Is embracing the state of black hair the new liberation?
By Erin Aubry Kaplan Sep. 09, 2009 | Thanks mostly to the intense physical scrutiny of Michelle Obama, black hair is now a subject suitable for public consumption. Well, almost. For the last year, big media’s been creeping rather awkwardly up to that point and now seems ready to take words like “pressed” and “processed” out of the black particular and move them into a more permanently accessible cultural space; both Time and the New York Times Sunday Styles section recently ran sober pieces on the social history and multiple meanings of black hairstyles. Meanwhile, black people have been almost forced into a new mode of self-reflection about workaday rituals they assumed were of interest to no one but themselves. (See Chris Rock’s upcoming “Good Hair,” an unironically titled documentary that profiles the lucrative but little-observed industry that black hair care has been for well over a hundred years.) The latest example of this cautious coming out was Tyra Banks inaugurating the fift
