If I wanna shave it close/Or if I wanna rock locs
That don’t take a bit away/From the soul that I got . . .
If I wanna wear it braided/All down my back
I don’t see nothin’ wrong with that
—India Arie (2006), I Am Not My Hair
There is nothing wrong with wearing Black hair in a wide range of styles . . . unless, of course, it conflicts with colonial sporting policies and practices. Some athletes face the choice of wearing ill-fitting helmets or no helmet at all. Other athletes are forced to cut their hair by referees who cite safety concerns without adhering to the rulebooks. Still, there are athletes subjected to nonconsensual touching of their hair, putting them in opposition to their own teammates. These are hair-related experiences of harm in sport. In this paper, we define Black hair aesthetics as encompassing various hair textures and styles of people of African descent, relating a discussion of hair to the real and potential risks of injury, inattention, and disregard in sport contexts.
Environmental and physical safety . . . [referred to] addressing issues of physical danger that may stem from issues such as faulty equipment . . . . Relational safety [referred to] the prevention and intervention of harmful experiences endured or witnessed in sport within interpersonal relationships . . . [and] optimising sport referred to the participation experiences for all stakeholders informed by positive development, rights of inclusion, accessibility, fairness, and safety. (p. 83)
We extend this conceptualization of safe sport as environmental and physical safety, relational safety, and optimizing sport to understand Black hair aesthetics as a site for harm and resistance in sport and physical activity.
Black hair has long been subjected to stigmatization. In recent years, we have seen the same in sport as Black hair has been thrust into the spotlight as an issue related to safety, maltreatment, misconduct, human rights, and risk. Here, risk is not only reflected in the physical, emotional, and social risks that underlie participation in spaces that lead to harm but also in athletes’ withdrawal or exclusion from sport spaces that invites risks in the form of loss of participation and inactivity. Acknowledging the implications of Black hair in sport may serve to decrease harm while improving health, relationships, belonging, participation rates, and access disparities in Black communities, making sport a better place for all.
Seen as an extension of their authentic selves, many professional athletes adopt a wide range of braids, locs, afros, weaves, and shaved styles to share their cultures and communities to global audiences (see Rawcliffe, 2023; Samuel, 2021). Recreational athletes also engage Black hair aesthetics, which is about much more than “style”; as Thompson (2009) noted, for Black people, “hair is not just hair; it contains emotive qualities that are linked to one’s lived experience” (p. 831; Glace & Waldstein, 2022; Lashley, 2020; Mercer, 1994). If Black people style their hair to express joy and self-actualization, simultaneously conforming to or explicitly resisting colonial norms of professionalism and beauty, we must consider the implications of sport cultures, structures, policies, and practices on Black people’s hair choices. Hair is political, impacting sporting success and physical, social, and material access. Black hair is a safe sport issue.
This article proceeds in five parts. First, we describe Black hair aesthetics, detailing historical and contemporary understandings of hairstyling as a Black cultural phenomenon. Next, we examine three key themes of safe sport and highlight the ways attention to Black hair aesthetics can expand knowledge of risk and safety. Last, we highlight the role of Black hair as decolonial political resistance to inspire organizational change and future research in sport and physical activity.
Black Hair Aesthetics
Hair is endowed with meaning and value through grooming and styling practices in relation to dominant and decolonial politics globally. Black hair aesthetics, in particular, has significant cultural, spiritual, and social meaning across Africa and the African diaspora (see Botchway, 2018; Brown, 2018; Byrd & Tharps, 2014; Campbell, 1987; Glace & Waldstein, 2022; Mercer 1994; Prince, 2009; Thompson, 2009, 2019). In Canada, specifically, beginning with Althea Prince’s foundational book, The Politics of Black Women’s Hair (2009), many scholars have critiqued “the persisting negative sentiments associated with Black hair” (Brown, 2018, p. 68) and the importance of Black people “having the willpower to challenge the politics of respectability” (Brown, 2018, p. 79) through their hairstyles. In the following, we outline the history of Black hairstyling and its role within anti-Black racism and resistance.
First and foremost, Black hair aesthetics has always denoted status and care. Byrd and Tharps (2014) described different hairstyles as indicative of marital status, age, religion, ethnic identity, wealth, rank within a community, and geographic origins across Africa. Young girls in the Wolof culture of Senegal, for example, partially shaved their heads to indicate they were not yet of marrying age, and widowed women stopped their styling and grooming practices during their mourning period to not look beautiful to other men (Byrd & Tharps, 2014). Outside of styling and grooming practices and symbolic meanings, hair also holds a very deep spiritual connection. In Yoruba traditions, a person’s spirit is held within their hair, and so hairdressers are imbued with great trust and responsibility in grooming and styling (Byrd & Tharps, 2014). Stylists are integral members of the community.
Hair became racialized during the colonial process; it was never seen as neutral. Once Western European settlers began the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade, hair meanings began to change for enslaved Africans on Turtle Island (colonially known as North America). Shaving the heads of enslaved Africans was one of the first acts when they were taken aboard slave ships; the shaving of the head in this context could be read as an act of coloniality, working to dehumanize people and erase African cultures and ethnic differences, given the immeasurable significance of hair (Byrd & Tharps, 2014). Within slave economies, Black people “took to wearing head scarves or handkerchiefs atop their heads, partly to shield themselves from the sun, but also to hide their unsightly, unkempt hair” (Thompson, 2009, p. 833), which resulted from not being afforded the time, access, or materials necessary for maintenance and beautification. This practice of hiding Black women’s hair was also described as a strategy to prevent the supposed sexualized tempting of White men (Barreau, 2022), suggesting that Black women’s hair is imbued with internal and external significance.
As Black people fought and won freedom from slavery throughout the 19th century, hair practices continued to evolve and adapt to their conditions; however, hierarchies remained. In Canada and the United States, processes of entrenched racial categorization included associating physical and aesthetic characteristics such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture, color, and style with signifiers of human worth; beautiful/ugly and valued/devalued binaries became essential in validating ideologies of European moral, political, and intellectual superiority (Erasmus, 1997; Mercer, 1994; Lashley, 2020; Thompson, 2009, 2019). White skin, angular facial features, and straight, long hair were classified and ordered as superior to curly or kinky hair, dark skin, and more rounded facial features within a beauty paradigm that directly resulted in power hierarchies that determined different life chances, access, and inclusion for differently racialized people.
A concrete example of the role of hair in local and global politics emerges from people affiliated with Rastafari philosophy, religion, and culture who mat, kink, and coil their scalp hair into rope-like tresses commonly known as dreadlocks or locs. These uncut, uncombed, unbrushed, but frequently washed locs symbolize defiance of and resistance to oppression, refusal of anti-Black racial discrimination, and rejection of Babylon (Western hegemony) with its attendant notions of grooming, beauty, and commercialized beauty products; locs are grown long as they are a conduit of cosmic energy, represent a conscious pursuit of Afrocentricity, and are a proud self-representation of connections to African royalty in Jamaica and Ethiopia (Campbell, 1987), the United Kingdom (Glace & Waldstein, 2022), and Ghana (Botchway, 2018).
In the 1960s and ’70s, afros, braids, and cornrows became symbolic hairstyles associated with Black nationalism and Black Power movements globally. These styles embodied aesthetics that contested Eurocentric understandings of beauty and emphasized a return to the “natural” and “African” origins of Blackness, thereby aligning with the ideologies adopted within the Black Nationalist and Power movements (Kelley, 2002; Mercer, 1994). Although these styles could be described as neither inherently natural nor African, due to the manipulation and syncretic stylization of the hair required to achieve a uniquely diasporic aesthetic (Mercer, 1994), afros, braids, and cornrows still facilitate a decolonial political movement. The use of Black hair aesthetics—as a display of resistance, intentional differentiation from colonial beauty standards, and a refusal of containment—is expressed in sport contexts.
Black Hair Aesthetics in Sport and Physical Activity
apart from her dark complexion, Jean Lowe did indeed fit many White/Euro-centric beauty standards. Instead of the curvaceous figure and kinky, voluminous natural hair that have historically been denigrated in Black women, Jean Lowe had a slim figure and straightened hair . . . yet, it can be argued that Lowe’s inclusion in not just one, but two, studies on track athletes’ femininity designated her as one whom society was most likely to perceive as less feminine. (p. 1376)
Race, hair, and constructions of femininity are rare intersectional analyses not often found within the sociology of sport. Researchers who have given the topic attention found hair to be influential in Black women’s physical culture because it is a signifier of otherness in Western contexts (Allen, 2021; Lashley, 2020; McElroy, 2015). However, Black hair aesthetics is linked to self-expression and comfort and presents additional challenges for athletes and sport organizations. Issues include the time and cost needed for styling (e.g., 8–9 hr for installing braids); the phenomenon of “sweating out” a style (e.g., transformation of straight hair to kinky due to sweat); the challenges presented by the time and structures needed for additional washing, conditioning, and styling after training and games; and the effects of wind, rain, heat, or humidity on hairstyles for outdoor athletes (Collins, 2011; O’Brien-Richardson, 2019, 2021; Versey, 2014). The considerations for sports participation are vast for Black athletes who prioritize their hair, especially women who endeavor to maintain a femme or feminine appearance.
Outside of general physical activity, sport, and exercise contexts, research on Black hair in U.S. sport has been examined mainly by scholars primarily focusing on swimming (Irwin et al., 2009; Norwood, 2010; Ross et al., 2014; Waller & Norwood, 2009), with an important factor identified in addition to the aforementioned: the effect of water, chlorine, and swim caps in damaging Black hair and styles. In response to the statement “I do not swim because I do not like to get my hair wet,” for example, Irwin et al. (2009, p. 18) found that “African American females . . . agreed with this statement at a 10%–12% higher rate (19.7%) as compared with their White peers (9.8%) and Hispanic/Latino females (7.3%).” In Norwood’s (2010) study, most of the nine college students interviewed, who were enrolled in mandatory swimming classes at their Historically Black Colleges and Universities, reported taking precautions, including wearing combinations of head scarfs, shower caps, multiple swim caps, and saran wrap prior to entering the pool, and then strategically scheduling hair styling around their swim class schedules to be able to increase the styles’ longevity. The students did not want to risk damaging their hair or ruining the style into which they had invested time and money.
In a rare Black Canadian swimming study, Nzindukiyimana and O’Connor (2019, p. 149) cited the memoir of Carol Talbot, who noted in the 1940s that she “and her female friends opted out of swimming activities [due to] a reluctance to wet her chemically treated hair. Given that participation in swimming can improve the disproportionate drowning rates of “visible minorities” in Canada, the three largest groups being South Asian, Chinese, and Black people (Gallinger et al., 2015), and that more welcoming physical activity spaces have implications for increasing belonging (McGuire-Adams et al., 2022), we agree with Nzindukiyimana and O’Connor (2019, p. 149) that “more research is needed to determine the extent of the impact of hair concerns” in sport.
Safe Sport and Black Hair Aesthetics
As such, we consider how Black hair can be a conduit for precarity and the potential for harm in physical activity spaces that are not designed for Black people, hair, and styling practices.heteronormative, male, White, and ableist origins to a platform for athletes of different gender identities and expressions, races, sexualities, and abilities to challenge hegemonic norms . . . [and revise] sport rules, regulations, and equipment . . . and views of what constitutes safety. (p. 91)
Environmental and Physical Safety
Within the sport environment, harm prevention includes issues, rules, and regulations related to equipment and injury (Gurgis et al., 2023). We argue that Black hair aesthetics interacts with physical activity practices in a manner that invokes concern over the physical safety of Black individuals. There are health concerns that result from risks that individuals may take for aesthetic reasons, their withdrawal from sport spaces, and equipment shortcomings that may compromise health.
Where attention has been given, studies have used a deficit model and physiological health perspectives as the primary justification for hair research related to sport and physical activity for Black people. For example, Huebschmann et al. (2016) and O’Brien-Richardson (2019, 2021) described the existing disparities between African American and non-African American women’s negative health outcomes, including higher prevalence of overweight and obesity related to inactivity due to hair harassment. These studies found that hair maintenance concerns, including pre- and poststyling practices, “sweating out” styles, and the environmental conditions (i.e., drying effects), were all significant factors diminishing Black women’s participation in physical activity and exercise. Similarly, Gaston et al. (2020) and Blackshear and Kilmon (2021) indicated that poor cardiometabolic health and decreased physical activity levels result from inactivity choices due to the effects of exercise on chemical hair treatments and straight hairstyles for Black women. Gaston et al. (2020) specifically found that 30% of Black women in their study who used chemical straighteners twice per year were less likely to report engagement in intense exercise compared with those who rarely/never used such chemical treatments.
The practice of using a chemical straightener may have a compounding effect on Black women’s health by not only limiting their physical activity levels but also increasing their exposure to harmful chemicals, increasing risks of breast (Stiel et al., 2016) and uterine cancer (NIH, 2022). The chemicals athletes use to straighten hair are an indirect safe sport issue. In discussion with Black women concerning their hair, health, and breast cancer, findings from Teteh et al. (2017) indicated that a multitude of factors—including the critical role of their hair and its emotional, political, and historical ties to beauty, health, and status within their community—contribute to willingness to accept the risks associated with their hair care products. Certainly not all Black women adhere to these ideals of beauty (some queer and masculine presenting women may not be affected by these risks); however, compared with men, women are more at risk due to current gendered cultural expectations of a hyper-feminine appearance with straight, long hair, and flat edges. In a broader sense, then, risks associated with lack of physical activity or potentially harmful hair practices are attenuated by the need for hair to be an important source of identity, belonging, and representation for athletes and the ways sport participation can change hair aesthetics.
The ideological constraints placed on Black hair are echoed in the fabrication of sports equipment, like helmets, where the assumption of Whiteness infiltrates design and can exclude Black people from protection. The correct helmet will vary depending on the activity and must be certified to comply with minimum safety standards (Canadian Pediatric Society, 2018; Consumer Product Safety Commission, 2023). Proper helmet fit is associated with a decreased risk of injury (Lee et al., 2022). However, Black hairstyles have not been considered in the design of helmets, and thus, participation in helmeted sports inherently may not consider the potential risks imposed on Black athletes. In the National Football League (NFL), players are fitted with customized helmets with “precision-fit” technology (Morgan, 2022). However, these helmets are not designed to accommodate the hairstyle changes of Black men in the NFL, and helmets that do not fit correctly may compromise their protection (Morgan, 2022). As Black players form the majority of the league’s roster (Marquez-Velarde et al., 2023), and one in five is estimated to wear their hair in braids or dreadlocks (Morgan, 2022), Black men are subjected to incur further risk to their health in a league that has already demonstrated negligence to the health and safety of its Black players (Possin et al., 2021). These issues concerning fit and safety may be further amplified in youth and college/university football programs with significantly reduced access to custom equipment and fittings.
In spaces where helmet use is not as tightly regulated, such as recreational biking, snowboarding, or skateboarding, Black youth and adults may choose to engage in activities without a helmet to avoid disruption to their hairstyle, especially in organizations where an undercovering is not provided. In auto racing sports, like kart racing, drifting, or drag racing, when headsocks or balaclavas are provided for every participant to wear under racing helmets, the primary objective may be to regulate body temperature or provide a fire-resistant layer over the head and neck, but a secondary effect can be protecting hairstyles under helmets. When Black people do not have to bring their own headcovering because every participant receives the same equipment, they also receive covert messaging concerning an environment of inclusion.
Previous studies highlight racial disparities with helmet use in recreational cycling among children, with Black children less likely to wear helmets (Gulack et al., 2015; Schuster et al., 2012). Poor fit related to certain hairstyles, including braids, dreadlocks, and cornrows, in a study by Pierce et al. (2014), was found to be a barrier to regular helmet use for African American children. Concerningly, the poor fit creates space between the helmet and head, which is a significant safety concern. Unlike NFL players, most Black youth likely do not have resources to source a new helmet or access to a professional fitting; thus, their remaining options are to bike with a poorly fitting helmet, abstain from wearing one, or not cycle at all.
Relational Safety
Relational safety refers to the prevention of harmful experiences occurring within interpersonal relationships in sport, including abuse, harassment, bullying, and discrimination (Gurgis et al., 2023). We argue that the risk of relational harm, whether by individuals, groups, or the broader sport system, occurs within current sport and recreation systems that isolate, exclude, and strip Black individuals of their identities and sense of safety and belonging through harassment and violence.
Black hair discrimination has been well documented in the workplace (Brown, 2018; Donahoo & Smith, 2022; Lashley, 2020) and at school (Henning et al., 2022; O’Brien-Richardson, 2019, 2021) to the extent that in the United States, multiple states have passed legislation (The CROWN Act), and in Canada, discrimination at work or school based on hair texture and style is barred under the constitutional right to equal treatment (Barreau, 2022). Nevertheless, adolescent girls have reported receiving negative comments about their hair during physical education classes (O’Brien-Richardson, 2019). In sport, Black athletes have faced mockery, derision, and discomfort (Carter-Francique, 2014; Collins, 2011; Ferguson & Satterfield, 2016; Joseph et al., 2021; McElroy, 2015; Pedroso & Aldred, 2023; Thompson, 2019); both male and female Black athletes have been coerced to cut their hair while competing (Lavigne, 2021; Stubbs, 2019) based on racist (interpretations of) regulations.
As a form of relational harm, hair pulling as a legal tackle in football has become a racially based safe sport issue. Pulling on Black players’ locs or braids has become commonplace in professional sport with both the NFL and the Canadian Football League. With approximately three quarters of NFL athletes with long hair wearing them in locs, and the impact forces on the head and neck estimated to exceed 500 pounds (Ruhala et al., 2017), this rule disproportionately affects and injures Black men. In response to a loc pulling play on a Black Canadian Football League player, Tom Higgins, the former director of officiating was quoted as saying, “Why guys have it [long hair] that are going to carry the football, I don’t know” (Ralph, 2012). Failure to recognize the cultural significance of Black hairstyles threatens to displace and erase Black athletes’ identities within and beyond sport and perpetuates harm against those who challenge sport’s Eurocentric ideologies and aesthetics.
In addition to outward displays of physical violence, the impacts of relational harm may also manifest as access concerns. Access is multidimensional and includes the ability to enter a space both physically and psychically. Black players may need ample skills and talent to make the roster of sports teams, enough money or social capital to pay for organized physical activity or a club membership, or sufficient ramps and elevator access to navigate sport facilities and buildings. Beyond these access points, participants must see themselves represented in leadership, feel valued, and know that they can bring their full selves every day. When institutions purport to be inclusive, yet access is devalued and identities are threatened, individuals with marginalized identities experience a host of negative outcomes, including diminished performance, reduced commitment to participation, and excessive contorting to assimilate (McGuire Adams et al., 2022).
Identity threats relate to feelings of exclusion associated with negative affect (i.e., sadness and anger) and a lack of belonging associated with the inability to be one’s true self (i.e., inauthenticity), two “separable constructs that operate in tandem” to reduce well-being (Slepian & Jacoby-Senghor, 2021, p. 392). These threats to identity are more nuanced when considering intersections of race, sexuality, and gender. Black women athletes actively use aesthetics, such as their hair and nails, as a form of hyperfeminine resistance against negative masculine stereotypes (Ferguson & Satterfield, 2016). Because some Black girls receive compliments when their hair is straight but not when their hair is natural (Henning et al., 2022), some may shift their aesthetics to minimize relational harm, particularly in artistic sports such as gymnastics, cheerleading, and figure skating. For Black girls within these spaces, barriers to their own safety and well-being are inscribed within the sport system itself where racial ideologies dictate what constitutes aesthetically acceptable hair—which, potentially, has a direct impact on points scored. Gymnast Gabby Douglas who won gold at the 2012 Olympics women’s artistic individual all-around competition was derided for her hairstyle, with some (social) media outlets saying her hair looked “unkempt” rather than celebrating the 16-year-old’s achievements (Carter-Francique, 2014; McElroy, 2015). Douglas reacted with awe to questions about her hair: “I don’t know where this is coming from . . . What’s wrong with my hair? I’m like, ‘I just made history and people are focused on my hair?’ It can be bald or short, it doesn’t matter” (Thompson, 2009, p. 205). As demonstrated in the epigraph by India Arie, Douglas is clear there is nothing wrong with her hair. Sport and recreation systems, cultures, and media continue to perpetrate systems of othering Black participants, including how Black hair is viewed and controlled.
Exclusionary practices and lack of representation impact Black athletes’ daily practices in sport and physical activity. As much as poor helmet fit compromises safety, so too does the social rejection experienced by Black individuals. In addressing dominant cycling discourses for women of color, Pedroso and Aldred (2023) noted that the exclusion experienced by many of the women manifested as a “material reality” (p. 6) when helmets did not fit over box braids. Rather than keep the onus on individuals to adjust to the context, individuals could ask for more from their environments. To decrease relational harms in sport, structural interventions that challenge existing expectations and cultures are needed.
Optimizing Sport
Optimizing safety in sport necessarily requires prioritizing human rights and creating accessible, inclusive, fair, fun, and ethical practices (Gurgis et al., 2023). For Black individuals in sport and physical activity specifically, we argue that optimizing sport must be done with consideration in relation to their whole selves, including their hair.
Former National Hockey League player Anson Carter (2023, para. 15) wrote about growing his locs long in the second half of his career: “a high-level member of the front office for my team at the time told me point-blank: ‘Carter, you should cut your hair. It doesn’t look good.’” Carter articulated that “good” is always subjective and, in hockey, is always in relation to the professionalism standards of the dominant White group. While many hockey players eschew short hair and are applauded for their “flow,” Black players are more closely scrutinized and often derided. Goalie Ray Emery, whose “platinum blond dye job . . . only lasted one day before he begrudgingly returned his hair to its natural color” (Lorenz & Murray, 2014, p. 37), was strongly encouraged by management who were “trying to ensure that he knew how to be a ‘professional’ in the NHL” (Lorenz & Murray, 2014, p. 41). Over the past two decades, many Black players have sported locs, worn braids, or grown out their afros. Although acceptance of these styles has not previously been framed as a safe sport issue, it is directly linked to cultures of accessible, inclusive, and fair hockey that all leagues have an obligation to create. Carter (2023) also shared that “equality is really what this hair conversation is about. Black players, and other players of color, can only have an equal experience if they don’t feel like they have to erase or censor part of their culture to fit in” (para. 34).
athletes having to hide or diminish (one) part of themselves to try to fit in the sporting cultures they love, or being excluded from physical activity altogether because the space is not safe . . . . When one lives at the intersection of multiple axes of oppression (as many, many of us do), reforming oneself looks and feels a lot like tearing one’s selves apart. An inclusion model of “add and stir” stops working and does not allow for our contradictory sporting experiences. (p. 316)
Making space for Black people in sport demands recognition of Black hair as a site of joy, of love and intimacy with a stylist, of queer and gender expression, and of militant resistance. Sport must shift to make space for varied Black hair aesthetics. To emphasize this message, U.S. world-record-holding sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, well known for multicolored, multitextured, and varied length hairstyles, took off her wig to reveal braid extensions at the starting blocks of the U.S. Track and Field Championships in July 2023 and, 2 months later, appeared for the first time with her natural hair for her final race at the Prefontaine Classic. Richardson’s actions are reminiscent of Serena Williams, who, 25 years earlier, “made an undoubtable statement by wearing braids and beads as she emerged on the professional tennis scene despite Eurocentric standards of beauty that deem Black hair as unprofessional” (Allen, 2021, p. 136). The message sent through their hairstyles was implicitly political; they “not only opposed the status quo but also exemplified the processes of self-definition and self-valuation” (Allen, 2021, 139). They resist dehumanization and optimize safety by demonstrating to all viewers that athletes can assert multiple versions of authenticity, express Black freedom through hair, and have a right to show up however they want.
As previously noted, many Black swimming participants experience barriers related to wetting and damaging their hair and a substantial investment of time and money required for hair care. SOUL CAP—a Black-founded and Black-owned business—helped to remove barriers by creating extra-large swim caps designed to keep thick, curly, kinky, voluminous, and long hairstyles dry. The founders recognized the need in Black communities for “changing the narrative on a life-saving skill that brings so much joy to so many people—and creating a place for every person who wants to get involved” (Soul Cap, n.d.). However, at the highest level of the sport, World Aquatics (formerly known as FINA, Fédération Internationale de Natation), in the leadup to the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympics, initially banned the SOUL CAP, noting that the caps did not fit “the natural form of the head” (Elan, 2021). Unlike high-performance racing suits, which have been justifiably prohibited for providing an unfair advantage, SOUL CAP does not provide a similar performance benefit. Thus, this ban against a supposed “unnatural” form of the head due to voluminous hair points to a belief that some Black athletes fall outside World Aquatics’ view of how world-class swimmers should look. In September 2022, the ban was reversed to promote diversity and inclusion and ensure that “all aquatic athletes have access to the appropriate swimwear,” according to Brent Nowicki, executive director at World Aquatics (Diaz, 2022). At the grassroots level, safe sport includes efforts to overcome race and gender barriers at a local recreation facility by providing hair care tools and, eventually, a hairdresser to help Black girls maintain their hair after swimming (White, 2021). Structural interventions such as these changes to rules and practices can optimize sport.
There are a variety of ways to optimize sport by reducing the harms that Black adolescents experience in physical activity. O’Brien-Richardson (2021) identified a hair intelligence quotient (knowing how to care for and protect hair from sweat, heat, water, and damage) as a learning priority among 14- to 19-year-olds in an underserved community in Newark, New Jersey. The 37 adolescents developed their hair intelligence quotient from family, social media, and peers, and the girls placed high value on having “ideal hair,” which they defined as “neat, tidy, clean, styled, and nonsweaty” (O’Brien-Richardson, 2021, p. 983). They continuously strove to find ways to acquire and extend their hair maintenance knowledge to increase physical activity participation. For example, they suggested that learning about hair care “in health class should be considered a part of hygiene,” specifically, hairstyles that are easy to care for and promote physical activity, “such as ponytails, braids, and short hairstyles”; they wanted additional time before and after physical activity “to care for their hair, as well as making hair accessories available, such as headbands”; and they believed that health and physical educators should acquire “cultural understanding of the significance and meaning of hair” to better support Black adolescents’ physical activity participation (O’Brien-Richardson, 2021, p. 986). This research demonstrates the benefits of community engagement, listening to participants, and structural/programming transformations in making sport more accessible.
Sport and physical activity programs designed by and catering to Black women and girls in Canada and the United States, such as Black Girl Hockey Club, Black Girls Run, and Black Girl Outdoor World, are essential interventions to create communities where Black hair is normalized, hair intelligence quotient can be increased, and role models or representation can be found. Programs like these can be essential to shift negative attitudes about physical activity in Black communities (Versey, 2014; Whitt-Glover et al., 2009). Research conducted by the authors Research conducted by Janelle Joseph and Shalom Brown through the COVID-19 pandemic with two such groups in Toronto, Canada, include Hill Run Club (2023), a “body positive, size inclusive, culturally sensitive mindful running club . . . for self-identifying Black Women beginner runners,” and Girl Power’d (2023), a “gymnastics and dance program meant to build self-esteem and self-love for young girls who identify as Black.” Interviews with girls and women demonstrated that the opportunity to be around other Black people who wear their hair in a variety of styles and, in the case of Hill Run Club, who work as professional hairstylists serving Black women was affirming. In these all-Black spaces, participants felt relaxed, seen, and understood because coaches intentionally, explicitly complimented participants’ hair, providing a source of empowerment and a signal of belonging.
Black Hair as Resistance
Resistance takes many forms and “refers to actions that are intended to produce social change” (Allen, 2021, p. 134). It is clear that across multiple diverse contexts, Black hair is both a material and symbolic battleground for racial, social, cultural, and political discourses to be played out. The National Basketball Association (NBA) provides a poignant contemporary example of the ways in which Black hair and (lack of) safety were encoded into sport policy and the ways discrimination was resisted by participants. In the late 1990s, the NBA engaged in a process of rebranding as an institution of racial uplift, with “street” credibility and aims to cash in on the growing popularity of urban, hip-hop culture. At the same time, Black players, like Allen Iverson, were heavily scrutinized within mainstream media and the public eye—with constant comparisons with criminal hip-hop artists, drug dealers, thugs, and gang members—reinforcing dominant understandings of Black masculinity as hypersexual, aggressive, and prone to violence (Ferber, 2007; Lorenz & Murray, 2014). Starkly contrasted with commentary about athletes who presented themselves with professionalism (aligned with White aesthetics), the dichotomized understanding of the presentations of Black masculinity separated the “good” athletes from the “bad” and justified keeping Black athletes under the leadership and control of White coaches and owners (Ferber, 2007). The media and the NBA positioned Iverson as problematic, and eventually, the league introduced a dress code banning many items central to Iverson’s style: “T-shirts, sleeveless shirts, sweatsuits, jerseys, and jeans (except for ‘dress jeans’) were prohibited. Sneakers, sandals, flip-flops, construction or casual boots, headgear (including baseball caps and bandanas), sunglasses worn indoors, headphones, chains, pendants, or medallions visible over clothing” (Lorenz & Murray, 2014, p. 27). The Black culture of the NBA was not only expressed through clothing. Hair became an important marker of identity.
Allen Iverson was outspoken about the difficulties of being on the road as an athlete without access to barbers and stylists with the expertise to style his hair (Hanlon, 2021). His (in)famous cornrows were integral to his identity and swagger and were broadcast internationally, serving as a refusal of shame imposed by the dominant culture and rejection of assimilation into colonial White beauty standards. His resistance to expectations of Black respectability encompassed bringing activities such as hair care, which are typically private and individual concerns, into the public domain. He showed the world two integral components of Black hair aesthetics: community and relationality. Black hair care is a team effort. Iverson highlighted his braider in interviews, having her on the road with him for away games or on call to fix his hair as needed. Captured in a now viral image (Rawcliffe, 2023), he once had his mother, Anne, fixing his cornrows midgame on the sidelines. Iverson’s cornrows contributed to the delinking of Black hair from the colonial violence that attempts Black erasure.
Sticking to box braids of various colours is my way of stepping my foot in that ring of being true to myself and being a representation to hopefully future generations of athletes who see me on TV and (say), “Oh, she has blue hair, I can have blue hair too.” (Samuel, 2021)
Similarly, Krystina Alogbo, a former Canadian waterpolo champion, wore dyed and shaved styles to signal identities as Black and part of the LGBTQ+ community. Her participation in the Pride Parade with Team Canada was not “about being gay or not, it’s just about being who you want and not being afraid about who you want to be” (Alogbo, 2020). Indirectly, she associates aesthetics with freedom.
In the university sport setting, many athletes in Canada experience limited access to Black hair care spaces (athletes in Toronto and Montreal are exceptions). Networks of basement hair salons, friends who work as barbers, and small family-owned beauty outlets are built and shared through word of mouth, helping link Black individuals to a larger community. In a large interuniversity sport project, Joseph et al. (2021) engaged in interviews and focus groups with over 100 people and surveys of over 5,000 people, accounting for more than half of the conference members. One of the important outcomes of the project was the illumination of the overwhelming Whiteness of university athletics in Canada—even in sports with the most Black players (e.g., basketball, soccer, track and field, and football). This study precipitated the proliferation of student resistance groups. BIPOC or Black varsity associations proliferated throughout the conference, and many noted a high demand but lack of supply of resources, such as barbers, promised to Black athletes when they were recruited.
Upon arrival on campus, student- athletes discovered local barbers did not know how to cut Black hair, and those who did were expensive or distant from campus. This barrier sparked creative programming. One football player observed that unfreedom is felt regularly when he puts his time, money, and efforts into academics, training, games, and part-time work, with little left for self-care. He said, “You can’t be show in’ up all dusty” referring to a disheveled look with a grown-out fade. Discussions of ways to combat Whiteness in Canadian university athletics organizations led to a 2-day hair event wherein Black student athletes partnered with their athletic department and broader university equity, diversity, inclusion and indigenization task force for funding reached out to their personal community networks of barbers and hairstylists, and paid for travel, accommodations, marketing the initiative, and administering appointments (Joseph & Brown, 2022). A hairstylist and a professional braider were mandatory, nonnegotiable elements of this initiative, dismantling preconceptions of what Black athletes need and literally changing how Black men on campus appear in time–space. All the barbers, braiders, and stylists had to do was show up and do what they do best: cut, braid, and style hair. The athlete activists humanized themselves by creating conditions they know they deserve. Hair stylization is a means of enacting, performing, and demonstrating Black resistance and freedoms in sport.
Black hair stylization is political. Afro styles historically emerged along with the Black consciousness movement in the United States. Locs are linked to anti-Western consciousness in Jamaica. Braids are part of a system that rejects colonial White beauty standards and emphasizes Black pride and consciousness. And, as Mercer (1994) noted, straightened Black hair is also a specifically Black creative cultural practice, a New World Black stylization, that responds to the historical forces that set the social and symbolic meaning of hair. Considering how resistance is enabled (or not) in sport is a worthwhile endeavor in efforts to promote safe sport.
Conclusions
There are many different ways the wide variety of hairstyles adopted by Black people in sport offer safety, freedom from harm, accessibility, fairness, human rights, and resistance. These styles are also sometimes misaligned with safe sport goals. Locs, large afros, afro puffs, twists, flat tops, or bantu knots may be among the easiest hairstyles to maintain in sport and physical activity but may present challenges for players in sports that require helmets or hair coverings. Players may choose to engage recreationally with only a modicum of safety or be eliminated from organized sport due to strict rules about fit or informal practices of racial discrimination. Styles that require chemical or hot iron treatments for straightening or gels for edges are not only potentially damaging to health due to increased risk of burns or cancer but are also not conducive to getting wet from swimming or sweat. As a result, participants may self-select out of some sports, choosing a hairstyle over physical activity, especially where organizers do not provide the time, resources, materials, or knowledge necessary for before-, during-, and after-sport hair care. Long microbraids, box braids, weaves, or other protective styles may be ideal ways to represent beauty, especially for Black women, but may be misaligned with sporting practice due to the time and cost related to maintenance with cleansing the scalp and moisturizing hair after sport and the ways current rules position certain hairstyles as interfering with play, creating a safety hazard, or causing distractions. As such, more attention must be paid to the specific needs of Black athletes to ensure they have the support, information, tools, and welcoming environment they need to start and stay physically active.
This is a call to action for sport administrators, coaches, referees, players, and researchers to consider the sport-specific requirements that may interfere with Black hairstyles and to demonstrate community and structural changes that send messages of welcoming, affirmation, and preparation for Black athletes. All people invested in safe sport must surface the decolonial political meanings associated with Black hair aesthetics and support alternate structures to increase inclusion, participation, and belonging.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. We are thankful to live and work on this land.
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