A Missing Site of Black Beauty History: The Black Beauty Supply Store

Abstract

With(in) retail spaces, Black Americans operate in a space with historical ties to inequality, dehumanization, and exclusion. This qualitative study situates the Black beauty supply store within these political and culturally relevant histories. Millennial perceptions of beauty, relationship to their hair, and the history of Black beauty supply stores are briefly covered in the literature review. Black feminist thought and Black feminist geographies informed the data analysis of interview transcripts from 20 millennial Black women. The findings reveal that millennial Black women shop at the Black beauty supply store due to convenience and the variety in product assortment. Yet, the in-store surveillance and assumptions of criminality affect their psyche, resulting in disengagement from the store. Participants realized that fully satisfying beauty retail experiences do not exist for Black women. Despite this, millennial Black women continue to return to the store where they embrace and cultivate Black stylistic and beauty innovations.

A Scoping Review of Black American Beauty Studies From 1995 to 2022

“…Even in virtual environments where Black women would be considered the majority participants, such as the natural hair vlogging industry, they still experience discrimination and bias specific to their identity (Hilton, 2020). The same sentiment is also found in beauty retail spaces, where millennial Black women revealed that they experience similar discrimination and a lack of representation in places where they buy beauty products (Reed, 2021).…”

“…Earlier studies conducted before 2011 (Makkar & Strube, 1995; Robinson-Moore, 2005, 2008; Lipford Sanders, 1996; Tucker, 2000; White, 2005) focused on understanding and comparing Black women’s beauty to Eurocentric standards. Studies published later, in 2021, move beyond comparison and instead focus on Black women’s perception of their beauty in relation to social media usage (Chambers, 2021), sexual well-being (Avery et al, 2021), and beauty retailing (Reed, 2021). In one instance, gendered and racial events were categorized to develop a taxonomy of microaggressions experienced by Black adolescent girls.…”

Copying and its place in product development: definitions and practices by fashion industry personnel

“…The sample size and industry variance are similar to industry personnel in previous studies. 60,61 Of the responding participants, job experience ranged from 2 years to more than 10 years, with an even distribution of participants across the number of years. Job titles, supplied by the participants, were variations of product development positions and included the more product-oriented positions of Senior Designer, Technical Designer and Product Developer, as well as inclusion of employees in areas of product marketing, business process analyst and customer-contact manager.…”