Kristin Denise Rowe’s decision to join the contemporary natural hair movement in the early 2000s has allowed her to bring a unique and important voice to the conversation around Black beauty.
An assistant professor in Cal State Fullerton’s Department of American Studies, Rowe teaches courses such as “Women, Race and Ethnicity in American Culture” and “The Body in American Culture,” where she and her students examine the intersection between beauty, pop culture, race and gender politics.
Rowe’s passion for research and her many published works in this area resulted in an invitation to contribute to the 2022 Comcast Xfinity docuseries, titled “The Black Beauty Effect,” a three-part series that focuses on the history, evolution and contribution of Black people in beauty and culture.
As an English major undergraduate student, Rowe was drawn to storytelling, film and pop culture. At the same time, she decided to join the contemporary natural hair movement, when a critical mass of Black women stopped chemically straightening their hair via relaxers in favor of natural hair styles.
Prior to that time, a significant part of Black beauty culture was centered on chemical relaxers. Rowe argues that at that same juncture, there became an overarching interest across races around going green, going organic and going natural, with an emphasis on “dechemicalizing” various aspects of our lives.
These movements, along with the introduction of YouTube in 2005, allowed the internet to become a space for Black women to teach each other how to style and maintain their natural hair. It wasn’t long before a community took shape, and Rowe felt the pull to contribute to the discussion.
“It was really just being in it,” Rowe said. “Being in the community, in the movement, being a product of it and observing things. And it was thinking that someone should write this down or unpack this.”
When the team from FaceForward Productions contacted Rowe in 2021,…
Read the full article here