On July 21, President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee to take on Donald Trump in November.
The news was historic. VP Harris became the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket. For many, this history-making moment was felt on a deeper level. While VP Harris’s style has widely been discussed, her openness about her hair-care routine has been significant and has resonated with Black women and other women of color.
“VP Harris is an important symbol in politics and American history, specifically at this time, because she represents Black representation at the highest level,” said Zenda Walker, author, licensed cosmetologist and textured hair educator. “What’s important about that, especially in how she carries herself and her image, is that Black women and women of color get to see themselves in her. … Whether we wear our hair natural, straight or in braids, … black women’s [choice of] hair is [seen as empowering].”
Black women have had a nuanced and often complicated relationship with hair. Although an estimated 65% of the U.S. population identifies as having textured hair, Black textured hair, specifically, has long been overlooked by brands, discriminated against in the workplace and, until recently, underrepresented in the media.
A February 2023 report from Dove and LinkedIn revealed that Black women’s hair is nearly three times more likely to be perceived as unprofessional. The report also showed that Black women are 54% more likely to feel that they have to wear their hair straight to a job interview to be successful. The mistreatment and inherent bias many Black girls and women have faced because of their natural hair is partly what contributed to the rise in straight hairstyles, including VP Harris’s signature silk press.
“If [VP Harris] chose to wear her hair [curly], the controversy wouldn’t come from Black women, it would come from other people. That’s why so many people are advocating for the CROWN Act to be enacted in all 50 states,” said Quani Burnett, founder of textured hair-care brand Soft Rows. As of this year, the CROWN Act, which was created to prohibit race-based hair discrimination, has been passed in 26 U.S. States. Inspired by the CROWN Act, in 2021, Louisiana became the first state to mandate all cosmetologists to receive textured hair education. Since then, the bill has passed in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and most recently, in Minnesota, where Governor Walz signed it into law in May. The bill is currently pending in California, according to Edwin Neill, CEO of Aveda Arts & Sciences Institutes and its parent company Neill Corporation.
The silk press first gained popularity in the early 1900s when many Black women wore the straight hairstyle as a means of survival and assimilation in society. The style — achieved by using hot tools such as hot combs, flat irons and blow dryers — gave Black women an option to temporarily straighten and add a silky, sleek shine to their hair for work and special occasions. It provided an alternative to chemical relaxers, which deliver more permanent results and have been linked to hormone-related cancers, including breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancer.
However, comparatively, the chemical-free method requires significantly more time, maintenance and heat-styling. The level of upkeep associated with preserving a silk press is what piqued the internet’s interest in VP Harris’s perfectly kept ‘do.
In a candid July 2023 interview with actress and podcast host Keke Palmer about Black maternal health, VP Harris shared her hair-care routine which became a viral moment. Prior, VP Harris had been vocal about her hairstyles, but when Palmer asked her about the maintenance required to achieve her signature look, it garnered thousands of views and impressions on social media.
“How many times a month do you get a silk press?” Palmer asked VP Harris in the interview. VP Harris broke down her seemingly simple routine: “I don’t use a curling iron — it’s too much heat. I use a round brush,” she said. “It takes a while [to achieve the style], so I use a boar bristle brush and a blow dryer.”
The organic interaction snowballed into fandom for VP Harris’s hair. On Google, when VP Harris was announced as the official Democratic presidential nominee on August 5, searches for “Kamala Harris hair” spiked by 33% the following day, according to Google Trends. And on TikTok, the popularity of the presidential silk-press hairstyle has begun to pick up steam. To date, the 30-second audio of Palmer and VP Harris’s conversation has over 760 posts with women of color using the sound to create videos of themselves duplicating the look.
Thanks to increased advocacy, legislation and representation in the Black hair-care category, the narrative and perception around Black hair is slowly shifting. With the rise of texture hair-care brands and products and more textured hairstyles being represented in media, the silk press has transitioned from a style used to protect Black women from discrimination to just a personal preference. That shift is what helped catapult VP Harris’s hairstyle of choice into a viral beauty trend. According to some, the normalization of the silk press has also transformed it into a symbol of the diversity that exists today within the textured hair category.
“I see [VP Harris’s] silk press not only as her trademark but also as a symbol of Black hair autonomy, which is what so many Black women have been advocating for,” said Burnett. “We [Black women] just want to be able to do with our hair as we please. We don’t want to have to be told what’s professional, what’s not professional or what the standards of beauty are. If anything, [VP Harris’s] silk press could also be looked at as a symbol of resistance and going against what people think our hair should look like. [Black women’s] hair is so versatile.”
As we inch closer to the 2024 presidential election, it is evident that VP Harris’s candidacy will continue to inadvertently challenge society to rethink its relationship with traditional Black beauty standards.
“Women of color have not been a part of the beauty conversation for so long,” Tia Mowry, actress and founder of the 1-year-old textured hair-care brand 4U by Tia, told Glossy. “It’s been empowering and wonderful to see a woman being celebrated that looks like [me]. [In my profession], I’ve been told my hair is a distraction, [for example]. This is why representation is so important.”
