{"id":40468,"date":"2015-03-16T02:13:30","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T02:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40468"},"modified":"2016-03-21T00:39:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T00:39:21","slug":"the-culture-of-curls-what-hair-really-means-in-mixed-race-societies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40468","title":{"rendered":"The Culture of Curls: What Hair Really Means in Mixed Race Societies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Culture of Curls: What Hair Really Means in Mixed Race Societies<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Yale Globalist<\/a>
\n2013-12-24<\/p>\n

Isidora Stankovic<\/strong><\/a>
\nTimothy Dwight College
\nYale University<\/em><\/p>\n

Look through any fashion magazine and you might notice something puzzling. Almost without exception, models of every race have the same sleek, straightened hair. The message from these media sources seems clear: these painstakingly smooth hairstyles are simply better. Women around the world have taken this message to heart and adopted straightened hair as a beauty ideal, but for some women, hair texture means something more. In societies with large mixed race populations, hair extends beyond beauty and becomes a factor that reveals ethnic heritage and even socioeconomic background. According to Professor Roberto Gonz\u00e1lez Echevarr\u00eda<\/a>, Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literatures at Yale University, \u201chair is a fashion statement as well as a statement of ethnicity.\u201d Curls and kinky hair are loaded with stigma in many countries, in part because they represent the effects of historical interactions between different ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

The legacy of European colonialism echoes strongly in Cuba<\/a>, and has been influential in shaping race relations, social structure, and the identities of mixed-race individuals. Professor Gonz\u00e1lez Echevarr\u00eda explains that Spaniards brought a relatively small number of African slaves to Cuba in the 16th century to replace the annihilated labor force. In the 19th century, the number of African slaves on the island grew as the country invested in the sugar industry. Interactions with white Europeans and black slaves created a significant mixed-race population, and the growth of this group has made it increasingly difficult to identify people as either black or white and produced a change in categorization of individuals. Thus, hair has become an important tool for labeling and social stratification. According to Gonz\u00e1lez Echevarr\u00eda, \u201cThere are many gradations of mulatto<\/a> in Cuba, and some are gauged by how kinky their hair is.\u201d He adds that Cubans can be prejudiced against kinky hair, noting that to have kinky hair is to \u201ctener pelo malo,\u201d or \u201cto have bad hair.\u201d They may call the hair of black individuals \u201cpasa,\u201d and women of European origin even refer to their hair as \u201cpasa\u201d when they are having a bad hair day, often saying \u201ctengo la pasa alborotada\u201d (\u201cI have messy\/wild hair\u201d)…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Culture of Curls: What Hair Really Means in Mixed Race Societies The Yale Globalist 2013-12-24 Isidora Stankovic Timothy Dwight College Yale University Look through any fashion magazine and you might notice something puzzling. Almost without exception, models of every race have the same sleek, straightened hair. The message from these media sources seems clear: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,1649,12,83,21,520],"tags":[673,19627,19628,19625,19626],"class_list":["post-40468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-south-africa","tag-cuba","tag-isidora-stankovic","tag-roberto-gonzalez-echevarria","tag-the-yale-globalist","tag-yale-globalist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46138,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40468\/revisions\/46138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}