Portrayal of black women's hair-beautification practices in six South African news reports: a close textual reading. Issue 1 (2nd April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Moodley, Prevan; Mthembu, Samukelisiwe Nosipho
• Is Part Of: African identities. Volume 18:Issue 1/2(2020)
• Page Start: 193
• Page End: 216
• Publication Date: 2020-04-02
• Subjects: Black beauty -- decolonization -- discourse analysis -- hair -- hair beautification -- subject positions; National characteristics, African -- Periodicals; Africans -- Periodicals; African diaspora -- Periodicals; Africa -- Civilization -- Periodicals; 305.896
• DOI: 10.1080/14725843.2020.1761289
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1472-5843

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Black beauty is both bodily aesthetics in an Africa struggling with decolonization and a political investment celebrating African physical phenotypes, such as hair variation, as attractive. Hair, a visible and heritable trait in its unstraightened form has been subjected to extreme beautification techniques. Media, advertising, fashion industries, as well as ideologies of image and embodiment, have debated hair-beautification practices. One site for public debates is the newspaper. News reports disseminate debates to readers and are expected to engage with contested ideas about hair beautification. This discourse analysis of six South African newspaper reports about Black African women's hair-beautification practices identified discourses named Commercialization, Chemical Harm, Empowerment, and Decolonization. The study also investigated these reports' portrayal of subject positions because hair represents identity. Black African female subjects for whom hair beautification represented being empowered were portrayed in opposition to counterparts who, allied with decolonization trends, do not wish to practise dominant modes of hair beautification. These are circulating discursivities that represent interstices where Black African female identities are debated in a journalism that grapples with the articulation of nuanced positions. In intermediate positions, news reports portray African women as negotiating both 'natural' and colonized hair aesthetics amidst globalization and the image-conscious world.