their mouths. What a strange insult… what is merely an observational fact is so often used amongst women as a punchline to a parable— a quip to strip someone of good character, or a boring, easy label of disgust. Why are the girls so pressed by my baldness? Why are we all so scared of it?

I’m led to believe that Black women and femmes with alopecia aren’t the only ones affected by the disability. Maybe all Black women, especially those of us who are straight and cisgender, feel the threat. I think we are afraid that losing hair will lead to us losing ourselves, that we will be alienated from our Blackness, our femininity, and even our adulthood. We may also fear that less hair equates to less power, agency, and beauty. I was afraid of all of this, too… only until I started embracing being “bald-headed” in these streets.

I stopped wearing wigs in public about a year into the pandemic as an experiment. Being publicly bald was unprecedented in all my 24 years. I rarely even entertained my baldness in private— sleeping with wigs to feel my “normal” girl fantasy and spending less time in the mirror to avoid body dysmorphia. The sides of my bald head were scarred, scabbed, and sometimes bloody from adhesives I used to blend the lace into my scalp—therefore blending my identity into beauty standards. 

But as I was falling in love with my partner at the time, I was also falling in love with my nature, bald and all. I started by working on healing the injuries to my skin before concealing the discoloration from years of harm I had been inflicting on my scalp. It wasn’t until the time of my bald debut that I reflected on the fears and realities that had kept me from that moment all those years.

Because hair is a currency in Western capitalistic, white supremacist, colonialist, patriarchal beauty standards, whether in effect or in response, Black hair is also a currency by its own cultural standards. I noticed how natural hair subtly resurged with a raging vengeance during the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2013, and because I was already bald and wearing wigs at the time, I felt detached from my ability to participate in our collective expression of resistance. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Akilah Sailers (@akilahsailers)

It was my bald head that reminded me of traditions of baldness as a display of radical African femininity beyond colonial contexts. I learned about our people, like the Maasai women of Kenya and Tanzania, who shave their hair for spiritual traditions, invoking a newness and an initiation into their futures. I began to see my bald head as a reflection of the futurism that has always lived in my art, philosophy, and self-expression. This seeded in me a strong sense of belonging to a diaspora of women who represent the timelessness of feminine African legacies.

I think straight, cisgender women are most terrified of baldness. I think we are the most obsessed with femininity and with how people, particularly men, perceive our hair as tied to it. I don’t blame us entirely. All Black women and femmes, including and especially trans, cis, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people, are so quick to be masculinized regardless of our hair, which justifies our subversion. However, my queer and gender non-conforming siblings teach me that the gendering of hair that society participates in—the cacophony of rules about what makes hair feminine or masculine or whatever else—is arbitrary anyway! 

For instance, long hair is often considered a signature of a high-femme aesthetic, which is why I overcompensated with long wigs so much in my late teens. However, long hair can somehow also symbolize masculinity in various contexts (think: shaggy aesthetics, “man buns”, etc.). On the other hand, it tickles me that people assume hyper-masculinity in bald women and femmes because I’ve personally never felt more effeminate. My smooth bald skin makes me feel so soft, and less hair accentuates all my juicy curves! Because the rules are so made-up, we get to define what femininity and masculinity are for ourselves.

It’s also lost on me how maturity and adulthood can be called into question based on hair. I didn’t want to go bald publically after my first and last “big chop” at 15 because I didn’t think it was time. I felt like I lacked the strength, maturity, and independence that I associated with all the bald Black women I had ever known. Instead, I gravitated toward youthful wigs to maintain an image of “adolescent innocence.” In an abrupt shift of perspective, no one could have prepared me for the infantilization I’ve faced with my baldness since my late teens—the creepy rizz-chat lines from boys about not having hair anywhere .

As I take Blackness, femininity, and “being grown” out of its braid, I realize how much of our muliebrity has always been coiffed by the oppressive desires of white supremacist patriarchy. The male gaze can’t construct our identity complexes with hair because our identity doesn’t even have to be attached to our hair if we don’t want it to be. My Black muliebrity lives in the energy inside me and the energy that surrounds me. As I continue to decolonize how I think of my personal self-expression, I find my power, agency, and beauty in this energy, too.

I can’t cap: having alopecia is complicated. Sometimes I feel stripped of the ability to assert my subjectivity in this world, like I am denied access to the versatility of choice. Sometimes, I want the option to flip my hair in my haters’ faces, knowing that it’s au naturale. Other times, I want to grow it all out like it’s 1976 down there, or stick my pit hair to the patriarchy, or try Nair and lasers on my legs with the other girls. I want a reason to go to the salon. I want to be accepted. I want to be desired. I want to be included. I want to be normal. I want to be pretty.

But I may be getting recognized as something more substantial now. Wigs made me feel pretty—like I could blend in. The authenticity of my bald head not only stands out as a striking look but more importantly, it feels true to me. I feel like a walking art piece, a challenging one with which to grapple or fall in love. Or, perhaps I’m a simple canvas on which to project your own imagination— your dreams of what beauty could be.

It has been over three years that I’ve been bald full-time. The decades of discoloration have fully cleared, and I am married to my skin and scalp care routine. I rarely wear wigs now, only when working on a show. My community recognizes my baldness as an extension of my futuristic work as a creative literary (Piscean!) architect of the collective subconscious. The embodiment of all those loving interpretations of me with my bald head feels very right.

And as for that show I was in… I left for a new gig. The show closed shortly after. 

My final stop to that wig room was a relief. I took off my wig along with my prep, the crochet cap that a Black female wig tech innovated for my bald head when I first started working professionally (thank you, Ms. Kelly). I scrubbed off my stage makeup to reapply a light beat before a much-needed night out.

As I left the stage door and started toward the train, a beautiful Black woman on 42nd street stopped me immediately, eyes wide and super excited to tell me that, “you are working that head girl! You must be a model or something… just gorgeous ! Believe it or not, I’m bald like you under this wig I got on. But I could never have enough confidence to rock my bald head like you!”

“I know you could. Look at you! You are gorgeous, too.”

I kept pushing toward the train. Seems like alopecia is in after all. I chuckled, this time in the spirit of having the last laugh. I am a gorgeous Black girl with alopecia. And you are gorgeous, too. And you. And you. And so are you.

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Splitting Hairs: Comparing Themes in Fiction and Non-Fiction Texts

Introduction.

Hair. Everyone has it. Everyone wants to change what he or she has, or does not have. Everyone can relate to each other over stories about hair. From musicals, to documentaries, to personal narratives, people have told stories about hair in all forms of communication. My students are fascinated by hair qualities and hairstyles. As with most other teenagers, all of their "attention focuses both on appearance (hairstyle) and social factors" 1 . Additionally, hair is a multibillion-dollar industry. More than 250,000 businesses in the United States are classified as beauty salons and employ over 845,000 people. 2 These beauty salons, along with some 720,000 other businesses classified as other types of beauty-related businesses, compose an industry with over $40 billion in annual sales 3 . In Pennsylvania alone, annual sales total $1.5 billion and job growth between 2000 and 2010 increased 22% 4 . In America, non-natural African American hair care accounts for an estimated $1.8 billion to $15 billion in annual sales 5 . Hispanic and "all other hair care" accounted for approximately $3.6 billion in hair care product sales in 2011 6 . This is why I selected "hair" as the unifying theme for this curriculum unit. The unit will explore the history and consumer culture of hair care and hair styling through literature.

The issues that we will be exploring in class are more serious than they first appear. My students are not the only ones who are concerned with hair. I have my own interests and curiosity about "good" hair. People of all ages, races, and economic backgrounds are keeping the industry alive and even growing during an economic recession. The importance that people place on hair is a matter of political and philosophical debate with everyone weighing in on the matter, from children in the classroom, to feminist theorists, to big industry. What constitutes "good" hair is a universal theme that is explored routinely in literature, and not just a transparent hook to engage my students with the reading and writing skills for the unit.

This curriculum unit will teach about comparing and contrasting universal themes in fiction and non-fiction texts that revolve around rites of passage and the consumer culture of hair. I will begin the unit with a brief discussion of consumerism among American teenagers and "ethnic" hair products and hairstyles, with a focus weighted toward black youth because of the demographic composition of my students and because African Americans make up an estimated 30% of the hair care industry 7 . The beginning of the unit will focus on consumer culture that drives hair care and hairstyles using songs, video clips, art, pictures, and newspaper articles. All of these materials will aid in introducing the literary concepts of theme and universal theme while being unified through the themes of hair, rites of passage, violence, and social acceptance. The remainder of the unit will focus on analyzing themes in short stories and excerpts using compare and contrast methods. The end result for each student will be a compare-and-contrast essay analyzing the universal themes in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and an excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X . I selected these particular texts because they each touch on a coming of age story that turns on hair, and they both address the theme of "Search for Self" for ninth grade.

The ninth grade curriculum in Pennsylvania is focused on the short story. The Common Core Curriculum was adopted and adapted for English in Pennsylvania. Very little will change in the curriculum with the adoption of the Common Core Curriculum; however, one major change will be in the amount of non-fiction text required. In every class, teachers are required to include between 60% and 75% non-fiction texts. This can pose a challenge for teaching the short story. I have taught ninth-grade English in Philadelphia for four years, and a topic that many of my students have issues understanding is theme. The textbook that a majority of teachers in Philadelphia use for literature presents concepts and situations that can be very foreign to most of my students, particularly in the stories that are included to highlight theme. The new minimum requirement on non-fiction texts and previous experience teaching ninth-grade English has inspired me to write a more localized unit for students to compare and contrast universal themes.

The very relevant subjects of fitting in and finding yourself by having the right hairstyle or "good" hair unify the literary texts that I selected. Everyone wants to fit in and find him or herself. Having the right hair is the hook in these texts because it is a major focus of my teenage students. Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and the excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X both address rites of passage and a coming of age for young adults. Both of the main characters, Bernice and Malcolm X, attempt to fit in by dramatically altering their hair according to current fashions. Bernice, a white girl, uses a story about cutting her long hair into a controversial bob in order to gain popularity with her cousin's friends and "walk unchallenged in the starry heaven of popular girls" 8 . In his autobiography, Malcolm X recalls growing his hair out specifically to conk (relax) it and look more like a white person.

Both situations have negative results for the main characters. Bernice quickly realizes that she has been manipulated into getting a bad haircut even as she sits in the barber's chair. She wonders to herself if she will be blindfolded, "No, they would tie a white cloth round her neck lest any of her blood—nonsense—hair—should get on her clothes;" Bernice then compares the barber shop and the barber with the guillotine and the hangman 9 . Bernice's bob turns out to be a social disaster, but the full consequences of her actions do not even register with her until she remembers a dance being held for her and her cousin; her aunt reminds her that the hostess of the dance considers bobbed hair "her pet abomination" 10 . The moment she bobs her hair, Bernice loses favor with the popular kids. The promise of bobbing her hair gained her popularity, but the action of cutting her hair off caused her to lose everything. Fitzgerald's story ends with Bernice seeking revenge by cutting off her sleeping cousin's hair. The general themes of adolescent insecurity, vengeance, violence, popularity, and surface beauty resonate for most, if not all, teenagers. While the universal theme is open to interpretation, I have no doubt that my students will tap into their own experiences and relate to Bernice or her cousin on some level.

As opposed to Bernice's disastrous haircut, Malcolm X remembers being quite pleased at the time with the physical transformation of his first conk; he vowed that he would never be without a conk again, and he wasn't for many years 11 . In his autobiography, he looks back on the physically painful experience of his first conk, remembering feeling as if his "head caught fire," as if the comb "was raking my skin off" 12 . He recalls that he gritted his teeth and "tried to pull the sides of the kitchen table together" 13 . Even after all of the agony caused by applying lye to his hair and scalp, he remembers admiring himself when the conk is done, noting how "white" his newly straightened hair looked in the mirror. At the time, Malcolm X was enamored with his conk, and his hair gained him entry into his desired social circle of "sharp-dressed young cats" 14 . Later in his life when he told his story to Alex Haley he felt differently saying,

That was my first really big step toward self-degradation... I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are 'inferior'—and white people 'superior'—that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look 'pretty' by white standards" 15 .

Malcolm X ends this chapter of The Autobiography of Malcolm X with a strong suggestion, based on his personal experience, for black Americans to shift their focus away from hair and towards learning because he sees conking hair as a legacy of slavery pertaining to the humiliation of black men. Some of the same themes from "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" are found in the excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X , such as popularity, status acceptance, violence, liberation, maturity, and surface beauty. Unlike Bernice, who is Caucasian and comes from a wealthy Wisconsin family, Malcolm X had the added pressures of racial and socioeconomic discrimination. Again, different readers could interpret the universal theme of the excerpt in different ways, but many more of my students will be able to relate personally to Malcolm X's story because they have had their hair relaxed or know someone who has had his or her hair relaxed.

I always strive to write engaging and relevant lessons for my students. This curriculum unit is no exception. In order to engage my students with the lessons, I have differentiated instruction by alternating between high-interest and low-interest materials throughout the unit. High-interest materials are pieces that will appeal to my ninth grade students' interests and curiosity. Some of the high-interest materials include short video clips from the movie Good Hair , A Girl Like Me , a musical video clip from Sesame Street , songs from the musical Hair , a photograph of a young boy touching President Obama's hair, articles about Olympian Gabby Douglas's hair, and pictures of an art show by Lorna Simpson that displays wigs and hair.

Good Hair is a 2009 documentary that Chris Rock made about the hair-care industry in America. Many of my students have already seen the movie, but they will be asked to reflect on their own first experiences with dramatic hairstyles or treatments as rites of passage. They will watch clips from Good Hair in conjunction with the brief 2005 documentary, A Girl Like Me that conveys the average experiences of a black girl made by high school student Kiri Davis. The musical video clip from Sesame Street is of a Muppet who sings about how much she loves her hair and the different ways that she can style it. Although my high school students are well beyond any interest in Sesame Street , I will ask them to compare and contrast the message of liberation in this clip with the more critical tone of Malcolm X's story about conking. The songs from the musical Hair might be high-interest materials because I normally do not play music in my classroom. I do not expect my students to necessarily enjoy the music, but I do think that they will like determining the tone and mood of each song using the music and lyrics. The news photograph of a boy touching President Obama's hair will be used to practice narrative writing. Students will see only the picture on my Promethean screen; then they will have to write a narrative describing what they think happened before and after the picture was taken. The pictures of the Lorna Simpson art show that displays wigs and hair will provide more practice for narrative writing. Lorna Simpson is a photographer who explores American impressions of African American women 16 . Students will select one of the wigs to write a narrative about. They will use details in their narrative writing to convey the character of a person who would wear the particular wig they choose. More information about these materials is located in the annotated bibliography.

Low-interest materials are pieces that might be more difficult to understand or not as entertaining to my students. Some of the low-interest materials include a newspaper article about a Native American student not wanting to cut his hair in 2008, a newspaper article about Rastafarian students being able to wear their dreadlocks and caps in school, a video clip and corresponding article from CNN about the growing industry of hair salons, and an excerpt about a girl's observations of her family's hair from Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street . My students struggle with non-fiction texts that are not written in narrative form. The CNN video clip will most likely assist them in their understanding of the material, but it will not necessarily pique their interest. Students will practice comparing and contrasting non-fiction texts with the newspaper articles. The excerpt from House on Mango Street will provide another opportunity for students to practice compare and contrast writing, but they will need to compare it with a non-fiction text in preparation for the final essay. House on Mango Street is a collection of vignettes about a girl's coming of age in a Hispanic neighborhood of Chicago. See the annotated bibliography for more information about these materials.

Social Aspects of Hair

Consumer culture deals specifically with people's desire to belong to a group, to be socially accepted. The culture of having the right hair is explored in literature regularly, as in "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and The Autobiography of Malcolm X . Bernice competes with her cousin to get a boy's attention by telling a story about plans to cut her hair. The prize for telling this story and ultimately cutting her hair is not just a boy; it is more about belonging to the right social group. Bernice's revenge act of cutting off her cousin's hair is symbolically violent and will most likely lead to her cousin's social demise. Malcolm X tries to solidify his role as a man, and a pimp, when he conks his hair. Being one of the cool cats was so important to Malcolm X, that he endured the physically violent practice of relaxing his hair and subsequently burning his scalp. The violence, symbolic or real, in both stories is connected to rites of passage into the character's chosen social group and revenge for being forced out of the group. The main difference between advertising of hair care products and actual consumer culture is that advertising makes it seem like getting the right hair is a simple and painless process, whereas the actual process is time consuming, laborious, and frequently physically painful. There is a price to pay, outside of your wallet, for gaining entry into and remaining a part of a social group. Both stories expose the personal and emotional costs of belonging.

Anthropologist Elizabeth Chin wrote an ethnography about the consumerism of pre-teen students in the Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut, titled Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture . A section of the book takes up the debate over ethnically correct dolls, particularly the way that some of the girls groomed their white dolls. Since the late 1980s, major toy manufacturers have been mass-producing "ethnically correct" dolls, and the idea behind making these dolls is to help minority children feel more secure with their identities by playing with dolls that look like them 17 . This idea was partly inspired by the Clark doll studies in the 1930s and 1940s. Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark conducted several studies to learn about black children's views on race. During these studies, children were given a black doll and a white doll and asked to point out which one looked "nice." More often than not, the black children pointed to the white doll as "nice" and the black doll as "bad" 18 . Adults tend to assume that "the physical aspects of toys—their gender, skin tone, hair—determine how children will use and relate to them" 19 . However, that is not the only determining factor of a child's self-worth, and the logic behind this thinking is flawed. Chin is able to gain social acceptance with a group of pre-teen girls through the grooming rituals that the girls practice with each other, with their family members, and with their dolls. She also states that the "girls reject the idea that their 'self-esteem' can be boosted through consumer items that address issues of race but not class" 20 .

The social aspects of hair are not limited to girls. National Football League rookie players have gotten embarrassing haircuts, and now hair dying for the Miami Dolphins, as a hazing ritual and a rite of passage onto the team 21 . Hair cutting has long been a ritual for passage into a social or religious group as with Cook Islanders, Hindus, and Roman Catholics. It is a tradition for men to meet at the barbershop to get a shave and a haircut and exchange news or gossip. As with women, men look to their barbers as a source for news both near and far and these visits to the barber are a universal experience that all men share 22 . Hair is both a cultural and literary theme that is expressed in "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and The Autobiography of Malcolm X and subsequently presented to my students as an example of universal theme.

History of African Hair and American Consumer Culture

As journalists Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps note, since the beginning of African civilizations "hairstyles have been used to indicate a person's marital status, age, religion, ethnic identity, wealth, and rank within the community.... The hairstyle also served as an indicator of a person's geographic origins" 23 . For certain tribes, you could ask someone to be your friend by offering to braid their hair 24 . Much importance was placed on hair for these social reasons and also because a person's spirit was believed to be in the hair 25 .

In addition to social aspects of hair, the aesthetics of hair were also important to Africans. Many African cultures believed that an abundance of thick hair was a sign of a woman's fertility, and she was therefore seen as being more beautiful 26 . A woman or man with unkempt hair was seen as undesirable to the opposite sex 27 . However, aesthetics was never the main focus of Africans. A deeper social, aesthetic, and spiritual meaning has been "intrinsic to their sense of self for thousands of years" 28 . It is impressive that the beliefs and rituals that formed around African's hair are still present in today's society 29 .

The history of American consumer culture for most black people, particularly when considering the slave trade in America, "has had a long and ugly association with the most profound sorts of violence" 30 . Before even departing for the colonies as slaves, interior Africans were kidnapped or physically forced by coastal Africans to march to the coast. Upon arrival, the coastal Africans in exchange for jewelry or weapons would trade the interior Africans to European slave traders. The slave traders would then shave the heads of their new slaves, unaware of the historical, social, and cultural significance that hair held for Africans 31 . After arriving in the colonies, Africans, now slaves and property of the slave trader, would step off the boat and onto trade blocks where white slave owners would auction them off or barter for other products because Africans in the colonies were considered to be commodities, not people. Slaves were made acutely aware of their value the same way that the children in Newhallville, a neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut, knew how much they cost their parents. The slaves who were not sold or traded would be discounted, like last season's fashion line, or loaded back on the boat to travel to the next trading block.

After slaves reached the plantations, they were not given time to groom their hair or provided with their combs, "so the once long, thick and healthy tresses of both women and men became tangled and matted" 32 . Slaves frequently hid their hair under rags because they were embarrassed or ashamed of the condition of their hair and the subsequent ringworm outbreaks and lice infestations that occurred. These scalp diseases would leave scabs and the rags covering the wounds caused infection which lead to a cycle of breakage and bald patches 33 .

The practical benefits of being a slave with light skin and straight hair were established early on with the two different assignments: house hand and field hand. Generally, the half-African, half-Caucasian children of the slave owners would have the advantage of being light-skinned with straighter hair, and thus have the privilege of working as a house hand 34 . These house hands "experienced a closer relationship with the White population—laundresses, barbers, cooks, nursemaids, housekeepers, chauffeurs, valets—[and] often styled their hair in an imitation of their White owners" 35 . Imitating "white" hairstyles was encouraged in house hands, and some slaves combined West African, American Indian, and European practices to straighten their hair and style it like their white owners while others continued to braid or wrap their hair in the West African manner 36 . According to Byrd and Tharps, "After two centuries in bondage, a unique homegrown system of Black hair care had developed.... the goal of grooming the hair had morphed from the elaborate and symbolic designs of Africa into an imitation of White styles adapted to Black kinks and curls. Both women and men were interested in straightening their hair because straight European hair was held up as the beauty ideal" 37 . Although they were without their regular tools and commercial products, slaves were able to use axle grease, butter, bacon fat, and butter knives to straighten and dye their hair 38 .

Slaves who tried to escape, could be caught and returned to their owners where severe physical punishment awaited. Newspapers would take advertisements featuring the characteristics of runaway slaves, and "the hair was considered the most telling feature of Negro status, more than the color of the skin" 39 . In fact, the true test of blackness was "if the hair showed just a little bit of kinkiness, a person would be unable to pass as White... which is why some male slaves opted to shave their heads to try to get rid of the genetic evidence of their ancestry when attempting to escape to freedom" 40 . At the same time, staying on the plantation as a light-skinned, female house hand with "good hair," or long hair free of kinks and frizz, was equally torturous. Slave owners would frequently take slaves as concubines, and "the jealous mistress of the manor often shaved off the lustrous mane of hair, indicating that White women too understood the significance of long, kink-free hair" 41 . Here again, the violence of shaving or cutting hair links back to the themes of the unit, Bernice, and Malcolm X.

Of course, hair care did not cease to exist after slavery was abolished. It is instead the beginning of the recognition of an ethnic hair care market. The Emancipation marked the creation of the black consumer market with enough disposable income to buy cosmetics, primarily "bleaching creams and hair-straightening products" 42 . Overuse of these bleaching creams and straightening products led to bald patches and hair breakage. Both Annie Turnbo, founder of Poro, and Madam C. J. Walker, founder of Walker Manufacturing, experimented with formulas to help care for damaged hair and scalps like their own 43 . Both women's stories demonstrate the way "black" hair was used to make money and build the race. They not only provided products that were in demand, but they also trained a sales force of young, black women, which provided work opportunities to those that would have otherwise been unemployed. While Poro eventually went under, Madam C. J. Walker became the first African American millionaire and "came to symbolize all that Black hair stood for in the first half of the twentieth century" 44 .

Consumer culture for black Americans is a double-edged sword. African Americans, once considered commodities themselves, are expected in modern society to forget their violent histories and participate as unbiased consumers. My students continue to experience societal pressures, stereotypes, and expectations surrounding the idea that white and light skinned people are somehow better than dark skinned people. They are also subject to the common assumption that all "black" hair is kinky and bad and all "white" hair is straight and good. This is clearly not the case for either group as there can be black people born with straight hair and white people born with kinky hair. However, these racist stereotypes will persist until society as a whole changes its perception and treatment of people without regard for the color of their skin or the style of their hair. In the meantime, my students and I will explore the cultural and historical significance of "good" hair.

My students are knowledgeable consumers, whether or not they are aware of it. They all recognize the social status that comes with having good hair and they know how to get good hair and how much that hair will cost. Like Malcolm X, they desire straight, flowing, "white" hair. The standard of beauty for black Americans has not changed much since the 1940s.

"Black" hair and "white" hair are visibly different, but Chin discovered that her Newhallville girls' treatment of both types of hair is the same. She observed the way that the girls treated "white" hair in two types of situations: her own hair and white dolls. One example is when a girl pulled the gold hair bow off her head and her relatives told her to stop "pickin' at Miss Chin's head" 45 . I have had similar experiences with my students wanting to style my hair. I have gone from having a ponytail one minute to individual plaits, cornrows to individual plaits, and buns on the top of my head just to name a few of the hairstyles they gave me. My students and I were able to bond socially as females and enjoy a few laughs at my expense because we were able to communicate about the girls' personal issues instead of homework and impending tests. This bonding experience is common among Africans and African Americans as Kathy Peiss notes in Hope in a Jar , "Hair grooming had long brought black women together to socialize while engaging in the time-consuming rituals of washing, combing, and plaiting, the tactile pleasures of working with hair mingling with the diversion of visiting and chatting" 46 .

Chin recognizes that the girls playing with her hair were not trying to "rearrange my race or racial identity in some biological sense; nevertheless, they were working to make me more like them just as they did with their dolls" 47 . I have experienced similar attempts by my students to make me physically look more like them, to look cooler in their eyes. While they made valiant efforts to style my hair in a way that was cool to them, and in many cases identical to the way they had their own hair styled, I generally ended up looking more funny than cool considering my teacher clothes and obligatory chalk marks on my pants. Eventually, they decided it was better to stick with simpler styles, such as French braids, fishtail braids, and occasionally curling my hair for special events.

The other situation in which Chin observed the girls handling "white" hair was when they played with white dolls. She noted, "From Cabbage Patch Kids with their yarn hair strung with beads and wrapped with foil to long-haired blonde dolls sporting intricately braided 'dos, white dolls in Newhallville were... not quite recognized as such" 48 . She did not see many children in Newhallville with ethnically correct dolls and thusly interpreted their treatment of white dolls as an attempt to identify with them more readily. While I am not sure I agree with Chin's inference, I do think it is important to note the preference amongst the children for Barbie hair and consider that it might be related in part to the lack of availability of dolls with "ethnic" hair.

There is a definite hierarchy of hair, and much of it can be seen simply by observing pictures of African American celebrities and noting similarities and differences between their hairstyles. A Google search for "African American celebrity hairstyles" returned thousands of pictures, most of which portrayed women with long, relaxed hair. I was able to construct a rough hierarchy of "good" African American hair. The least desirable hairstyle is a short, natural style, followed by long and relaxed with tight curls, short and relaxed, and finally long and relaxed with loose curls. Overwhelmingly, it appears that "good" African American hair for women is still "Barbie" hair.

The results of my first search were mostly expected, but when I tried a similar search for "white" hair, I realized how many assumptions I make on a regular basis. As a comparison with my search for African American celebrity hairstyles, I performed three different Google image searches for "white" celebrity hairstyles. The first search I did was for "Caucasian celebrity hairstyles." The results were a bit scattered and I realized that not many people would use that terminology in a Google search. I cleverly revised my search to "white celebrity hairstyles," or so I thought it was clever. After again realizing that almost no one would type that phrase to search for Caucasian hairstyles, the pattern that I initially saw made more sense. The results displayed hair that was so blonde that it looked white. Finally, partly out of frustration at not being able to think of the proper phrase and partly out of curiosity, I searched "celebrity hairstyles." The results were very surprising a bit disturbing to me. The results showed 29 white women, a majority of them blonde. I certainly expected a number of white women in my search results, but not 100%. I should also note that although I never specified that I was looking for female hairstyles, there were no men in my results. After getting over my initial shock that Google deemed that my search for hairstyles was specifically for Caucasian, female celebrity hairstyles, I took a closer look at the hairstyles in the results. As with the African American hairstyles, there was a distinct preference for long, straight hair. The bob was at the bottom of the hierarchy, followed by long hair with loose curls, and finally long, straight hair. There was a distinct preference for blonde hair with some of the pictures showing brunettes with dramatic blonde highlights.

My personal realizations helped me understand that the default for celebrity hairstyles is white, blonde, and female. This was an enlightening experiment that showed me the keywords for "good" hair in consumer culture are set to "white." This "unmarked" category is the default setting regardless of its moral or aesthetic validity. I would also like my students to run these same searches and report on their findings.

Objectives/Standards

I will be teaching this unit to my ninth grade English classes. We have fairly regular access to computers, but we may not have copies of the stories and books for each student. It is my goal to read "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" on laptops in the classroom and secure copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X for each student to borrow and read at home. The texts I selected relate to the theme for ninth grade: Search for Self. All of the main characters are trying to figure out who they are as people, and they explore their identities through their hair.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education is currently in the process of adapting the Common Core Standards for English. The standards will be in use throughout the School District of Philadelphia beginning September 2012. I am basing my objectives on the most recent draft of the Common Core Standards for Pennsylvania. My objectives for this unit are students will be able to: cite textual evidence to support analysis of the text and make inferences based on an author's beliefs about a subject; analyze U.S. documents of historical and literary significance, including related themes and concepts; independently gather vocabulary knowledge; independently and proficiently read and comprehend literary non-fiction text; determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development; write explanatory texts to examine complex ideas and information clearly and accurately; organize ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections; use transitions to link the major sections of the text; and provide a concluding statement. These objectives are adapted from the following Common Core Standards:

1.2 Reading informational Text

1.3 Reading Literature

1.4 Writing

I will be implementing several different strategies, including technology, for this curriculum unit. The main strategies that I will use are collaborative group work, reading journals, quizzes, and graphic organizers. These strategies will be spaced out during the unit and will serve as formative and summative assessments in addition to a final essay comparing and contrasting the universal themes in each story.

Collaborative Group Work

I will divide each class of approximately 33 students into groups of three or four. My goal is to create heterogeneous groups based on previously collected data. Groups will work together with different roles to complete: scribe, task manager, timekeeper, and researcher. The timekeeper can double as the researcher in groups of three. The scribe will take notes on the discussion; the task manager will ensure that every task is completed; the timekeeper will make sure that the group does not run out of time; the researcher will refer back to the text for evidence or examples as needed. At the end of such work, students will give group members grades based on their performance in their roles.

Collaborative groups will work together on the compare and contrast writing assignment for The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Sesame Street video, on the compare and contrast writing assignment for non-fiction texts, and on the compare and contrast writing assignment for House on Mango Street and a non-fiction text.

Reading Journals

Students will be required to take structured notes while completing a reading assignment for homework. The format should be familiar by the time we reach this unit, but I will review it again prior to their first reading assignment. All notes must include a page number for future reference. Beyond the page number, I require students to question the text, note important characters and events, make inferences about the text, and record quotations that may be useful for their essay assignment on universal themes. Reading journals will be checked as credit for completing a homework assignment.

As added incentive to read and take notes that demonstrate an understanding of the text, I will administer pop quizzes on reading assignments. The questions will be open-ended and will cover a few major events or characters from the previous reading. Students will be allowed to use their reading journals to complete their quizzes. These periodic quizzes may also include vocabulary that I assign based on the text.

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are visual alternatives for students to organize thoughts and ideas. I will provide students with a Venn diagram for their small writing assignments and a compare and contrast chart for their essays on universal theme.

Lesson Plan Format

My lesson plans all follow the seven-step lesson plan because both my district and union require this format. The steps are as follows: Do Now (Warm-up or Anticipation Set); Direct Instruction; Guided Practice; Independent Practice; Closing (including Exit

Ticket); Homework; and Assessment. A cycle of feedback between teacher and student is established when using the seven-step lesson plan that promotes understanding of the material. The teacher can also build lessons on each other using the feedback from previous lessons.

Classroom Activities

Plan #1: theme and universal theme.

Objectives:

Students will be able to cite textual evidence to support analysis of the text and make inferences based on an author's beliefs about a subject; analyze U.S. documents of historical and literary significance, including related themes and concepts; independently gather vocabulary knowledge; write explanatory texts to examine complex ideas and information clearly and accurately; and organize ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections.

For this plan, I will need a smart board, projector, computer, speakers, picture of Barack Obama and boy, the Sesame Street video clip, and the final essay assignment sheet.

Learning Plan (2-3 day lesson):

Students will be presented with an image of Barack Obama bending over to let a young, black boy touch his hair 49 . Their Do Now assignment will be to write a brief narrative explaining what they think happened leading up to that photograph being taken. Students will have the opportunity to share their narratives with the class. I will be sure to have at least three students read their narratives aloud so the class has enough to compare during a discussion. Students will then watch a Sesame Street video clip about hair 50 . After the conclusion of the clip, I will ask students to explain the similarities and differences between the picture and video clip. We will then construct a definition for "theme" as a class. I will then explain what a "universal theme" is and have students to list universal themes that they have seen in movies or read in books. Students will complete a Think-Pair-Share and the class will make a master list of universal themes. We will select a theme that makes sense for their narratives and for their Exit Pass, students will either continue the narrative they began or write another narrative that explains what they think happened after the photograph was taken. Each narrative must have the five parts of plot, at least one major character, and made direct reference to the events portrayed in the picture. For homework, students will revise their narratives and check them for the five parts of plot, one major character, direct reference to the events in the picture, and reference to the universal theme the class decided on. They will also have to write one paragraph explaining how their narratives convey the universal theme selected during class.

Students will begin class with a selection of writing prompts about the theme of hair for their Do Now. They will pick one and write a response: describe what you think "good" hair is; describe a time you got a bad haircut or hairstyle and how you felt; describe your hair and compare it with the hair that you want (color, length, style, et cetera); explain how much time and money you think it takes for the average person to maintain "good" hair on a daily basis. Prior to discussing student responses, we will review theme and universal theme. Students will then share their responses to the Do Now prompts and I will facilitate a discussion of what they believe constitutes "good" hair, why they believe certain hair is good, and the industry of hair in the United States. If possible, I will have students rearrange the desks into a large circle so they can have a conversation with each other while I listen, take notes, address unanswered questions, and prompt quiet students for their opinions. I will not contribute opinions or participate in the discussion until it starts to slow down. At that point, I will read over some of the notes that I took and prompt a new discussion on stereotypes that are applied to different hairstyles and people with certain types of hair, making reference to the picture and video clip from the previous class. I will again remain an observer of the discussion. If there is time, students will have a final discussion about the benefits of mutual grooming and hair rituals. The Exit Pass will be a question asking students to think about why they think the things they do about hair and "good" hair. For homework, students will read the final essay assignment and be prepared with questions, if any, about the assignment. The essay assignment guidelines can be found in the appendix. They will also write a paragraph explaining the theme of the day's lesson.

Plan #2: Comparing and Contrasting Theme

Students will be able to cite textual evidence to support analysis of the text and make inferences based on an author's beliefs about a subject; analyze U.S. documents of historical and literary significance, including related themes and concepts; independently and proficiently read and comprehend literary non-fiction text; determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development; write explanatory texts to examine complex ideas and information clearly and accurately; organize ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections; use transitions to link the major sections of the text; and provide a concluding statement.

For this plan, I will need the song "Hair" and the corresponding lyrics, the CNN video clip and article, copies of "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," images from "Wigs," copies of "Hairs," the video clip of A Girl Like Me , copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X , compare-and-contrast charts, the Sesame Street video clip, a reading quiz, Good Hair , and an assortment of articles.

Learning Plan (4-5 day lesson):

Students will listen to the song "Hair" from the musical Hair for their Do Now. 51 I will provide lyrics for their reference. As they listen, students will assess the tone and mood of the song, explain the theme of the song, and explain how the theme does or does not fit in with the universal theme that we selected for homework. The class will watch a video clip about the growing industry of hair salons and reflect on similarities and differences between their thoughts and the news report 52 . I will provide the text article for reference and a compare and contrast table, and students will individually write a 3-paragraph compare and contrast essay. The aim of the activity is to get students in the habit of writing compare-and-contrast essays in preparation for their final assessment. For their Exit Pass, students will review the reading journal format. I will distribute copies of "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" that students will need to read and take notes on for homework.

For the Do Now, students will select a wig or hairpiece from a series of images from the Lorna Simpson art show "Wigs" and write the outline of a narrative about the kind of person they think would wear the wig or hairpiece. 53 Students will read the chapter titled "Hairs" from House on Mango Street and watch A Girl Like Me . 54 We will analyze tone and mood as a class, and then students will individually write a three-paragraph essay comparing the tone and mood of "Hairs" with the tone and mood of A Girl Like Me . For their Exit Pass, students will write a couple of sentences explaining the overarching theme that links all of the materials we have used for this unit. I will distribute copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X that students will need to read and take notes on for homework.

For the Do Now, students will complete a compare-and-contrast chart for the theme and tone of the Sesame Street clip, "Hairs," and The Autobiography of Malcolm X . Students will individually complete a reading quiz on The Autobiography of Malcolm X and "Bernice Bobs Her Hair." The class will then watch a series of short clips from Good Hair and, in collaborative groups, read an article from a selection about Olympian Gabby Douglas, Rastafarian students, or a Native American student. The groups will then work together to analyze the universal themes in Good Hair and the articles. The articles are located in the annotated bibliography. As an Exit Pass, students will reevaluate their ideas about the universal theme for this unit's lessons. For homework, students will complete a compare-and-contrast chart for universal theme in The Autobiography of Malcolm X and "Bernice Bobs Her Hair."

The remaining days of the unit will be focused on writing and revising their essays. An alternative cumulative assignment can be completed in conjunction with math teachers. The math classes will address ratios and proportions and the English classes will work on research. Students will be given some statistics and numbers for the beauty industry and will find some of their own. They will then interview local salon owners and work in math class to create ratios and analyze the data. English class will focus on writing a research paper using citations.

Annotated Bibliography

2012 economic snapshot of the salon industry. in Professional Beauty Association [database online]. 2012 [cited August 15 2012]. Available from http://www.probeauty.org/research/#national-salonspa-industry-profile.

This resource is a profile of the economics of the salon industry in America. It includes

sales, establishments, and jobs.

2012 salon industry state portraits. in Professional Beauty Association [database online]. 2012 [cited August 15 2012]. Available from http://www.probeauty.org/research/#national-salonspa-industry-profile.

This resource is a profile of the salon industry in America broken down by state. It

includes state industry trends, sales, and employees.

Lorna Simpson biography. in Biography.com [database online]. 2012 [cited August 15 2012]. Available from http://www.biography.com/people/lorna-simpson-507345.

This resource is a biography of artist Lorna Simpson.

I love my hair. in Sesame Street [database online]. 2012 [cited July 15 2012]. Available from http://www.sesamestreet.org/play#media/video_7d8a6fe6-cae4-44ef-8305-e28ac7885055.

This resource is a video of a Sesame Street character. She sings about all of the ways she

styles her hair.

Industry information Sheet—Beauty salons (NAICS 812112) including day spas. in The University of Georgia BOS/SBDC, Applied Research Division [database online]. 2001 [cited August 15 2012]. Available from https://www.georgiasbdc.org/pdfs/beauty.pdf.

This resource is a profile of the beauty salon industry in America including statistics,

trends, and resources.

Byrd, Ayana D., and Lori L. Tharps. 2001. Hair story: Untangling the roots of black hair in America . New York: St. Martin's.

This resource is a book about the history of "black" hair stretching from Africa in the 15 th

century to present-day America.

Chin, Elizabeth. 2001. Purchasing power: Black kids and American consumer culture . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

This resource is an ethnography of the Newhallville neighborhood in New Haven,

Connecticut. The focus is on how poor, black children navigate the consumer culture in

Davis, Kiri. A girl like me. in Reel Works Teen Filmmaking [database online]. 2005 [cited July 15 2012]. Available from http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/films/a_girl_like_me/.

This resource is a seven-minute documentary about the importance of appearance to

young, black women. It includes a recreation of the Clark Doll Studies and interviews

with several of Davis's peers.

Finn, Joan. A worldwide look at the ritual of male hair grooming. in NorthJersey.com [database online]. 2011 [cited August 16 2012]. Available from http://www.northjersey.com/community/events/131198689_A_worldwide_look_at_the_ritual_of_male_hair_grooming.html.

This resource is an article about photographer Jay Seldin's observations of worldwide

rituals for male hair grooming while taking pictures for The Barbershop Book . It also

includes some history of worldwide hair grooming rituals and a couple of pictures from

Fitzgerald, F. S. Bernice bobs her hair. [cited 5/5 2012]. Available from http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/bernice/bernice.html (accessed May 5, 2012).

This resource is a short story about the socially awkward Bernice and her visit with her

cousin, Marjorie. Marjorie coaches Bernice on being popular; eventually, Bernice

becomes more popular than Marjorie. Marjorie seeks revenge, which ends up backfiring.

Hill, Jamele. Gabby Douglas' hair draws criticism. in ESPN [database online]. 2012 [cited August 15 2012]. Available from http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/espnw/story/_/id/8232063/espnw-gabby-douglas-hair-criticized-social-media-sites.

This resource is an article about Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas and the media

focus on her hair.

Jones, Athena. Hair salons and barbershops: A growing industry. in CNN [database online]. 2011 [cited July 15 2012]. Available from http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/15/us/hair-salons-economy/index.html?iref=allsearch.

This resource is an article about the growth of the hair salon industry, particularly in

Kelly, Omar. Hair-raising hazing for Miami Dolphins rookies. in South Florida Sun Sentinel [database online]. 2012 [cited August 16, 2012]. Available from http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-hairraising-hazing-for-miami-dolphins-rookies-20120727,0,5625568.story.

This resource is an article about hazing within the Miami Dolphins.

Knight, Paul. A Native American family fights against hair length rules. in Houston Press [database online]. Houston, TX, 2008 [cited July 13 2012]. Available from http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-07-10/news/a-native-american-family-fights-against-hair-length-rules/.

This resource is an article about a school district in Texas that tried to make a 5-year-old

Native American boy cut his hair prior to matriculation.

Mack, Aarika. Louisiana school district relents, allows Rastafarian students' dreadlocks, caps. in First Amendment Center [database online]. 2012 [cited July 15 2012]. Available from http://archive.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=5845.

This resource is an article about a Louisiana school board allowing students to keep their

dreadlocks and head coverings in school because of their first amendment rights.

MacNicol, Glynnis, and Ortiz, Jen. Happy 50th birthday, Mr. President! Watch Obama go gray. in Business Insider [database online]. 2011 [cited July 15 2012]. Available from http://www.businessinsider.com/barack-obama-birthday-grey-hair-2011-8?op=1.

This resource is an article with a pictorial timeline about how the president's hair has

grayed during his term. It includes a picture of a young boy touching his hair.

Meisel, Melissa. Diversity is the direction: New developments in the ever-evolving ethnic hair and skin care marketplace. in Rodman Publishing [database online]. 2012 [cited August 15 2012]. Available from http://www.happi.com/articles/2012/04/diversity-is-the-direction.

This resource is an article about the trend toward natural hair and natural skin and hair

care products.

Peiss, Kathy Lee. 2011. Hope in a jar: The making of America's beauty culture . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

This resource is a book about the history of beauty culture in America. It includes a look

at the contributions of Annie Turnbo Malone and Madam C. J. Walker to the beauty

Ragni, Gerome, and Rado, James. Hair. [cited July 13 2012]. Available from http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/hair/hair.htm.

This resource is the lyrics to the song "Hair" from the musical Hair .

Saint Louis, Catherine. Black hair, still tangled in politics. in New York Times [database online]. 2009 [cited July 17 2012]. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/fashion/27SKIN.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2.

This resource is an article about the political nature of black hairstyles. It presents

opinions about chemically treated hair and natural hair and makes reference to the Chris

Rock documentary, Good Hair .

Sanchez, Raf. Story behind five-year-old touching Barack Obama's hair in the oval office revealed. in The Telegraph [database online]. 2012 [cited August 1 2012]. Available from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9290667/Story-behind-five-year-old-touching-Barack-Obamas-hair-in-the-Oval-Office-revealed.html.

This resource is an article revealing the true story behind the picture of the young boy

touching President Obama's hair.

Simpson, Lorna. Wigs (portfolio). in Walker Art Center [database online]. 2009 [cited August 1 2012]. Available from http://artsconnected.org/resource/84890/wigs-portfolio.

This resource is a gallery view of artist Lorna Simpson's photography installment, Wigs.

It includes pictures of wigs and hair.

Stilson, Jeff. 2009. Good hair , ed. Chris Rock, eds. Jenny Hunter, Kevin O'Donnell. Vol. DVDHBO Films.

This resource is a documentary about what African American women will do to get

"good" hair. It includes interviews with celebrities, some history of the African American

hair care industry, and an overview of the Bronner Brothers International Hair Show in

Atlanta, Georgia.

Thompson, Cheryl. Black women and identity: What's hair got to do with it? in MPublishing [database online]. Ann Arbor, MI, 2009 [cited August 15 2012]. Available from http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mfsfront;c=mfs;c=mfsfront;idno=ark5583.0022.105;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mfsg.

This resource is an article about the importance of hair to African American women. It

includes a brief history of African hair care and the ethnic hair care industry.

X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. 1992. The autobiography of Malcolm X . New York: One World/Ballantine.

This resource is an autobiography written by Alex Haley about Malcolm X's transition

from a country boy to a hustler to the spokesman for Black Muslims.

Compare-and-Contrast Essay Guidelines

Students will write a compare-and-contrast essay analyzing the universal themes in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and an excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X . The graphic organizer below will aid students in arranging their ideas. Students will use the point-by-point format to write a five-paragraph essay (introduction, similarities, first story differences, second story differences, conclusion) with at least one piece of textual evidence per paragraph. The essay must be typed double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font and include a works cited with parenthetical citations in MLA format. There is a two-page minimum.

• Elizabeth Chin. 2001. Purchasing power: Black kids and American consumer culture . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 164.
• "Industry information Sheet—Beauty salons (NAICS 812112) including day spas" in The University of Georgia BOS/SBDC, 2001, https://www.georgiasbdc.org/pdfs/beauty.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012).
• "2012 economic snapshot of the salon industry" in Professional Beauty Association, 2012, http://www.probeauty.org/research/#national-salonspa-industry-profile (accessed August 15, 2012).
• "2012 salon industry state portraits" in Professional Beauty Association, 2012, http://www.probeauty.org/research/#national-salonspa-industry-profile (accessed August 15, 2012).
• Cheryl Thompson, "Black women and identity: What's hair got to do with it?" in MPublishing, Ann Arbor, MI, 2009.
• Melissa Meisel, "Diversity is the direction: New developments in the ever-evolving ethnic hair and skin care marketplace" in Rodman Publishing, 2012.
• Thompson, "Black women and identity."
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Bernice bobs her hair," 1922, http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/bernice/bernice.html (accessed May 5, 2012).
• Malcolm X and Alex Haley. 1992. The autobiography of Malcolm X . New York: One World/Ballantine, 56.
• "Lorna Simpson biography" in Biography.com, 2012, http://www.biography.com/people/lorna-simpson-507345.
• Chin, Purchasing power , 143.
• Ibid., 144.
• Ibid., 171.
• Ibid., 172.
• Omar Kelly, "Hair-raising hazing for Miami Dolphins rookies" in South Florida Sun Sentinel, 2012.
• Joan Finn, "A worldwide look at the ritual of male hair grooming" in NorthJersey.com,
• Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps, Hair story: Untangling the roots of black hair in America , 2.
• Chin, Purchasing power , 30.
• Byrd and Tharps, Hair story , 1.
• Kathy Lee Peiss, Hope in a jar: The making of America's beauty culture , 42.
• Byrd and Tharps, Hair story , 19.
• Peiss, Hope in a jar , 13.
• Byrd and Tharps, Hair story , 16.
• Peiss, Hope in a jar , 67.
• Byrd and Tharps, Hair story , 25.
• Chin, Purchasing power , 82.
• Peiss, Hope in a jar , 90.
• Chin, Purchasing power , 166.
• Raf Sanchez, "Story behind five-year-old touching Barack Obama's hair in the oval office revealed" in The Telegraph, 2012.
• "I love my hair" in Sesame Street , 2012, http://www.sesamestreet.org/play#media/video_7d8a6fe6-cae4-44ef-8305-e28ac7885055 (accessed July 15, 2012).
• Gerome Ragni and James Rado, "Hair," in Hair .
• Athena Jones, "Hair salons and barbershops: A growing industry" in CNN ,
• http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/15/us/hair-salons-
• onomy/index.html?iref=allsearch (accessed July 15, 2012).
• Lorna Simpson, "Wigs (portfolio)" in Walker Art Center, 2009, http://artsconnected.org/resource/84890/wigs-portfolio (accessed August 1, 2012).
• Kiri Davis, "A girl like me" in Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, 2005, http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/films/a_girl_like_me/ (accessed July 15, 2012).

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