Banks, I. (2000). Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women’s Consciousness. New York: New York University Press.

Drawing on interviews with over 50 women, from teens to seniors, Hair Matters is the first book on the politics of Black hair to be based on substantive, ethnographically informed research. Focusing on the everyday discussions that Black women have among themselves and about themselves, Ingrid Banks analyzes how talking about hair reveals Black women's ideas about race, gender, sexuality, beauty, and power. Ultimately, what emerges is a survey of Black women's consciousness within both their own communities and mainstream culture at large.

Harris, J. & Johnson, P. (Eds). (2001). Tenderheaded: A Comb-bending Collection of Hair Stories. New York: Pocket Books.

What could make a smart woman ignore doctor's orders?
What could get a hardworking employee fired from her job?
What could get a black woman in hot water with her white boyfriend?
In a word...
HAIR.
The issue is not only about looking good, but about feeling adequate in a society where the beauty standards are unobtainable for most women. Tenderheaded boldly throws open the closet where black women's skeletons have been threatening to burst down the door. In poems, essays, cartoons, photos, and excerpts from novels and plays, women and men speak to the meaning hair has for them, and for society. Tenderheaded is as rich and diverse as the children of the African diaspora. With works by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and other writers of passion, persuasion, and humor -- this is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Jacobs-Huey, L. (2007). From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women’s Hair Care. New York: Oxford University Press.

When is hair "just hair" and when is it not "just hair"? Documenting the politics of African American women's hair, this multi-sited linguistic ethnography explores everyday interaction in beauty parlors, Internet discussions, comedy clubs, and other contexts to illuminate how and why hair matters in African American women's day-to-day experiences.

Lake, O. (2003). Blue Veins and Kinky Hair: Naming and Color Consciousness in African America. Westport: Praeger.

The author explores how Africans in America internalized the negative images created of them by the European world, and how internalized racism has worked to fracture African American unity and thereby dilute inchoate efforts toward liberation. In the late 1960s, change began with the Black Is Beautiful slogan and new a consciousness, which went hand in hand with Black Power and pan-African movements. The author argues that for any people to succeed, they must first embrace their own identity, including physical characteristics. Naming, skin color, and hair have been topical issues in the African American community since the 18th century. These three areas are key to a sense of identity and self, and they were forcefully changed when Africans were taken out of Africa as slaves. Her historical look at the cultural background to African American issues of hair and skin is the first monograph of its kind.

Payney, N. C. (2019). Don’t Touch My Hair: And Other Issues I Have With the World. (self-published).

The world is a complicated yet entertaining place - full of enough material on which to make commentary. This book is full of insight on several topics that will have you thinking and laughing at the same time.

Prince, A. (2009). The Politics of Black Women’s Hair. Ontario: Insomniac Press.

Dr. Althea Prince follows up her earlier collection of essays (Being Black) on Black cultural life with this important new collection. This book sensitively charts Black women's journeys with their hair: how it is perceived, judged, and graded on the yardstick of mainstream society's standards of beauty. Relying on the tradition of the personal essay, and conversations with several Black women, Prince delves into "the politics of Black women's hair," specifically examining the impact on the emotional lives of Black girls and women.

Rooks, N. (1996). Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

The authors reflect on the updated appearance and grooming policy known as AR 670-1 released by the U.S. Army on March 31, 2014 that applies to all military personnel including students and those serving in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and the National Guard.

Badillo, C. (2001). “Only My Hairdresser Knows for Sure: Stories of Race, Hair and Gender.” NACLA Report on the Americas, 34(6), 35-38.

In the Dominican Republic, a white woman’s hair is described as blonde. Whether it is curly or straight, black or brown, it is said that she is blonde. About the “others,” it is said that they have bad hair and that’s all—bad hair has no color.

Brown, S. L. (2015). “My Hair, My Politics.” New Republic, 246(11), 16-17.

The article discusses the significance of Afro hairstyles for African American women in relation to hair straightening. Through discourse analysis of focus groups with a natural hair student organization, I ask: How does the natural hair movement provide a space where Black (Women's) Language is actively used to (re)negotiate hair and beauty politics?

Brown White, S. (2005). “ Releasing the Pursuit of Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Hair: Natural Hair As An Afrocentric Feminist Aesthetic for Beauty.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 1(3), 295-308.

Hair, like the issue of skin colour, carries much historical and social baggage in the African American community. Since slavery, the colour caste system within the African American community has perpetuated internalized racism and self-hatred. The system promotes a hierarchy that suggests the more European one's features - the lighter one's skin, the less ethnic one's facial features and the straighter and longer one's hair - the greater one's social value. Since non-discursive phenomena are included in the scope of rhetoric, visual images, such as choice of hairstyles, are rhetorical. Using an Afrocentric-feminist critical framing, I argue that some women who choose to wear their hair natural are making a rhetorical statement that resists Eurocentric standards of beauty while engaging in an act of self-definition and liberation. This rhetorical analysis will provide an overview of the politics of hair in the African American community and apply an Afrocentric-black feminist critical lens to the narratives of fourteen women who have chosen to wear their hair natural

Dash, P. (2006). Black hair culture, politics and change. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 10(6), 27-37.

Since the period of black enslavement in the Americas, Diaspora people have used their bodies as a canvas on which to articulate their presence as subjects. This propensity to use the body as a key medium of creative and political expression emerged from an amalgam of African retentions and new, grounded syncretisms in the West. It was further influenced by their denial of access to the academies and cultural institutions such as music halls, galleries, theatres, museums and even clubs. But more than an embodied locus of creativity, the black body has been a site of political struggle since the antebellum period. Whether generated by an oppressor who sought to condition the black subject for labour by inflicting pain on his/her body or driven by the conflicts within some black subjects for physiognomic valuation, the body of the diasporic settler has been and remains a key site of political contestation. This paper will explore these two themes through the medium of black hair culture. In the process, it will look at the centrality of hair to diasporic aesthetics and hair as a symbol of black resistance to oppression. In doing so, it offers students and educationalists with an interest in issues‐based enquiry in art and design education a pathway to project development with a focus on hair culture that could be developed in a variety of media, while opening up avenues for dialogue that should enhance understanding.

Gibson, A. L. (1995). Nappy: Growing up black and female in America. New York: Harlem River Press.

As an eloquent rendering of the experiences of black women coming of age in America, Gibson's memoirs strike to the heart of a generation in transition and resonate with its wit and its troubles. Using her personal experiences, Gibson examines how American standards of beauty affect women of color and their struggles for self-acceptance.

Howard, S. (2015). (De)Tangled: An Exploration of the Hierarchies in the Natural Hair Community. (Unpublished master’s thesis). Georgia State University: Atlanta, GA.

Within popular discourse, natural hair is considered to be a source of liberation where Black women can accept and nurture their natural hair texture. My research explores the points of contention in this community and the hierarchies that exist based on length of hair, curl pattern, and texture. By using product content analysis, interviews with Black women with natural hair, and analysis of social media, this thesis brings the ideal aesthetics in the natural hair community to the forefront for closer examination. Findings insist that, in the natural hair community, a curl is more attractive than a kink, longer hair more preferable than short, and that “manageable hair” is vital to Black women’s successful performances of Black femininity. This thesis project attempts to broaden the discourse on Black women and natural hair to encourage new conversations and understand tensions in the natural hair community.

Lemi, D., & Brown, N. (2019). Melanin and Curls: Evaluation of Black Women Candidates. The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, 1-38.

Research on candidate evaluation has delved into questions of how voters evaluate women candidates, Black male candidates, as well as how candidates’ appearances may condition electoral opportunities. Combined, this scholarship has tended to focus on how race, gender, and skin tone privilege or undermine evaluations of Black male or White women candidates. We intervene to study Black women candidates and draw on research on colorism and Black women's hairstyles and ask: How does variation in skin tone and hairstyle affect Black voter evaluations of Black women candidates? We develop and test two hypotheses: the empowerment hypothesis and the internal discrimination hypothesis. We mostly find support for the latter. Importantly, we find that the interaction of dark skin and non-straight hair has mostly negative effects on Black men and women's trait evaluations, but a positive effect on Black women's willingness to vote for the candidate. Furthermore, this research shows that hair texture is an important aspect of responses to Black women candidates—hair is not just hair for Black women candidates. This research shows that understanding the effects of candidate appearance on voter behavior necessitates considering the intersection of racial and gender phenotypes.

Mercer, Kobena. (1987, Winter). "Black hair/style politics," New Formations, No. 3 Winter, pp. 33-54.

Starting with the famous incident in which Michael Jackson’s heavily treated hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, Mercer looks at the political and cultural implications of contemporary black hairstyles, including the Afro, dreadlocks and the conk. The symbolic - as well as natural - properties of hair and hair styling are considered in relation to a number of influential figures and groups: the Rastafari, the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, among others. Comparisons are made with other hair-oriented cultural phenomena, such as the hippy movement and the musical Hair.

Morrison, A. (2018). “Black Hair Haptics: Touch and Transgressing the Black Female Body.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 17(1), 82-96.

In the United States, black hair—that is, the hair of African-descended peoples—has a long and fraught political, economic, and social history that informs its contemporary reception: at the interstices of self-making, aesthetic expression, and respectability politics, black hair has been both overdetermined and underexplored as a site of intellectual inquiry. This essay aims to offer a critical examination of natural black hair as a central site of interpersonal negotiation for black women in the United States. Drawing on performance studies, cultural studies, and black feminist studies, I offer black hair haptics as an analytic for the racialized and gendered dimensions of quotidian public interpersonal engagement with black hair as an extension of the black body. I argue that black hair is a unique site of analysis for transgressions of socially appropriate interpersonal interaction.

Pergament, Deborah. “It's Not Just Hair: Historical and Cultural Considerations for an Emerging Technology,” Chicago-Kent Law Review, 75(1), 41-59.

History reflects the social, religious and political importance of human hair. Individuals have used hairstyles to flaunt social conventions about gender, race, sexual identity, and social status. Totalitarian governments have regulated hairstyles as a means of social control and dehumanization. Today, advances in technology now make it possible to discover information about an individual's current or potential health status. Judicial decisions and administrative regulations offer individuals limited protection from state or institutional intrusion into the information revealed by genetic hair analysis. This Article argues that the explosion of technologies that use hair to reveal intimate details of an individual's biological identity challenges society to reconsider the meaning of hair. Ultimately, courts must focus not only on the cultural and social significance of the biological material being analyzed, but also on the potential impact of the genetic information that may be revealed.

Rhodes, Z. (2013), 'Subtle Racism: Viewing Race Through Hair,' Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research.

This article uncovers the unchallenged subtle practices that create barriers to black women's access to generic hairdressing, arising from the hairdressing curriculum within a location. It contends that institutions pay lip service against racial discriminatory practices but de facto their practices demonstrate that they are far from being anti-discriminatory. The article uses the subject of hair as a window to view how social structures behave towards minorities. This way of looking is used to examine agency, institutional and structural practice. It takes a symbolic cross-cultural phenomenon, in this case hair, and uses it as discovery tool to examine barriers that affect minorities. The scrutiny of subtle practice is important because such practices are often overlooked by society and even accepted as the norm. This process can be transferred to challenge different issues, such as the beauty industry's provision for black skin, or the provision of diverse cultural diets for elderly ethnic minorities who live in homes for the elderly. This way of looking at the phenomenon could also be used to enlighten different discriminatory practices. Maintaining a philosophical, practical, collaborative approach and exploring human processes such as values and attitudes, helped determine the use of methods which were: interviews and questionnaires.

Rowe, K. D. (2019). “Beyond Good Hair: Negotiating Hair Politics Through African American Language.” Women and Language, 42(1), 43-68.

This paper explores how conversations around Black hair and beauty intersect with the use of African American (Women's) Language (AAWL) and discursive practices. How does Black women's use of AAWL features demonstrate the ways these women experience Black hair and beauty politics? I argue that in spaces such as this organization, language is used to share, negotiate, and make meaning of hair/beauty politics. Through understanding uses of AAWL and discourse within conversations around hair/beauty politics, we can better understand how Black women experience hegemonic beauty standards, while collectively and actively negotiating them. Broadly, this study contributes to understandings of African American Language, AAWL, and hair and beauty politics.

Smith, C. (2018). “The Policing of Black Women’s Hair in the Military.” Africology: The Journal of  Pan African Studies, 12(8), 50-63.

Just like a shadow, the public discourse on Black women’s hair is ever present. In 2009 comedian and actor Chris Rock examined the nuances of the Black hair care industry in his movie Good Hair (George, N. & Hunter, J.). The movie unearthed a potpourri of issues that Black women deal with on a daily basis as it relates to their hair. Since the release of Rock’s film, the topic of Black women’s hair appears to be a constant part of America’s discourse. Even the United States Military has weighed in. The input from the military is significant as Black women account for a sizeable portion of their enlisted population. This article uses a qualitative approach to examine rhetoric of the US military’s grooming and hairstyle policies to determine what’s really being said about Black women’s hair.

Tate, S. (2007). “Black Beauty: Shade, Hair and Anti-Racist Aesthetics.” Ethnic & Racial Studies, 30(2), 300-319.

Dark skin shade and natural afro-hair are central in the politics of visibility, inclusion and exclusion within black anti-racist aesthetics. This article focuses on black beauty as performative through looking at how the discourse of dark skin equals black beauty is destabilized in the talk of 'mixed race' black women. A dark skin shade and natural afro hair become ambiguous signifiers as the women's talk leads to a mobility of black beauty. Their talk is thus an interception in which there can never be a definitive reading of black beauty while also pointing to the binaries of the black anti-racist aesthetics on which they draw. Thus, while women are rooted in racialized and racializing notions of beauty they expand the boundaries of the beautiful black woman's body. Black beauty as an undecidable resists binaries without ever constituting a third term and arises through the disidentification and shame of cultural melancholia.

Thomas, T. (2013). “Hair” they are: The ideologies of Black hair. The York Review, 9.1, 1-10.

Thompson, C. (2009). “Black Women, Beauty, and Hair as a Matter of Being.” Women’s Studies, 38, 831-856.

The article discusses women's hair to examine how mass media and social interactive processes negotiate one's grooming choices while assigning a value on one's body. The author argues that the Eurocentric beauty standard of straight, long hair has a sociocultural affect on Black and biracial women's ideas of physical attractiveness, self-esteem, and identity. Social psychologist Leon Festinger's social comparison theory, which suggests that people compare themselves to others when they are unsure about themselves, is explored. How the discrepancy between desired and perceived beauty leads Black women to engage in hair practices to emulate the dominant beauty standards is discussed.

Byrd, A & Tharps, L. (2014). “When Black Hair is Against the Rules.” The New York Times.

The authors reflect on the updated appearance and grooming policy known as AR 670-1 released by the U.S. Army on March 31, 2014 that applies to all military personnel including students and those serving in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and the National Guard. Read Here