On Headshots and Cornrows: How Black Hairstyles Reveal the Bias of “Professionalism”

Earlier this year, I realized it had been four years since I’d taken a professional headshot. I wanted new photographs that better represented my current look and aura. Then last May, I spotted an Instagram post promoting $100 portrait sessions with photographer Brandon Hicks at The Black Image Center. Kalena Yiaueki, Maya Mansour, Zamar Velez, Haleigh Nickerson, Samone Kidane, and Michael Tyrone Delaney founded the Los Angeles-based Black Image Center in 2021. They support and amplify the work of Black photographers and visual artists by providing resources, education, and a platform for this community’s creative work. Their offerings include studio space, workshops, exhibitions, and mentorship programs—like artist residencies—to foster community and professional development.

“So lemme get this straight,” I thought, “Headshots taken by a talented Black photographer at an affordable price with 100% of the proceeds going towards a local Black non-profit aiming to champion Black artists and creatives? Say less!” As soon as I booked a session, my next two quests emerged—an outfit and a hairstyle. I wanted to serve creative, grown, professional, compelling, and unapologetically Black. But how exactly?

From how we dress to how we style our hair, Black women know that our appearances determine how people perceive us—and how we perceive ourselves (I’ve been working on a performance art series about the latter). Black girls and women are suspended and expelled from school, disregarded for or fired from jobs because cornrows, Afros, twists, box braids, and many Black hairstyles aren’t considered professional or acceptable. (And don’t even get me started on tightly coiled, cottony, matte, Afro hair textures like mine, the texture that got left behind in the second wave of the natural hair movement.) As a Black woman, my physical appearance has played an overwhelming role in how I think about, approach, and navigate my professional life. I’ve written extensively about my relationship with my own hair, beginning in college when I wrote my first published personal essay about my natural hair for a college literary journal and my senior thesis, a novella based on my study abroad experience in South Africa where I did my first big chop.

This passion continued into adulthood when I was a multicultural beauty writer and editor at BuzzFeed who covered everything from not needing to lay your edges to a Black student’s viral mugshot underscoring Texas’ discriminatory marijuana laws. As a freelancer, I reported on the growing national wave of lawmakers and activists working to make the Crown Act a federal law to outlaw anti-Black hair discrimination nationwide. Black women also face bias and discrimination in how we dress. Black girls, particularly brown-skinned girls, are harshly judged and criticized by people, including their own skinfolk, for how they’re dressed at prom. They’re also more likely to be disciplined for clothing at school than their peers, like in D.C., where Black girls are 20.8 times more likely to be suspended than white girls, according to the National Women's Law Center. When thinking of the workplace, what immediately comes to mind are those viral stories of curvy Black women news anchors being hypersexualized and vilified for choosing clothes that don’t hide their bodies.

Women of all races face sexist and misogynistic misperceptions based on what we wear. However, Black women experience a unique blend of sexism and racism—misogynoir, as coined by Black feminist writer Moya Bailey in 2008. This applies to the sociopolitical implications tied to what and how we style ourselves in school, the workplace, and beyond. That monologue America Ferrera’s Gloria delivers in Barbie about the impossible societal expectations of women resonated with many, (though not all) but thinking in the context of misogynoir, imagine how much more complicated those expectations become for Black women. Consider the impossible expectations of being a Black woman in a nation founded on your subjugation and dehumanization, a nation still led by some who openly advocate for the return of a "great" American era when our bodies were not our own and we were legally regarded as three-fifths of a free individual. Now (if you weren’t already imaging this when I said “woman”) imagine that for a Black woman who is transgender or a Black woman with a disability. That’s why so many of us think long and hard about seemingly simple experiences like getting professional headshots.

Does that mean we’re constantly obsessing about the Male Gaze and the White Gaze? No. Black women are not a monolith and don’t all share the same exact anxieties, if any at all, about our appearances. But just know that when you encounter a Black girl or woman stressing about her outfit and hairstyle for a school or work event, there’s levels to this shit! Thankfully, I am a journalist, artist, and writer, a creative working in industries relatively flexible to my appearance, though by no means immune to racial biases and discriminations that extend to a Black person’s appearance. Nowhere in America are we guaranteed safety from all of these compounded gazes, not even in all-Black women spaces. Sometimes—thanks to deep-rooted social conditioning and crabs-in-a-bucket mentality—we are our own biggest enemies.

That’s why I chose to take my headshots in straight back cornrows and a straight hair lace front wig—a visual code-switching, if you will. Interestingly enough, I ended up preferring the cornrow pics over the wig options. I looked as powerful and regal as I felt in those neatly plaited braids, a hairstyle powerful enough to threaten white folks who try to ban them from academic and professional spaces that (should) provide Black folks with tools to empower ourselves financially and socially. (Side note: when I searched for images of Black women in professional headshots on Google, I found zero images of women wearing cornrows. ZERO.) That’s also why I opted to wear an outfit that makes me look like the beautiful badass that I am.

Now I (also) know that y’all know that I’m big on wearing Black-owned designers, especially to spaces for and by Black creatives (1. I clearly know everything that y’all know about me and 2. see me in Sabby Lou for Black House Radio and Andrea Iyamah for a Black Getty event—yes it was a Black event, and no, Black jobs are not a thing. I’m using Black logic iykyk.) However in this instance, I went with my Gunmetal Coated Denim Maxi Dress by Rick Owens. I got this dress the weekend of the headshot session but had tried it on before at the Rick Owens store in West Hollywood. I loved the sculptural look of the piece, a work of art chiseled carefully out of a material both hard and soft, metallic and rough, with a sheen and texture of raw denim that mirrored the formality and casualness of the fabric. The gunmetal color feels unexpected, especially in a professional headshot. The soft boning throughout the upper body reflected the intensity of my intention with my work.

As he snapped photographs on a film camera (cool, but also stressful because ya girl didn’t know what she was giving), Brandon complimented my look and offered calming, friendly vibes, though I honestly would have preferred some direction, which he did provide once I mentioned this. One thing I did worry about before and during the shoot was the straplessness of it all. Headshots are often edited to fit particular layouts, after all, and I envisioned someone havign to decide how to crop my image without making it seem like I was naked. Then again, I thought, who said I couldn’t have more than one set of headshots?

These headshots were more for myself anyways, to mark a new chapter in my adulthood, one where I’m folding art curation and writing and an interdisciplinary art practice into my journalism practice. And in the words of the woman about whom Ayo Edibiri told no lies, This is me…now. And now-me is someone who wanted to rock cornrows while wearing a structural dress that made me feel like that girl. While there might not be a place in America where Black girls and women are safe from anti-Black hair discrimination or being judged by what we wear, daring to defy the supposed standards and norms that uphold these biases—like how you “should” look in a professional headshot—certainly helps to challenge said framework, making space to build our very own professional environments where our actual work, experience, and expertise matter more than how we look.

So without further ado, what the few folks who didn’t immediately scroll for the photographs have been patiently waiting for…my new headshots!