Hair comes in a wide range of colours and shapes from long and short, to curly, to wavy and straight. There are a plethora of ways to present your crowning glory from ponytails to puffs, from bangs to bobs, from crewcuts to cornrows and so many more. So why is a nurse's hair such a contentious issue for many nurse managers and organisations? Thirty years ago, Caldwell 'marveled with sadness that something as simple as a black woman's hair continues to threaten the social, political, and economic fabric of American life' (Caldwell, 1991, p. 367).We continue to wonder today, how nurses' hair can apparently continue to threaten patient safety, nursing professionalism and corporate standards, to the extent that ever more prescriptive policies and dress codes are required to govern and police it.As a group of predominantly black nurse authors, we find the policies against certain styles of hair culturally oppressive and
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