Navigating the “Mane-stream”: Natural Hair and Embodied Racial Capital in Professional Settings

• In Event: 3448 - Open Topic on Sociology of Body and Embodiment

Abstract

Previous research suggests that mainstream ideas about “professional” self-presentation shape dominant expectations of workers’ appearances. However, little is known about how Black women experience and navigate these expectations especially as it relates to their hair-styling choices. Using web-based survey data with 200 Black-identified women in the United States, I explore how dominant perceptions of ‘natural’ Black hair shape Black women’s hair-styling decisions and analyze how their actual (and perceived) experiences in the workforce reflect the meanings attached to Black hair. Theoretically, I rely on the concept of “embodied racial capital” to conceptualize findings and clarify how gendered and racialized understandings of Black women’s body are associated with material implications related to job opportunities, monetary gain, and emotional costs/benefits. I find that Black women who wear their “natural” un-straightened hair are perceived as un-professional which greatly influences their experiences during the interview stage and later in interpersonal dynamics in the workplace. By integrating a critical and intersectional perspectives of the body, I illustrate associations between natural hair and negative appraisals of competence, fit, potential, and personality (among others). Respondents’ intentional decisions to wear their hair in its natural state reflects the importance of hair to their identity and is also understood as a way to challenge these ideas.

Author

• Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, University of South Florida