Hair Culture Quotes

As a black woman, there's so much pride and communication through hair. It's naturally something that you are excited to embellish on and be creative about.

Although I come from a family who are Muslim - my mother is Egyptian, my father is Palestinian - my mother only puts a veil on her head when she has a bad hair day.

So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.

I think women hide behind their hair.

I think many people, especially from other cultures, just don't understand the role hair plays in black women's lives.

You know, if I tell the press that I like long blonde hair, the next day there will be girls with long hair wigs outside waiting for me.

I still miss the days when a haircut was just a haircut. It was only your mates you had to face. Now there's a whole industry centred around people analysing your 'look'. I just cannot understand how anyone could get so worked up by... hair.

I live on hairspray. The bigger the hair, the closer to God.

Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

I hate short hair on men - the 'real' man is something I don't know. My dad was always playing with hairbands, making rings, while the women were wearing jeans, white T-shirts and Converse. That was the uniform at home.

Braids are not new. Black women have been wearing braids for a very long time.

Girls are taught to be so afraid to take up any "space," even with their own bodies, and hair is a part of that. I'm glad to not be a part of that!

Who I was was not acceptable to black L.A. youth: the way I spoke and my sense of humor. Everybody else had relaxers and pressed hair. I wore my hair in an Afro puff. Nappy. The way I dressed. It was all about name brands at the time in L.A. I had no idea. All those things, I failed miserably at.

As well as being a creative genius, Vidal Sassoon was a formative figure of the Sixties. Along with the Pill and the mini-skirt, his influence was truly liberating.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny.

A lot of people don't realize that hair is a big thing for a lot of people, not just African-American women. It's something to be aware of and to be cautious of.

I love a lot of the '70s singers: Pam Grier from the 'Foxy Brown' movie, Diana Ross, Tina Turner. They've always been able to embrace their hair, and they've never been afraid to take risks and go all out and make it thick and fun and a statement at the same time.

The hair is the finest ornament women have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were in mourning.

It took me years to get my hair right… after years of perms, conditioning… Nirvana came out and it wasn't cool to have big hair anymore. It was just a horrible injustice.

Vidal Sassoon changed hair forever.

What my mom failed to understand was that I didn't even want long hair -- I needed long hair. And my desire for protracted, flowing locks had virtually nothing to do with fashion, nor was it a form of protest against the constructions of mainstream society. My motivation was far more philosophical. I wanted to rock.

Women have a lot of... attitudes enforced in us about our sense of attractiveness being bound up in long, flowing, Hollywood kind of hair.