Our hair is a significant aspect of our personal identity and cultural expression. Yet, the true cost of caring for our beautiful hair—both financial and temporal— often goes underestimated. Let’s dive into the realities of haircare for maintaining healthy hair and explore why it’s more than just a beauty regimen.
The real cost of beauty
Maintaining hair can be a substantial financial commitment. For many Black women, the costs extend well beyond basic haircare routines:
Salon Visits: Professional styling, including treatments like relaxers, perms, braids, and extensions, can range from $200 to $600 per visit or more. Styles typically last between 2 and 6 weeks, and sometimes even a couple of months, depending on the style. Maintaining healthy hair often requires regular salon visits, leading to recurring expenses for upkeep.
Products: High-quality shampoos, conditioners, oils, and treatments tailored to specific hair types and needs can be quite costly. Specialty products for textured and curly hair often come with a premium price due to their specialized formulations. According to GITNUX and REVOLT, the average Black woman spends approximately $649.68 annually on haircare products.
Tools and Accessories: The cost of combs, brushes, flat irons, scarves, flexirods, and other styling tools adds up over time. Regular replacements and upgrades to these essential tools contribute further to the overall expense of maintaining healthy and styled hair.
The time commitment
Haircare demands more than just financial resources—it requires a significant investment of time. For many, the routine involves multiple steps that can easily consume several hours:
Weekly Maintenance: Depending on hair type and style, washing, conditioning, and styling can be a weekly ritual that takes up a good portion of the day. For textured hair, this often includes detangling, deep conditioning, and carefully setting styles to ensure optimal health and appearance.
Salon Appointments: Regular visits to the salon are essential for touch-ups, trims, or trying out new styles, all of which are necessary to maintain the health and look of our hair. These appointments can be lengthy; for instance, getting braids done can take anywhere from 3 to 12 hours or more.
Daily Care: When our hair isn't in a protective style, daily routines often include moisturizing, detangling, and styling, which demand consistent attention. Even when our hair is in a protective style, morning routines like oiling the scalp, moisturizing, and taming edges still require time and care.
Nightly Care: Regardless of whether our hair is in a protective style or not, nightly care is crucial to protect and maintain it. This may involve wrapping straightened hair, adding pin curls, using flexi rods, or oiling and twisting. After setting our hair for the night, we secure it with a scarf and often add a bonnet for extra protection. Silk bonnets, like Obé’s LUXE Satin Bonnet, serve as a protective barrier to minimize friction and prevent breakage while sleeping, ensuring that all the time spent on haircare is well-preserved.
The lack of equity in haircare
Despite the significant demand, there is a glaring lack of equity in the availability and affordability of products for textured hair. While the haircare market is saturated with products catering to straight and fine hair types, those designed specifically for textured, curly, or coily hair are fewer and often more expensive.
Limited Availability and Higher Costs: The scarcity of products tailored to textured hair often forces consumers to pay a premium. Specialty products that meet the unique needs of Black hair—such as moisturizing conditioners, detangling creams, and styling gels—are often priced higher than mainstream alternatives. This creates an added financial burden on individuals already investing substantial time and money into their haircare routine.
The Demand and Supply Dilemma: Another pressing issue is the growing trend of non-Black individuals purchasing products meant for textured hair, often depleting local store supplies. This means that those who truly need these products sometimes find the shelves empty, leading to increased inconvenience and the need to shop online, often at even higher prices.
Compromised Integrity of Black-Owned Brands: A disturbing trend is the acquisition of Black-owned haircare brands by larger, non-Black corporations. While this can provide these brands with greater resources and distribution, it often comes at a cost. The integrity of original formulas may be altered, diluting the efficacy and cultural significance of the products.
The Health Penalty: Additionally, there is a concerning rise in the inclusion of damaging chemicals found in haircare products, particularly those marketed to Black women. Ingredients like parabens, phthalates, and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives have been found in some haircare products and are associated with potential health risks, including carcinogenic effects. The concern is that these products, which may contain higher levels of such chemicals, could contribute to health disparities. This shift not only affects product quality but also diminishes the authenticity of brands that were once trusted staples within the Black community.
This lack of equity in the haircare industry underscores the broader challenges faced by those with textured hair—challenges that go beyond personal grooming and touch upon issues of access and representation.
Adding water to the mix
With everything we've discussed in this blog, it’s no wonder that many people with textured hair are hesitant to embrace being in, on, and around water. The time, effort, and financial commitment required to maintain our hair can make water feel more like a threat than a source of enjoyment. Whether it’s the fear of ruining a freshly styled look or the worry of causing damage that requires costly repairs, water often becomes an enemy instead of something to be enjoyed freely.
But everyone should have the opportunity to embrace water, regardless of hair type. That’s where Obé comes in. Obé is a waterproof headscarf designed to tackle these concerns head-on, allowing you to experience the joy of water without compromising your hair’s health or style. Whether you’re swimming, caught in the rain, or just trying to protect your hair in the shower, Obé provides a stylish and practical solution that lets you enjoy water confidently.
With Obé, you can reframe your relationship with water—not as a threat, but as a natural and refreshing part of life that you can embrace with ease. Water is an essential part of life and should be a source of joy, not stress. By integrating solutions like Obé’s waterproof headscarves into your routine, you can protect your hair while still enjoying all that water has to offer.