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theses

This dissertation explores the rise of the Digital Black Natural Hair Movement (DBNHM), a movement championed by Black women who employ social media groups to establish communities and engage around their shared identities as Black women who wear their hair in its natural state (naturalistas). The study focuses on how the DBNHM materializes in three social media natural hair groups (SMNHG). To understand why and to what end do naturalistas create and participate in these communities, a digital textual analysis of the media texts found in these SMNHG and fifteen semistructured interviews were conducted. Two key findings emerged. First, members of SMNHG displayed behavioral practices that mirror those inherent to traditional sister circles: the fictive family structures Black women have historically erected to engage in collective acts of solidarity and resistance. Second, the communities are laced with a culture of resistance evident by the prominence of pro-Black language and imagery that resonate messages that resist hegemonic beauty standards, while simultaneously celebrating Black natural hair as beautiful, healthy and sophisticated. Collectively, these findings suggest that the development of the DBNHM is a 21st-century turn on the group liberation practices Black women have historically undertaken. This argument allows this work to sit in conversation with Black digital humanities research that explores how Black women are fusing their personal politics with technology to forge discursive and rhetorical virtual spaces, geared towards the production of anti-hegemonic and resistance content.

ETD_10911

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-xye1-g536

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.