Director Haifaa Al-Mansour’s new Netflix film, Nappily Ever After, will confront an important (but all too often underrepresented) issue: hair. Based on Trisha R Thomas’ best-selling novel from the year 2000, the rom-com will see Sanaa Lathan play an advertising executive who alters her social identity by shaving her head and letting her hair grow naturally after years of relaxing it straight.

“My hair was like a second job,” she says in a new trailer, released August 2. “Now I’m forced to focus on myself. I wonder who I’ll be?”

The resonance of this sentiment in the black community is evident in the social media response to the trailer, with one Twitter user emphasising the importance of such representation for young black girls, and others sharing their personal experiences.

Nappily Ever After will be released on Netflix September 21. Watch the trailer below.