IF THIS SHOP COULD TALK: A DISCURSIVE ANALYSIS OF THE LIBERATORY FUNCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN BEAUTY SALONS AND CULTURE

Abstract

“If This Shop Could Talk: A Discursive Analysis of The Liberatory Function and Development of African American Beauty Salons and Culture” explores the intersection of political consciousness, aesthetics, and community development engendered in quintessential and atypical locales of African American beauty culture with an emphasis on the African American beauty salon as a discursive space. As it seeks to expand limited understandings of African American beauty culture, this analysis employs Afrocentric, Black Feminist, and Womanist theoretical perspectives as it traverses temporal and geographic boundaries. As proclamations of Black pride and beauty are juxtaposed in present day society against a multitude of headlines that detail stories of discrimination based upon hair, this work addresses matters of how and why Africana women assert such prideful proclamations amidst injustice. How do African American women know that there is power in beauty? Why do African American women believe such a thing? Why do African American women engage in beauty culture and beauty salons? This work focuses on 20th through 21st century America, by exploring Black beauty culture concepts and byproducts including trends, styles, community activism, and consciousness as connected to African history in Kemet, African history in West Africa prior to the Transatlantic slave trade, and African history in America between the 16th and 21st centuries. This work employs discourse analysis and Afronography to reveal and assert the existence of a unique epistemology within Africana women’s beauty culture that has been employed in the subversion of oppression and the assertion of Black female identity in America. An Afronographic research study accompanies this analysis and represents qualitative findings from interviews conducted with women who identify as persons of African descent and members of intergenerational family beauty practice, where women in their families preceded them in beauty service provision. The researcher’s perspective is also included throughout the work as she is a licensed cosmetologist and member of an intergenerational family of beauty practice. Ultimately, this work suggests that there is a unique, significant, and sacred agency that exists in the phenomena, traditions, history, and locations of African American beauty culture which has generated aesthetic creations in hair, skin and nails that rhetorically shift paradigms, in addition to words, actions, and feelings that foster an epistemology that can aid in the liberation of Africans in the United States and abroad.