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Your race, your looks

Real women on why biased beauty standards are still around—and how you can work to change them in your everyday life.

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“Almost every black woman has had a ‘hair moment,’” said Farai Chideya, who went on to share hers with a roomful of women at Glamour’s Women, Race and Beauty panel last November. It was when a higher-up once commented that her braids made her look unprofessional. Judging from the heads nodding, most of the women in the diverse audience had heard something similar—or worse—about their looks. And it hurt.

The roundtable, which featured brilliant women of every ethnicity, was a high point in Glamour’s year, but it was triggered by a low point. Last summer, a former staffer made an unauthorized presentation to a group of female attorneys in which she commented that, in her view, Afros were “a Don’t” for work. Glamour management found out about her remark two months later and was floored. (Click here for our response.) We shared the outrage of hundreds of you who wrote in to voice disagreement. The idea that a woman cannot be herself and still get ahead at work runs contrary to Glamour’s message of empowerment.

Your letters made one thing clear: Many women of color still feel judged according to racially biased beauty norms in their careers and sometimes even in personal relationships. It’s not just about hair and it’s not just about African American women, as you’ll see from the variety of testimonials on these pages. At a time when women of all shapes, sizes, colors and manner of hairstyles are increasingly seen in magazines and on TV and movie screens—and when Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, proudly wears her dreads—multicultural beauty acceptance hasn’t pervaded our lives as much as we’d like to think. Those same dreads could cost you a promotion in some offices, noted some letter writers; one reader said reactions to her natural hair at work “made it seem like I’d entered a meeting in jeans and a T-shirt.” But going with straightened hair isn’t simple either, said panelist Lisa Price, founder of Carol’s Daughter beauty products: An African American woman who wants to experiment with extensions may be seen as a sellout. Fear of saying the wrong thing stops most people from making the next crucial step—talking openly about these beauty standards. So Glamour brought together a group of journalists, academics and businesswomen to take that step. Listen in on their discussion:

FARAI CHIDEYA Host, News & Notes, NPR: When I was a young reporter, I was told that my braids made me look unprofessional, so I took them out. Have any of you been faced with this kind of situation?

JAMI FLOYD Anchor, Jami Floyd: Best Defense, In Session: I grew up in New York City, which you would think is a diverse place, but I was called all kinds of names related to race, like Brillo-head. My mother’s white, and she didn’t know how to do my hair, so I had something that I always call white-mama hair—believe me, it was something you had to overcome! But my parents pressed upon me that “In this world, you are a black woman,” so I was political about my hair and would not straighten it. Then there came a point when I wanted to do television, and I didn’t think the Afro was going to play, so I made a very difficult choice—to straighten my hair.

DAISY HERNANDEZ Managing editor, ColorLines magazine: When I worked in a corporate office, I “self-regulated”: I knew what the unspoken rules were, so I wore my hair back because I wanted to thrive. But Jami, can you [wear your hair natural] now? Do you get to a certain level of success when you can bust out?

FLOYD: Oprah busts out occasionally, but she’s Oprah. I certainly could try it if I were willing to not advance further. I think television is one of the last real bastions of the white beauty standard, but still in many industries the workers can be replaced by someone who’s willing to play the game or who looks like the person in charge. And this is a problem for all women, not just women of color. The way we present ourselves, the choices we have to make every day that men don’t have to think about. Why? Because they are the CEOs in most cases, they are the network executives, the partners in law firms. It’s about who’s in charge.

VANESSA BUSH Executive editor, Essence: But Jami, at what point do you say, “Why should I?” When I was working at mainstream companies and decided to wear my hair natural, I knew there were probably going to be people who would say things that I thought were inappropriate, but I was willing to take the hit. I can’t control how people perceive me, but I certainly am not going to change my beauty standards to suit someone else’s narrow viewpoint.

FLOYD: Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. I’ve got two kids who are in school, and you get to a point where you have practical decisions to make. I have a message I want to get out there, so I’m going to make this particular compromise and be very careful not to lose a sense of who I am.

VENUS OPAL REESE Assistant professor of aesthetic studies, the University of Texas at Dallas: What I’m hearing from Jami is something that I heard Denzel Washington say: Sometimes you have to do what you got to do so you can do what you want to do. So sometimes making progress is about timing. Right now, Jami, in your industry you’re paying a cost so you can do what you want.

MALLY RONCAL Celebrity makeup artist and creator of Mally Beauty makeup: Yes, sometimes you have to adapt a little because you’ve got to pay the bills. But not to the point where you change your natural beauty just to fit in. I work with celebrity clients at video shoots and on album covers, and I’ve had execs say, “Can we just soften the ethnicity a little bit?” They don’t know that they’re dealing with the wrong girl. I say, “Hell no!”

CHIDEYA: I’m thinking about that India.Arie song “I Am Not My Hair.” But sometimes you really are.

FLOYD: Even now, often hair is the way we are differentiated in this culture. To me the decision to straighten your hair is deeply political. When I have my Afro and walk down the street, there’s no doubt that I’m black. With this [straightened] hair, if I talk about being black on air, viewers write and say, “You’re black?!” I feel [straightening your hair] is giving up a sense of your identity. Let’s be honest: It’s an effort to look Anglo-Saxon.

BUSH: Actually, for a lot of African American women, hair is like an accessory; it’s like changing shoes. At Essence we celebrate all types of women—women with straight hair and natural hair, those who have a little meat on their bones and those who are a size 2—because often we don’t get validation outside of our own space. I mean, it was just this year [that Don Imus said] we’re nappy-headed hos and on and on. What does that have to do with who your authentic self is?

FLOYD: I agree that for black women our sense of ourselves is not always consistent with the way other people see us. Yes, today my daughter is more likely to see someone who looks like her in magazines and that’s great. But we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking those changes have occurred in every industry. They haven’t happened in television news, in entertainment or in law firms; although in law now you can push the envelope a little bit. With each generation, that envelope gets pushed, but we haven’t yet gotten to a place, in corporate America at least, where [how you wear your hair] can be simply a style choice.

REESE: I’d like us to consider how we see things. When it comes to race, we’re looking from the past. When people see me with my natural hair, they don’t see Dr. Venus Opal Reese who has four degrees, they see an historical idea of what natural hair means. And that’s what it meant in the 1970s and 1960s; it equaled black nationalism and was linked to the Black Panther Party. It was considered militant. That doesn’t mean it’s true now, but that’s how it’s linked.

BARBARA TREPAGNIER Professor of sociology, Texas State University at San Marcos: That’s something I think most of the women in my study [for her book Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide] wouldn’t know. How could they? It’s not talked about; we’re scared to death of racial controversy. In my study I found that whether you are racist is about how aware you are of the concerns that people of other races have. So we need to stop wondering, “Am I racist? Oh, God, no, I couldn’t be!” and ask how aware we are.

CHIDEYA: And African Americans have to admit, pressure to look a certain way comes from our community, too. I was at a black journalists convention and I had my hair blown out. People looked at me like I was a sellout.

LISA PRICE Founder, Carol’s Daughter beauty products: I can relate! When I straightened my hair, people would say, “Why did you get rid of your curls?” They assume that since you’re successful, you straighten your hair to look like everyone else. I don’t do it anymore; it’s too much to explain. Among African American women there’s always discussion on whether straightening or weaving means you’re trying to be white. The beauty of our hair is that we can have a sharp cut one year and ‘locks the next. Embrace that and have fun.

RONCAL: But you have to be comfortable with yourself before it can be about having fun. With my makeup line I work with everyday women, and obviously I give them tricks to enhance their own beauty. But I get a lot of Asian girls saying, “My eyes are too slanty. How do I make them look rounder?” And African American women asking, “How can I make my nose or lips look smaller?” I tell them, “We all deserve to feel as beautiful as we are. But I don’t want to hear you say, ‘I want to look more like a white girl.’”

CHIDEYA: Let’s take questions from the audience.

AUDIENCE MEMBER VERONICA CHAMBERS, novelist and journalist: We need to address that this is also about how we treat each other, and how we teach other people to treat us. Sometimes in my interactions with other black people I don’t feel beautiful at all. I have dreads. I once went out on a few dates with a black man who one night at dinner said, “Do you have a picture of yourself with straight hair?” When I asked why he wanted to know, he replied, “This is really going well. I’d like to know what my options are.” That never happened to me on a date with a white guy and not with the white person I married, who makes me feel very beautiful all the time.

CHIDEYA: So, panelists, how do you deal with the negativity when it comes from inside your own community?

REESE: Most of the more than 200 women I interviewed for my play Split Ends [about the history of black women’s hair] said that most of the hurt they received was from other black people. We have a history of not being valued that we still impose on each other. I don’t want to sound cavalier, but nobody’s got a whip over our backs. Why are we waiting for someone outside of us to dictate when it’s OK to be who we are?

RONCAL: I’ve found that it pays to be who I am. For example, I love lashes and heels and big hair, so when I got my first big job, I showed up with my “thing” going on. At the end of the shoot the hairdresser said, “This thing you’re doing”—and he gives me the full-body hand scan—“nobody’s ever going to take you seriously as an artist.” I went home and cried. For my next job, I wore a ponytail and no makeup, but I didn’t feel like me. So the next day I went extra big with my hair! We had so much fun the photographer asked me to work with him on his first big gig. So you’ve got to feel like you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Lisa, is having more women of color in the beauty business who will use more diverse images how we get to the next level of understanding?

PRICE: Yes, we have to set the tone. But there’s more impact when Olay hires Angela Bassett and runs those commercials not just during the BET Awards. We also need to use situations to educate. In 2006 Brad Pitt said in Esquire that he got Carol’s Daughter products for Zahara, because it made it so much easier for white people to deal with black-person hair. A lot of African Americans were offended because he said “black-person” hair, but I wasn’t. First, the business side of me was like, “Brad Pitt gave us a shout-out!” But also, I’d received letters from customers in the same situation who didn’t know what to do. We have to get to the point where we can have an open dialogue—never mind the “right” choice of words. Share the difference between a two-strand twist and a braid, or a press-and-curl and a wrap style. There are so many different ways that we wear our hair that other people don’t understand.

TREPAGNIER: It’s also important for white women to have close friendships with women of color. Those that do better understand race and racism, because they get their friends’ concerns. Close friends share those things.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Celebrities of color, like Beyoncé, usually have long [straight] hair, and girls focus on that. How can we support teenagers who are not confident because they idolize stars that don’t look like them?

FLOYD: I’ve done lots of pieces on self-esteem and hair. There’s a desire at that age to conform, but if the encouragement to be yourself is there from loved ones, you’ll find that later, that true self will come out.

HERNANDEZ: [Insecurity and rebellion] is a stage that all teenagers go through. When I was a teenager, I had blue contact lenses, I dyed my hair blond, but I also had people guiding me. Think of yourself as a model for girls. Your self-confidence says something to them. Even this discussion says to young women that they have choices. We all have to remember our own importance in one another’s eyes.