When Will We Stop Policing Black Athletes' Hair?
Olivia Miles and Coco Gauff are the latest victims of “good hair” commentary, and it’s holding us back as a community.
The past month has been stacked with victories and historic moments in women’s sports, with basketball in particular capturing the headlines recently. Record-breaking contracts, signature shoe releases and an NCAA Championship run to remember from UCLA culminated in one of the most exciting WNBA Draft nights in a while.
A stacked class of elite talents took over New York to take the first steps of their professional careers. What should have been a night filled with overwhelming joy was slightly tainted by the internet’s perception of “good hair.”
Olivia Miles was the second overall pick of the draft, starting her WNBA career with the Minnesota Lynx. The WNBA Draft red carpet is one of a few major fashion moments in women’s basketball, and as one of the biggest names in college basketball, all eyes were on her. Artfully styled from head-to-toe in a way that reflected and elevated her personal style for the night, conversations surrounding Miles had less to do with her outfits or even her position in the draft. Her hair has been the focus of the basketball community since she stepped foot on the stage.
View this post on Instagram
Miles chose to wear her natural hair in an afro for the draft. Her hair was slightly slicked back at the beginning of the night, but with the wardrobe change, she chose to wear her crown in all its glory as she took the stage to collect her Lynx cap.
This decision seemed to rub many people the wrong way. As a community, Black people’s relationship with their hair is a complicated one. The natural hair movement of the 2010s started a societal shift in the way Black people and wider society perceive Black hair, but the movement is still rooted in texturism and respectability politics.
The subconscious belief that looser curl patterns are more desirable and tighter coils need to be tamed and manipulated is what leads to wholly unnecessary comments like the ones Miles has dealt with for days now. Countless social media threads have debated whether or not Miles’ hairstyle was appropriate for one of the biggest nights of her career, with some even going as far to suggest looks they would deem acceptable.
Only a few weeks before Miles took the stage in her Type 4 afro, tennis star Coco Gauff received similar treatment for her hair in a small-scale Miu Miu campaign. Her hair was pulled back into a simple bun, matching the understated style of her clothes and the campaign as a whole.
View this post on Instagram
Some people claimed she looked like a Civil Rights era figure, whilst others lambasted Miu Miu’s art direction. In reality, Gauff’s hair looked like many Black women’s hair, and there is nothing wrong with that.
The only acceptable presentation of Black hair simply cannot be limited to silk presses, baby hairs and wigs, especially when it comes to athletes. Yes, a large portion of WNBA players wear wigs and sew-ins throughout the season, but for a lot of players at both the professional and recreational levels, that isn’t how they feel the most comfortable on the court.
Ridiculing Miles for not getting a wig installed for her big night, like some of her peers, or Gauff for not using gel to make her bun sleeker, shows how much progress still needs to be made in the natural hair movement. Both athletes have since made statements, with Miles adding a short postscript to her draft night post, saying, “For my fellow Black women with natural hair like mine… be you and be free. The beauty that our hair brings is so unique and essential to who we are.”
So where do we go from here? The regressive backlash both women have faced recently is reminiscent of the reaction to gymnastics royalty Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles’ hair during their respective Olympics. There is an unrealistic expectation for Black athletes to have the same perfectly maintained hair as women who aren’t sweating and pushing their bodies to the limit 24/7. If it’s hard for Black women who go to the gym frequently to maintain a silk press or a protective style, imagine how much harder it is for a professional athlete to do so.
White athletes are regularly seen with messy buns and “undone” hair. When a Black athlete’s hair is styled similarly, it is suddenly a problem and a poor reflection on Black women as a whole. There’s a lot of internalized disdain towards Black hair that needs to be unlearned throughout the community, but until that happens, how many more women are going to face this kind of treatment?
Gauff said it best in a wonderfully worded video statement she posted before taking a break from social media: “I’m not going to apologize for the way that my hair looks because there are other girls who have the exact same hair as me. My hair was good enough for a high-fashion brand like Miu Miu. If my hair is good enough for that, then yours is too.”
The anti-Black rhetoric thrown at Miles and Gauff, as well as Douglas, Biles and countless athletes before them, comes from decades of manipulating hair to fit a beauty standard that was not made to ever accommodate Black women. Layers of gel, relaxers and the most undetectable lace wigs still leave Black women on the outskirts of conventional beauty. Those methods just add more nuance to the conversation when faced with women who reject those styles.
Black women’s hair is already heavily policed, and has been for generations, by both Western society and their own communities. Many have thought the cycle ended with the natural hair movement, but the policing has simply changed with the times. Thinly-veiled words and turns of phrase replaced children getting their hair relaxed at a young age to make it more “manageable.” Gel and mousse replaced hot combs in the everyday hair routine.
We are lucky enough to live in a time where Black women in sports are thriving, offering representation on platforms we could never have imagined 20 years ago. That representation doesn’t all have to look the same. It can come in the form of a 30-inch hot pink wig, knotless braids or an afro.
Instead of dictating what these athletes’ hair should and should not look like — as if the public holds that kind of power, anyway — our energy should be spent celebrating the women paving the way for a new generation of WNBA All-Stars and Olympic medalists. All Black hair is “good hair,” and it’s time we stopped letting outdated beauty standards alter that perception.
