187 views
Andre Walker became famous for being Oprah Winfrey’s hair stylist, but he is also known for something else: a system that he created back in the 1990s to market his line of hair care products. The system categorizes natural hair types, and it's often referred to simply as "the hair chart." The chart identifies four hair types and within each of those categories there are different sub-types. The chart spans straight, wavy, curly, and kinky hair.
For Walker, the chart was all about selling his products. People could use it to identify their hair type and then buy a complementary product. But the chart has gone way beyond his own hair care line and become a way some African-American people talk and think about hair. Not everyone thinks the categories are helpful, and some of the criticism has its roots far back in American history.
This episode is a collaboration with The Stoop, a podcast hosted by Leila Day and Hana Baba, which features stories from across the black diaspora.
In the beginning, former AIA-SF president Henrik Bull and the Transameri...
This episode of 99% Invisible is all about acoustic design, the city sou...
At the top of Mt. Olympus in San Francisco, on what was once thought to ...
It’s a stick with bristles poking out of it. It doesn’t even qualify as ...
There’s not much that we can do about all the physical matter that’s bee...