The mother of a 12-year-old girl filed a complaint last year against a dance school in The Hague. The institution has a guideline that dancers' hair must be worn in a bun for classical ballet. The student in question has afro hair and usually wears it in braids.
Braided hair
The girl attended ballet classes with her braided hair styled into a bun. The dance school therefore denied her access to classes as long as she did not wear her hair in a sleek bun.
Prescribed guidelines
According to the student and her mother, it takes too much time to get afro hair into a sleek bun without braids. They had offered to style her hair for performances and official events of the ballet school. However, the dance school found this insufficient, arguing that other students with afro hair did comply with the prescribed guidelines.
So, it's not that the mother doesn't respect the guidelines or refuses to comply with them. Her daughter's hair needs to be in a bun at the back, so she does that with her daughter's natural afro hair. The only thing is, the hair isn't sleek, so it doesn't comply.
I don't believe the Royal Conservatoire realizes that by doing this, they are discriminating. Afro hair belongs to Black people, and the message cannot be interpreted any other way than: your hair does not meet our guidelines, it's not good enough.
Examples of afro hairstyles that don't comply?
What if the daughter had beautiful long dreadlocks? Would she have to cut her hair because it was too, I don't know, what? Isn't that discrimination compared to a 12-year-old girl with beautiful long blonde sleek hair? What if she had a head full of curls? Would that be good enough?
I also don't believe the institution realizes what it means to de-kink a 12-year-old girl's hair. Not only is there a risk of getting burns on her scalp, but the chance of hair breakage is very high, especially because straightened hair quickly reverts to afro hair with sweating. Half-afro, half-straightened hair is the most fragile there is, and the vicious cycle that many women with afro hair experience can begin.
How glad I am that this lady went to the commission to get justice and did not slavishly try to comply with the prescribed rules of such a pretentious institution, as most of us do. One of the most common arguments why women relax their hair is that they believe afro hair is not acceptable in their job.
Don't get me wrong, as a mother you certainly have the free right to relax your own hair or your daughter's hair at age 12, but no institution in the world has the right to instruct you to straighten your child's hair because otherwise it doesn't comply. It's time for a change.
We, Black women, have tried for too long to conform to a standard that we can barely meet. The price we have to pay for that is high, very high. 73% of women with afro hair suffer from hair breakage and hair loss as a result of chemical relaxers. We prefer not to talk about this because it is too complicated and too painful. But if we want change, we, like this woman, will have to stand up for ourselves.
It's not for nothing that I have been advocating for years for the Afro Hair Etiquette. People who are not born with afro hair often don't understand the problem, and you can't blame them for that. But even Black people often don't understand the root of the problem. Therefore, I would be very happy to cooperate with companies and institutions that want to learn about afro hair, what they can expect, and the rules they can apply, because as every white mother of a Black adopted daughter or a mixed-race daughter can attest; afro hair is different.
For more info about the Afro Hair Etiquette Course; please contact kroeshaar.com.