This... is White Privilege

Jan. 10, 2013 at 3:02pm with 220 notes

Reblogged from thelovelyphones

other

#965

polarrainbow:

thisiswhiteprivilege:

White privilege is not having to go across town just to get proper hair care/styling products.

White privilege is seeing products for “normal” hair, knowing they’ll work for you, and not getting offended at the implication that African hair is “abnormal.”

Hair geek mode on!

Although this might sound like… Uhm… Hairsplaining? >.> I’m sorry if it does, but I just love hair and talking about it… And this will probably be longer than I thought. I’m mainly writing this to help! I don’t mean to butt in myself where I’m not welcome. ._.

Normal hair refers to the state of the hair. Normal hair is hair that isn’t oily, dry or damaged either chemically or frictional.

Sometimes the term “normal”, as well as “medium” refers to the texture of the hair. Medium is the more correct term though. Hair texture comes in three varieties; fine, medium, coarse. Where medium is the most common all over the world with roughly 80% of the population having it. Fine hair is only common in one place of the world, northern Europe. Coarse hair is common in African countries as well as native Americans, and other places with a typically hot climate.

But back to the products; It doesn’t actually matter that much what the product says it’s for. Pretty much all of them have identical ingredients, for example shampoos having a base of a sodium sulfate, followed by preservatives, emulators, pH-adjusters, maybe some silicones and perhaps a dab of oils. After all, its purpose is to clean the hair, the ingredients doesn’t give a iota about what kind of hair it’s in.

I stopped caring a long time ago what the product package said it was suited for, and went straight to the ingredient list to locate the ingredients which my hair like and doesn’t like. I have fine hair, but I’m currently using a hair oil “meant for” coarse hair, yet my hair loves it.

The main problem is more about how we’re taught to use the products. Shampoo your hair (all of it), rinse, apply conditioner, rinse. Use styling products. Every day.

Now THIS is where the haircare is more suited for medium/normal hair. The actual use of products, not the products themselves. We’re taught early on that this is the regime that is the one and only. Before I invested a great deal of time in learning about haircare, I went by this regime as well. My fine hair was so brittle and dry no matter what products I used. Then I found out that fine hair is very sensitive to too much oils, and may even benefit from not using a conditioner whatsoever. To wash the scalp, and scalp only, with shampoo instead of smearing it in the hair as well did a miraculous change. Stop washing daily did as well.

As I have pretty much the “opposite” texture of coarse hair, I don’t have many tips for those. But from what I’ve heard, coarse hair benefit a lot from heavy oiling and light/few washes.

Bottom line is, it’s not the products, it’s how and why and when they’re used that matters most. And that teaching is very adapted to medium hair (althought even medium hair people usually benefit a lot from breaking this product routine as well).

Revolt! Don’t let some snip of text on a bottle decide if it’s for you or not. Don’t let anyone say you’re doing haircare wrong. Heck, I pour vinegar on my hair like there’s no tomorrow. Despite the bottle claiming it’s for salad.

Ummm how about you don’t derail a post that’s discussing racial differences in product marketing by babbling on about hair care.

There is a significant difference in texture between black hair and white hair. They react differently to different products. Some of the “normal” products still won’t work for them regardless because they’re not made for that hair texture. Just because something is made for coarse hair doesn’t mean its will work for everyone with coarse hair. And there is a difference between the coarseness of a white persons hair vs. black persons hair because the texture is different.

I get the point of what you’re trying to get at here but it’s not appropriate to derail this post like this. Someone is sharing their personal experience and you’re essentially trying to say that their feelings about this situation are wrong and that you know better than they do.

This is a real problem. I worked in salons for 3 years and I can’t count the number of people we had to turn away because our stylists weren’t trained to style their hair or our products wouldn’t work for them.