Black men take pride in their natural hair

South African rapper AKA rocks a fade.

South African rapper AKA rocks a fade.

Published Sep 15, 2016

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Following the recent events at Pretoria Girls High School where young black girl students stood up for the right to wear their hair out, much of the dialogue around African hair has been centred on females.

Black men are also joining the party as we too look to freely express ourselves through our hair choices. Afro-hair blogger Joan Hillman has a website in which she writes about advice on hair.

She says: “The hair on the heads of men, specifically kinky coily afros, tends to be much richer, coarser and denser than women's as, in most cases, they do not necessary put their hair through as much manipulation and styling as we do," she explains.

READ: Dry shampoo bad for your hair?

Keith Benza aka YVNGENZA, a 20-year-old rapper and produce isn't too keen on using hair products regularly. “I tried conditioning my hair regularly, but I wasn't consistent with it.”

 Keith Benza - Instagram

Most men want to keep it simple so do not want to follow too many steps.

But if you can, use conditioner, Hillman advises. “After shampooing, conditioner can be used and then rinsed out. Men should follow the use of a sulphate-free shampoo with conditioner where possible but if not then it should be sufficient to follow the cleansing step with a natural oil or product that offers conditioning properties,” she says.

READ: Beauty review: Johnson’s Vita-Rich

Rocky Bukasa, who works as an instructor at the L’Oreal Institute in Braamfontein and also owns a salon focusing on Afro-hair noted: “Guys are tired of walking around with hair they cant comb or brush. The popular hairstyle I've noticed is the fade. So that's long on top and short down the sides.”

Teboho Gondo, a photographer and videographer, is one of the many young black men who wears the fade. Much of our style is picked up from the hip-hop culture, says Bukasa. And he has a point. I recall Kendrick Lamar’s emergence in 2011 inspiring a lot of young black men to take on the fade hairstyle which Lamar wore at the time. More recently, rappers Travis Scott and Asap Rocky, who both wear box braids, have inspired other black men to take on the style.

Kendrick Lamar - REUTERS

“Hip-hop is playing a big part in what we're seeing. The previous trend of young black men getting dreads is coming down a bit though. We see a lot of them coming into our salon to cut them off and go for the fade.”

The beard is also trendy right now amongst black men. “Some of them are really starting to experiment with them. There's this big trend of dying the beard grey. For some reason, they want to look old,” he laughs. “Men are even taking the time to apply beard oil to maintain their beards.”

It's an interesting time to be young and black. We’re still discovering ourselves and, as we continue to play around with our hair and learn more about it, more and more of us are starting to wear our hair with pride.

This is an extract from Shingai's piece on black men's hair appearing this Sunday in Life in The Sunday Independent

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