My problem with black femininity

"How to embrace your femininity"—and it’s a black girl with a straight wig on.

Let me preface this by saying this is in no way an attack on black women who wear wigs. Instead, I want to explore whether there’s a deeper reason behind why we do.

My TikTok is usually a mix of funny videos and philosophical discussions, but every now and then, I stumble upon "femininity coaches." These are women teaching how to be well-mannered, how to dress for respect, how to be a "lady" with a big fat L. The deeper I fell into this content, the more I noticed a troubling pattern. I soon found myself in the realm of "black femininity” videos and after watching a few, I realized they were nothing more than aestheticized racism.

How did we get here? How did femininity for black women become a performance of erasure?

Femininity, but Make It White

The viral femininity movement started a couple years ago with videos on "how to speak elegantly," "which hairstyles make you look chic," and "how to be a high-value woman." The more I watched, the more absurd it became. The goal seemed to be making women untouchable, pure, and… white? These coaches weren’t teaching women how to be themselves; they were teaching them how to contort into something palatable for the male gaze. It was robotic, unrealistic, and just another unattainable standard placed on women.

I don’t blame the women who follow these videos. After all, they’ve spent their entire lives scrutinized for the way they walk, talk, and exist. So, when a fellow woman promises to help them navigate this world, they listen. But what many don’t realize is that no book, no 1-minute-and-30-second video, and certainly no $300 course will suddenly transform their lives. It’s a business model built on insecurity, and the coaches profit from it.

The Anti-Blackness in "Black Femininity"

Many of these so-called black femininity videos aren’t just restrictive—they’re anti-black. They condemn bonnets, deeming them inappropriate to wear in public. They label black slang as improper, acrylic nails as tacky, hoop earrings as too ghetto. How many videos have we seen tearing apart lip-liner trends or shaming big lips as "unladylike"? How often are black women called too loud, too reckless, too much?

And then, of course, there’s our hair.

Society has conditioned us to believe that our hair is unacceptable, unmanageable, and unprofessional. Since colonial times, natural black hair has been deemed dirty, as though it is unimaginable for black men and women to look beautiful in their natural state. Black features, black hairstyles, and black fashion trends have been pushed aside, as if they have no place in the world that we built.

From a young age, black boys are told to shave their heads to avoid looking like "thugs", black girls are urged to relax their coily hair to appear "classy » and its just fixed into their brains that they always have to chase the eurocentric standard of beauty. As they get older, you notice them internally judging each other by the color of their skin, forcing a good chunk of them to bleach (even if they risk cancer) and women to braid their hair with extensions even tho it causes skin breakage, irritation, pain, and also, you guessed it, cancer.

See my problem with black femininity coaches is that they don’t just sell an idea of "refinement", they sell the idea that to be beautiful, to be worthy, to be feminine, we must be less black. They erase the language of our people. They demonize the foods our ancestors ate. They denounce our fashion, our jewelry, our self-expression. But what angers me the most? They hate our hair.

They hate the color, the healthiness, the coils, the beads, the satin bonnets that keeps it protected, all of it. They make us believe our hair is unruly, when in reality, our ancestors have cared for it for centuries. They hate how your hair makes a statement, how it reminds them of your rich history, they hate that your hair is political.

But what actually kills me is that black women have taken the torch from white people in hating our own hair.

From Colonization to Internalized Hate

Once upon a time, colonizers shaved black men’s heads and forced black women to cover theirs, hiding their beauty. They managed to make us believe that long 4c hair is associated with witchcraft. However, we found ways to resist by making cornrows a means to escape their oppression and scarves a fashion statement, so much so that white women wanted to know what the hype was all about lol.

Fast forward to today, and it’s black mothers yelling at their girls to get ahold of their hair, to slick it back, tie it, suffocate it. Before, it was white girls giggling behind your back when you had cornrows or touching your hair without permission. Now, it’s black women hating on their fellow sisters because they dared walk out the house looking “ratchet”, it’s the women that confidently say that they could never never be seen with their hair undone (basically going out with their afros) and they would never come to work with their nappy hair. It’s the black managers that refuse to hire compentent black candidates because of their locks. The self-hate runs so deep that we go as far as to risk our own health.

There has been a fruitful market of synthetic extensions or real human hair that we shop in forms of wigs, braid extention and more. A high end quality wig can cost up to 3000$ and above (that’s wild). Yet many of us don’t even know where the hair comes from. I watched a couple documentaries and i’m sorry to say that most of the hair you buy comes from sewers, bathrooms, the floor of saloons or if you’re lucky, from the head of someone who is sick and is sacrificing their hair as an offering to their god. These bundles go through toxic chemical processing before being sold to us at ridiculous prices. And for what? To fit into a standard that was never meant for us? Is it really worth it?

Reject the Lie

It’s been about 2 years that I decided to ban extensions and produly wear my natural hair. That choice has come with disapproving looks and even scoldings from my parents which only made me realize how deep the issue really is. When you wear your natural hair, especially your afro, you’re stared at, sometimes it’s amazement but sadly its mostly confusions and judgment.

From your own people.

Seeing black women wear their natural hair triggers something in others. It unsettles the years of internalized shame, the deeply ingrained belief that we must assimilate. I’ve had grown women try to make me feel bad about my hair, but I wear it like a crown. Because let’s be honest black hair is beautiful. Black hair is sexy. Black hair is powerful.

Some people ask me where I found the courage to break free. The truth is, learning to love my natural hair, my skin, my lips, my forehead—every part of me—led to me decentering Eurocentric beauty standards altogether. I found beauty in my culture. I found pride in honoring my ancestors. And I know they would be proud of me too.

In conclusion, black femininity coaches, and the entire industry surrounding them, are bullshit. And hair is just one part of the conversation. The entire movement is rooted in misogyny and anti-blackness, selling black women the idea that we must mold ourselves into something "better"—which, in their eyes, just means whiter.

I urge black women to define beauty for themselves. To recognize that we don’t have to change to meet anyone’s standards. I urge black people to confront their internalized racism, to question the things they’ve been taught, and to liberate themselves from the words of colonizers.

And the next time a black femininity video pops up on my feed? Trust that I’ll block and report. It’s time we start consuming content that empowers, not diminishes, us.

Here is one of my favorite video essay about the topic, she also goes more in depth !