“Going natural”: Black women’s identity project shifts in hair care practices

Hair care, a seemingly mundane consumption practice, is packed with sociocultural meanings and constitutes an important realm of identity work for consumers. Drawing upon existing literature on consumer identity projects, this paper investigates the experiences of urban, Black women in Kenya as they disengage from the normative practice of altering their natural hair texture using chemical straighteners (a practice that conforms to Eurocentric beauty ideals of straight, flowing hair), and adopt the non-normative hair care practice of “going natural,” in which they embrace their natural hair texture and hairstyles. This paper traces the historical, sociocultural, and political events that underpin the normative ideology associated with the identity marker of natural Black hair, and how this ideology influences the women’s “going natural” experience. Findings reveal tensions that emerge in the women’s identity project disengagement and reconstruction process, and how the women navigate their position as they reimagine their embodied identity quest.