Hair And The Construction Of Black American Women’s Identity

For a long time, China’s studies on the construction of Black American women’s identity mainly focused on black skin and identity, physical shape and identity and costumes and identity. Hair has been related with one’s social status and cultural background closely. However, there are few researches about how black American women resisted against white-centric beauty standards to fight for black beauty and construct their identity through hair reform. As a matter of fact, when black people strived for their civil rights and equality, black women launched some activities and movements through the typical black natural hairstyles as symbols at the same time.This paper is divided into three parts. The first chapter mainly introduces the confusion of black women towards their beauty and identity. The second one shows the movements and struggling launched by black women. It came to the culmination during the1960s. African American’s hairstyles, which were regarded as the symbol of black pride and black power, were related to politics at that time. The last chapter gives a new picture of the approved black beauty and the reconstructed black identity. Modern black women have their own beauty standards which are based on black natural characteristics. They think black beauty is not only related to the physical traits, but the inner spirits. The first lady Michelle Obama and the talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey are the two typical representatives. The author believes that a clear understanding and deep analysis of how black American women strived for black beauty and identity through hair reform has positive advantages, which encourages them show black natural beauty and pursue one’s dream bravely.