At the age of 6, Kenza Bel Kenadil had her hair straightened for the first time. It was the beginning of 13 years of straightening, using irons or chemicals. It was a way for her to put an end to the bullying she suffered at school because of her hair texture: hands or pens in her hair without her consent, insults.
She remembers a comment she received from a boss at work: “I had my hair half tied up, like a colleague with straight hair, and he asked me to go home and change my hairstyle and hide my hair, or else not to work.” Now a campaigner against hair discrimination, Bel Kenadil promised herself seven years ago never to touch a straightener or relaxer again. On Instagram, where she has nearly 260,000 followers, many mostly non-white women add their own experiences of hair discrimination at work.
Independent MP Olivier Serva, of the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, has written a bill to acknowledge these experiences. The legislation, due to be examined by the Assemblée Nationale on Thursday, March 28, would add discrimination based on “the cut, color, length or texture of hair” to the list of punishable discriminations in the Labor Code, the Criminal Code and the General Civil Service Code.
‘A racist colonial perception of black bodies’
Serva said that the adoption of this law “would enable all victims of hair discrimination to use the legislative arsenal and to remember that under no circumstances should an employer force an employee to change his or her hairstyle.” While discrimination based on physical appearance is already considered illegal, Serva believes that his text clarifies this, citing the example of an Air France steward who had to go all the way to the top appeals crout to prove that he had been discriminated against because of his braided hair – a legal procedure that lasted 10 years. Serva also said he has looked to the US, where several states have legislated precisely on this form of discrimination.
But unlike in American law, the bill that will be looked at by France’s Assemblée Nationale makes no mention of a racist aspect to this type of discrimination.
“This distinction says something about France,” explained Daphné Bédinadé, a doctoral student in ethnology and social anthropology at EHESS. “Racism is never explicitly mentioned in the bill. Yet by only talking about hair discrimination, it is obscuring the problems of people whose hair is highly discriminated against, essentially Black women.”
“While this may seem trivial to some, in France and other predominantly white countries, this discrimination hinders access to institutions such as work or housing, for example,” agreed Douce Dibondo, author of La Charge raciale : vertige d’un silence écrasant (“Racial Charge: A Dizzying Silence”). “Hairstyles are perceived as eccentric, unprofessional, even dirty, and should be made acceptable to whiteness and its falsely universal ideology. The injunction to smooth, tamed hair is rooted in a racist colonial perception of Black bodies.”
Years of ‘assimilation’ straightening
Aude Livoreil-Djampou, owner of Studio Ana’e, a Parisian salon specializing in curly, frizzy and kinky hair, noted that she “still has many customers who recount remarks made about their natural hair” and who get it straightened. However, the salon has noticed a decline in such requests. On the one hand, because of the increasingly recognized harmfulness of the products used; on the other, because many women have decided to go back to natural hair.
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After years of straightening her hair “to assimilate,” Fatou N’Diaye, creator of the blog Blackbeautybag, “learned to love [her] hair” by doing a “big chop,” a technique involving cutting off the relaxed, straightened or chemically treated parts of hair to leave only naturally curly hair behind and make a total transition.
“It was a way of telling the world that my hair doesn’t need to be hidden, flat or straightened for me to be desirable or intelligent, and above all to get rid of the legacy of colonialism that made us hate our hair,” explained N’Diaye, who has now become an influencer and consultant to major cosmetics and luxury brands.
Nevertheless, self-assertion can carry risks, “depending on the professional environment in which you work,” said Daphné Bédinadé.
“Asserting yourself [also means taking the risk] of not getting a job or an apartment because of racial bias,” agreed author Dibondo. “It’s enough to make you want to tear your hair out at the injustice! These are situations that even Olivier Serva’s bill, if adopted, will have a hard time putting an end to.”
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.
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