Abstract
This research will investigate the obsession with the Eurocentric beauty standards that still plague Brazil and, at the same time, empower Afro-Brazilian women to wear their hair naturally and embrace their ancestry as identity. The natural hair revolution has begun. The reality is that when women are told to "fix" their hair, it is to straighten and make it manageable, more appealing, and conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. When women straighten their hair with Keratin and Brazilian Blowouts, they damage their hair, risking their health and showing shame for who they are. Brazil, with its diverse population and complicated racial categories, falls into what in Spanish is known as "Pelocracia"—an aristocracy where the texture of your hair indicates your race. One can no longer hide by having colored eyes or a lighter skin complexion. To be fully embraced into that "other" without fully understanding its implications, women must change the texture of their hair and erase any connections to African ancestry. The question will always be: how important are hair texture and skin color in Brazil, and why?
The various degrees of whiteness and the societal pressures to erasure black features like coily, curly, and kinky hair have long existed in the world of many Afro-Brazilian women. The measure of whiteness revolves around an obsession with straight blonde hair. In this presentation, the question of how important hair texture is to identity in Brazil and its rippling effects on an international scale will be examined.
The reality is that there are degrees of whiteness and certain features are praised over others, for example; straight hair. Autoethnography was used to answer these questions and understand the implications that arise from having chemically treated hair and the various lengths at which women go through to obtain straight hair that also expose violence against the bodies of women of color who are constantly reminded that they are not enough.