Beyond Racial Boundaries
Texturism is a form of discrimination based on hair texture, where straighter hair textures are systematically privileged over curlier, coilier, or kinkier textures. While it operates within the broader framework of racial discrimination and Eurocentric beauty standards, texturism has a distinctive characteristic that sets it apart: it functions not only between racial groups but also within communities of colour, creating hierarchies that divide the very communities most affected by hair-based bias.
Understanding texturism is essential for anyone seeking to address hair discrimination comprehensively. Without recognising this within-group dynamic, interventions that focus solely on external, institutional discrimination will miss a significant dimension of the problem.
Defining Texturism
Texturism can be defined as the differential treatment, valuation, or perception of individuals based on their hair texture within a hierarchy that ranks straighter textures above curlier and coilier ones. This hierarchy operates at multiple levels:
Societal. Media representation, beauty industry marketing, and cultural production overwhelmingly centre straight and loosely waved hair as the aesthetic ideal. When textured hair appears, looser curl patterns (often classified as Type 3 on the Walker scale) receive more positive representation than tightly coiled patterns (Type 4).
Institutional. Workplace grooming policies and school dress codes that penalise “unkempt” or “unprofessional” hair disproportionately affect individuals with tighter textures, whose natural hair is least likely to conform to Eurocentric standards of smoothness and sleekness.
Interpersonal. Comments, compliments, and reactions that distinguish between “good hair” (looser, softer textures) and “bad hair” (tighter, coilier textures) perpetuate the hierarchy in daily interactions. These evaluations occur between racial groups but also within families, friendships, and romantic relationships within communities of colour.
Internal. Internalised texturism occurs when individuals absorb the texture hierarchy and apply it to their own self-evaluation, experiencing shame, dissatisfaction, or inadequacy about their natural texture.
Texturism and Colourism
Texturism is closely related to, but distinct from, colourism — the preferential treatment of lighter skin tones within communities of colour. Both phenomena reflect the internalisation of Eurocentric beauty standards established through colonial hierarchies that privileged physical proximity to whiteness.
Hair texture and skin colour are correlated but not identical: individuals with lighter skin can have very coily hair, and individuals with darker skin can have looser curls. This independence means that texturism creates its own axis of discrimination that intersects with but is not reducible to colourism.
Research suggests that texturism and colourism interact in complex ways. An individual with darker skin and looser curls may face colourism but not texturism. An individual with lighter skin and very coily hair may face texturism but not colourism. And individuals at the intersection — with both darker skin and coilier hair — face compounding disadvantage.
CROWN’s CROWN Discrimination Index is designed to capture both dimensions, enabling researchers to disaggregate the effects of texturism from colourism and other forms of appearance-based bias.
Historical Roots
Texturism’s roots trace to colonial-era racial hierarchies that established phenotypic proximity to whiteness as the standard of beauty, intelligence, and social value. In both the Americas and Europe, the history of hair discrimination reveals that hair texture was used — alongside skin colour — as a marker of racial classification, with straight or loosely textured hair conferring higher social status.
The legacy of these hierarchies persists in contemporary beauty standards, language about hair, and the texture-based preferences that operate within communities. The terms “good hair” and “bad hair” — still widely used in many communities — encode the colonial-era texture hierarchy in everyday language.
The Natural Hair Movement and Texturism
The natural hair movement — which has encouraged individuals to embrace their natural hair textures and reject chemical alteration — has been transformative. However, it has also surfaced texturism within the movement itself.
Critics have noted that the natural hair movement’s media representation, commercial success, and social media visibility have disproportionately centred individuals with Type 3 (curly) hair, while those with Type 4 (coily/kinky) hair receive less representation and fewer product options. Influencers with looser curls accumulate larger followings; brands market more to achievable, defined curl patterns than to the tightest coils.
This pattern replicates the texturism the movement seeks to combat — celebrating “natural” hair while still privileging textures closer to the Eurocentric norm. Awareness of this dynamic has prompted important conversations within the natural hair community about whose “natural” is being celebrated.
Impact on Mental Health and Identity
Texturism’s within-group operation gives it particular psychological potency. When the broader society devalues your hair, you can attribute that experience to external prejudice and maintain positive self-regard within your community. But when your own community also ranks your hair as less desirable, that protective attribution becomes more difficult.
Research on hair satisfaction and mental health suggests that intra-community hair evaluation has a stronger impact on self-esteem than inter-racial evaluation, precisely because the evaluators are people with whom the individual shares identity and belonging. Being told by a stranger that your hair is unprofessional is painful. Being told by family or community members that your hair needs “fixing” strikes at the sense of belonging itself.
The psychological impact of texturism includes:
- Shame about natural hair texture, particularly for individuals with Type 4C (the tightest coil pattern)
- Hair-related social anxiety within racial and ethnic community spaces
- Excessive spending on curl-defining products to achieve looser-appearing textures
- Reluctance to participate fully in the natural hair movement due to perceived exclusion
- Internalised beliefs about the inferiority of one’s own texture
Addressing Texturism
Combating texturism requires interventions at multiple levels:
Language awareness. Challenging the “good hair/bad hair” dichotomy and the texture hierarchy embedded in everyday language is a starting point. When communities adopt more precise, non-evaluative language — describing hair in terms of fibre structure, porosity, and density rather than desirability — the hierarchy begins to lose its power.
Inclusive representation. Media, marketing, and cultural production must represent the full range of hair textures with equal positive valuation. This means moving beyond the commercial convenience of centring easily styled, photogenic curl patterns.
Research. Understanding texturism requires specific measurement. CROWN’s CDI includes dimensions designed to capture within-group discrimination alongside external discrimination, providing data on the prevalence and impact of texturism specifically.
Therapeutic intervention. CROWN’s 360° Protocol addresses internalised beauty standards — including internalised texturism — as a core component of healing from identity-based appearance discrimination. CBT components specifically target the cognitive patterns through which individuals internalise texture hierarchies.
Community dialogue. Honest conversation within communities about texturism — its roots, its operation, and its harm — is essential. This dialogue is not about blame but about awareness: recognising that the texture hierarchy is a product of historical power structures, not a reflection of natural value.
Texturism is a reminder that hair discrimination is not only an external force imposed by institutions and the broader society. It is also an internal dynamic that operates within the communities most affected — making it simultaneously harder to recognise and more painful to experience. Addressing it requires the same rigour that CROWN brings to all dimensions of hair discrimination: evidence, measurement, understanding, and care.
