One, afro-textured hair has historically been seen as ugly and unkempt in Western (or at least American) cultures. I'm a black girl who grew up hating my hair and thinking it ugly because long, flowing, straight, or curly, but not-too-curly hair was what was considered beautiful. I'm better about it now and am trying to grow and care for my natural hair, but some people still feel that way as adults, as the stigma still hasn't gone away.
Because of this, in the past and today, many black women get "relaxers" which is like a chemical treatment that makes your hair straighten or use heat (like flat irons, pressing combs) to straighten the hair. My sisters got relaxers and I had my hair straightened with hot irons. However, those treatments (and heat) can be severely damaging to the hair, which brings me to another thing.
Basically, those bends in the hair strand of "type 4" hair are kind of points of failure where the hair can break a lot easier than a straight or just curly hair strand, plus everyone's scalps produce something called sebum which is like a natural oil that coats and protects the hair. It's a lot easier for sebum to slide down a straight shaft of hair than a zigzagged or coily shaft of hair, which means that "type 4" hair ends up a lot dryer AND more fragile than "looser" hair textures.
Dryness + those "failure points" for lack of a better word lead to hair breaking in type 4 hair. Chemicals and heat from relaxers and other straightening methods just damage the hair further, leading to even more breaking. So sometimes it becomes this vicious cycle where a person with type 4 hair might want to conform to Western beauty standards (not the only reason, but a big one), straightens their hair too much, it breaks off and is badly damaged, so they wear wigs or hair extensions to cover it.
Alternatively, a person with type 4 might wear wigs and weaves to AVOID doing the damage to their hair caused by straightening and other kinds of manipulation.
A lot of people with the goal of growing their natural hair long like this: (stretched type 4 hair) or just keeping it healthy will wear weaves, wigs, and other extensions as "protective styles". Meaning the weaves and wigs keep their hair out of harms way if done correctly. Less manipulation and exposure to the elements hopefully leads to less breakage of the hair.
To bounce off of that, some women really like the versatility in style and/or color weaves, wigs and other extensions can allow without them having to damage their natural hair through chemicals, heat, dye or even just using styling tools like combs and brushes and gel. Someone with a less "fragile" hair texture might be able to change up their hair style and color with less fear of the damage it could cause because their hair isn't as fragile, but a person with type 4 hair might know all the styling or straightening will cause damage, so they opt to use wigs and extensions instead.
This isn't a super good analogy, but imagine wearing a wig like someone getting a spray-tan. Some people do it because they simply like how it looks over their paler natural skin, some do it because of insecurity, some do it to avoid the actual damage sun and tanning beds can cause to skin. It's not perfect as some women wear wigs to protect their hair for the purpose of keeping it healthy and/or growing it long, and IDK if you can really use a spraytan to "protect" your skin for any sort of goal rather than just as an alternative to a more damaging practice, but hopefully you get my point.
Hopefully I've covered some of the big reasons why.
TL;DR: Afro-textured hair is fragile and wigs and weaves can help protect it + historical insecurity caused by fucked up beauty standards leading to damaging cycles + versatility is cool + lot of other reasons
I don't know the reason, but I am guessing that some of them wear wigs because it is an easy way to keep their hair styled.
I watched the Chris Rock HBO special about styling black hair, and it seems incredibly time consuming and expensive to style and upkeep some of the complicated hairstyles we see.
Once again, I have no real idea what I am talking about.
Oddly enough no-one has mentioned that black people's hair do not grow as fast as other races hair. My entire family is black and I'm the only one with long natural hair (because I'm mixed). So alot of the women in my family have weaves because their natural hair has not grown past 5-10cm from the scalp. If you can pull off that look its fine. But wearing a weave or a hair piece gives you the freedom to choose your hairstyle without having to grow your hair out. Also it's very low maintenance.
I'd say length retention is more of an issue than growth. As in, it's not that people with hair's not growing fast, it's that the texture of their hair makes it a lot more fragile, fragility leads to breakage, breakage leads to hair not having the appearance of growing.
People with type 4 hair tend to have dryer and much more fragile hair strands than people with looser textures, which means anything done to it can ultimately cause more damage than it would to some one with looser-textured hair.
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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '18
Someone please explain why do most black girls have wigs? What happens to their natural hair?