A few weeks ago, on a random Sunday in March, I decided I wanted to start wearing my natural hair. There were several reasons for this. First, I could no longer justify – or honestly, afford – my biweekly silk presses. The biggest reason, though, was that at 24 years old, my whole “I don’t know how to do my hair” schtick sounded tired, even to my own ears. I was embarrassed that, as a grown adult who had spent most of her childhood going to salons, I still didn’t know how to manage my hair, and I was ready to change that, no matter how many failed braid-out tutorials it took.

Well, I asked, and the TikTok algorithm answered. Unbeknownst to me, my decision coincided with the latest iteration of the online natural hair discourse. The same day I told my ( doubtful ) mother I was attempting to go natural, my For You Page introduced me to Sharon, aka @sshozxox. Over the past month, the creator has gone viral for her sharp, unfiltered videos urging Black women, especially those with kinkier hair textures, to interrogate why they consider their natural hair difficult to maintain, and why they feel the need to rely exclusively on styles like wigs and braids.

Sharon’s videos have a directness that makes you stop mid-scroll. She is incisive, unflinching and does not mince her words, prompting endless reaction videos dissecting what we are and aren’t allowed to say when it comes to Black haircare. “Your hair is ‘high-maintenance’, get over it,” she says one video. “It’s paining you because you know I’m right,” she says in another.

So why have her videos struck such a nerve? Many commenters have reached for the obvious response: shouldn’t Black women be allowed to do whatever they want with their hair? In short: yes. But this isn’t about demonising any one style; Sharon herself wears wigs occasionally. The broader point is that an aversion to wearing your natural hair, or knowing how to care for it, is worth examining.

No matter which side of #NaturalHairTok you’re on, it’s hard to deny how stigmatised non-Eurocentric beauty standards still are in the West. The negative perception of Black women’s natural hair is so pervasive that, in 2019, Dove and the Crown Coalition – in partnership with then-California State Senator Holly J. Mitchell – introduced The Crown Act to protect against discrimination based on race-based hairstyles. As of 2026, the Act has been passed in over half the country, though that doesn’t mean discrimination has disappeared overnight.

Just a few weeks ago, tennis player Coco Gauff received backlash for a Miu Miu campaign in which she wore her 4C hair in a non-slicked-back bun. “I’m not going to apologise for the way that my hair looked, because there are other girls who have the exact same hair as me, and I wanted them to feel represented. Your hair is fine the way it is,” she responded on TikTok.

The impact of Gauff’s words can’t be overstated. For many women, a lack of representation – whether in the media or their immediate environment – shapes a complicated relationship with their natural hair. Take 28-year-old Mamy Mbaye, co-founder of haircare brand Slick, who grew up at a predominantly white boarding school, often wearing protective styles and timing visits home around hair appointments.

“I would not even walk outside with my natural hair,” she says. Eventually, she studied abroad in Brazil and, inspired by the beauty culture there, decided to do a big chop. She describes the current #NaturalHairTok conversation as “very real”. “I think that it’s a worthwhile pause,” she says. “Like, why does your fake hair or the hair that you buy matter more to you than your natural hair?”

“I think that it’s a worthwhile pause. Like, why does your fake hair or the hair that you buy matter more to you than your natural hair?”

Texturism is also at play. Although the natural hair movement of the mid-2010s made strides, it was often looser textures that were most widely accepted online. Much of the content wasn’t tailored to different hair types, and the definition of “natural” was more rigid. “I think we are re-entering a space of complete erasure in a lot of media when it comes to Black people who don’t look ambiguously anything else,” Mbaye says. “When I think of 2015 or 2016, I’m starting college and Insecure is on TV, Atlanta is on – there were so many shows representing Blackness in a multidimensional way.”

This latest wave of discourse seems to be striking a deeper chord. Rose-Sharon Nnamchi, a 22-year-old from Essex, says it prompted her to rethink her own habits. “It really gave me a reality check,” she says. “It made me realise: why do I do braids or other protective styles back-to-back? Why do I only give my hair a day to breathe before I’m back in the chair?”

As she sees it, the conversation isn’t about policing Black women’s hair, but about questioning why we feel most beautiful in more Eurocentric styles. “If this is a conversation that’s tired, why does it keep coming up again?” she adds. “There’s clearly a reason why it resurfaces every year… It’s because when we speak about it, nothing changes.”

That tension is echoed elsewhere. Ife Olancola, a 24-year-old based in Virginia, pushed back against the idea that the discourse is exhausted, citing a video in which a Black teacher was teased by her own students for wearing her natural hair. As Olancola points out, negative attitudes can sometimes come from within the community itself – something often joked about online, but rooted in something deeper.

“I think [the ‘natural hair discourse is tired’ rebuttals] are a slap in the face to a lot of us who are passionate about natural hair acceptance because we recognise that it’s still an issue,” Ife Olancola, a 24-year-old based in Virginia, tells me. “While I think we all have different personal experiences when it comes to our hair and accepting our hair, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a systemic issue and that we should stop talking about it.” 

For Black women, there is no single way – let alone a right or wrong way – to navigate your relationship with your hair. “Every woman has such a different experience from childhood,” says beauty journalist Aimee Simeon. “How do we interact with our hair as kids? All of this impacts our attitudes in adulthood. It has to be approached with nuance.”

And while the internet is often where nuance goes to die, the past month has sparked conversations that feel difficult, but necessary. This latest revival of the natural hair debate is the only one that has made me reflect this deeply. As Simeon puts it: “I don’t think it’s a conversation that will ever particularly end… it’s just going to change and evolve as time goes on.”