When’s the last time you left the house wearing your natural hair out? For some Black women, this is an easy question, since the answer is just a few days—or even a few hours—ago. But for another group of Black women, the same question elicits feelings of insecurity and defensiveness. I saw this play out recently when Ireland-based TikTok creator @sshozxox posted a video posing that question. She argued that many Black women can’t pinpoint the last time because their natural hair is constantly concealed beneath wigs and weaves. Her issue isn’t exactly with the styles themselves, but the fact that many of those women take better care of their units and bundles than the strands growing out of their heads.

“It’s paining you because you know I’m right,” Sharon (who prefers to go solely by her first name) said in the now-viral video that includes the text overlay, “You treat your wig with the care your natural hair deserves.” In a series of follow-up posts, Sharon doubled down on the point. Despite the common sentiment among Black women, she maintains that natural hair is not inherently harder to manage than wigs and weaves, and argues that women who exclusively wear those styles often frame the choice as convenience when the deeper issue may actually be a subconscious discomfort with their natural texture.

Reactions quickly got heated. Some viewers took Sharon’s critique as tough love that prompted necessary introspection about why their natural texture is concealed and manipulated so often. Others felt her comments oversimplified a complex issue and unfairly shamed Black women who choose to wear wigs and weaves.

“The girls are mad,” says Blake Newby, a former beauty editor turned content creator. Newby initially scrolled past Sharon’s video in quiet agreement. It wasn’t until her FYP became flooded with response videos and comments accusing Sharon of policing Black women’s hair that Newby decided to join the conversation in Sharon’s defense. “I was so confused by the discourse because I felt like she was right,” says Newby, who exclusively wears straight wigs and weaves over her natural hair. “I understand that I need to deconstruct the reasons behind the fact that I never wear my natural hair.”

Other prominent Black creators, including Jackie Aina and Patricia Bright, have also posted response videos echoing Sharon’s thoughts and urging Black women to dig deeper and ask themselves why they may prefer wigs, weaves, and even braids over their natural hair. The answer to the question is layered, but internalized racism sits at the core of the conversation. Black women aren’t born with an insecurity about their natural hair texture; many inherit that feeling through systems of racism that were meant to degrade and marginalize Black people. “Until natural hair is no longer political, until things like the CROWN Act are no longer necessary for us to wear our natural hair in professional workplaces…[this discourse] is important and relevant,” Newby said in her video.

Sharon didn’t expect her videos to go viral; she was simply ranting in response to another Black creator who “made multiple videos about how she hates her 4C hair texture and how it’s difficult to maintain,” she says. “It triggered something in me because I’m tired. My hair looks exactly like hers, and I’ve been able to take care of my hair. We’re both on the same internet. We both have access to the same information. How have I been able to create a routine, and you’re still crying on the internet?” Sharon asks.

Much of the pushback against Sharon’s videos echoes an argument we've heard before: Stop policing what other Black women do with their hair! The dissenting opinion says that because Black hair is so heavily regulated (both within and outside of the community), Black women should have the freedom to do whatever they want with their hair, with zero commentary.

Some also feel Sharon’s harsh tone only perpetuates the shame Black women already feel about this issue. “Let’s acknowledge the hurt and pain they [Black women] internalize…it’s not their fault,” one viewer comments under Sharon’s video. “It takes a lot of time to unravel the self-hate, so let’s not use guilt…defenses will naturally go up when the approach isn’t empathetic.”

Another group of Black women feels Sharon’s sentiments are obtuse because they leave out those who wear wigs to deal with hair issues like alopecia. “As someone with alopecia and very thin hair that is no longer full, I feel like this conversation often centers women who already have full, healthy-looking hair,” comments one user under a video in defense of those who primarily wear wigs and weaves. “It unintentionally leaves out a whole group of women who would love to wear their natural hair but are dealing with damage, hair loss, or conditions like mine.”

The discourse has prompted many viewers, including Newby, to speculate that we could be on the cusp of another natural hair movement—though this one may look different from the last. “I think this natural hair movement will look like a little bit more freedom,” Newby says.

How the modern natural hair movement fell out of favor

To understand where the natural hair community may be headed, it’s important to look back at where we’ve been. The first big push for Black people to embrace their natural texture took place during the 1970s as part of the Black Power movement. A more recent iteration, which started around 2010 and peaked around 2016, was largely fueled by the rise of YouTube, where Black creators flocked to the platform to make tutorial-style natural hair content. Creators like Chizi Duru, Whitney White (better known as Naptural85), and Jessica Pettway (OnlyOneJess) created representation for curls and coils, while carving out a space where Black women could learn how to care for and style their hair.

Before YouTube, much of the information around natural hair care was limited to salons or passed down from women in your family. These creators made that knowledge far more accessible, producing educational content on everything from building a washday routine and transitioning from relaxers to mastering styles like twist-outs.

The movement personally impacted me. After relaxing my hair for more than a decade—starting at just two years old—I went natural in 2016 and heavily relied on these creators’ content for guidance. Sharon says she did, too: “They gave me inspiration for how to do my hair.”

Now, 10 years later, it seems the movement has, in many ways, made a U-turn, with more Black women going back to straight hairstyles after giving their natural texture a try. When Allure reported on the phenomenon in 2021, the most common reason women gave for returning to relaxers was simply, “I’m tired.”

Sharon points to what she sees as false advertising from hair-care brands as one reason the movement lost momentum. “The natural hair movement was supposed to be for kinky, curly girls that looked like me,” Sharon says, noting that people with looser curl patterns have not historically been ostracized in the same way as those with type 4 hair. Instead, “when the movement started, we saw a lot more girls with loose curls at the forefront,” Brendnetta Ashley, a hairstylist in San Francisco, says. Creators with type 4 hair, like Duru, were still influential, but it seemed the most prominent faces of the natural hair movement had loose, bouncy curls instead of tight, kinky coils.

As Sharon sees it, brands capitalized on the trend by creating more products for natural hair without consistently centering tightly coiled textures in their marketing. “The natural hair campaigns started changing; the women started to get lighter, and the curls started to get looser, and then the message behind the movement got lost,” she says.

Her theory is that many women with type 4 hair tried those products expecting to achieve the curl patterns shown in advertisements. When they didn’t get those results, they grew frustrated and internalized the idea that their hair was difficult to manage. In reality, Sharon argues, their hair wasn’t the problem—it was the expectation that it should behave like a completely different texture.

Brands weren’t solely to blame for those misaligned expectations, though. The issue was fueled by several factors: flawed curl charts that led many people to miscategorize their hair, YouTubers who positioned their routines and techniques as the “best way” to achieve a bouncy twist-out or a defined wash-and-go without acknowledging how heavily results depend on texture, and the persistence of internalized racism in the form of texturism. While the movement championed messages like “love your God-given texture” and “natural hair is beautiful,” the imagery often suggested that looser curl patterns were the textures most worthy of celebration.

Looking back at that time period, “I wanted these perfectly defined curls because that’s what I felt the Black community was telling me I needed to have,” writer Kayla Greaves shared in a 2024 essay for Allure about heat-training her hair.

These expectations led many Black women to feel fatigued caring for their hair. Greaves went natural in 2014, but for her, the move didn’t feel empowering. “It felt like a chore. I grew to resent doing my hair,” she said in the story. “Having ‘healthy hair’ came at the cost of my mental health, and that’s just not a price I’m willing to pay.” Now Greaves gets frequent keratin treatments and often wears her natural hair straight, a routine that means her weekly styling takes only 20 minutes.

Greaves is one of many Black women who don't despise their natural texture; they just prefer the convenience of wearing their hair straight or in wigs and weaves. “I do not have the capacity to care for my hair the way it deserves to be cared for on a daily basis,” Newby says.

But Sharon argues that maintaining wigs and weaves can be just as much work. “I used to wear wigs exclusively for two years, so I know the process behind wigs,” she says, noting the method usually involves gluing the wig cap on, putting the glue on your hairline in three layers, waiting for each layer to dry before putting on the next, putting the band on for a few minutes, putting the spritz on—and that’s all before any styling.

“To me, it's quite hypocritical that you can take time out of your day to do something as intricate as gluing a wig down, but washing your hair, putting conditioner on your hair, taking out your cornrows, is too much work,” Sharon says.

When you take maintenance out of the conversation, there’s still this uncomfortable truth that many Black women with tight curls and coils have been indoctrinated to believe their hair isn’t beautiful—and we have colonization, Eurocentric beauty standards, and systemic racism to thank for that. For years, Black hair was widely deemed unprofessional—and, in some spaces, still is. “In the industry that I'm in, there’s this unspoken rule that if you want to be successful, then your hair needs to look a certain way,” says Newby, who, in addition to being a content creator, is a host for red carpet events. “It is just really ingrained in me that for special occasions, your hair should be straight.”

While laws like the CROWN Act—a piece of legislation designed to prohibit workplace discrimination based on hair texture and styles such as braids, locs, and twists—have helped shift the negative perception surrounding natural hair, many Black women still contend with those underlying biases. Sharon hopes that her critique inspires deeper internal reflection to challenge those beliefs, for Black women today and for the next generation.

What will the natural hair movement 3.0 look like?

As a mom to a little girl with natural hair, the part of Sharon’s argument that resonates with me most is the point that an overreliance on wigs, weaves, and even braids can cause Black women to be disconnected from their natural hair—a mindset that will ultimately harm the next generation.

When Black women see their hair as something to be concealed in favor of textures that aren’t inherently ours, the message that gets passed down to our children is that their hair—our hair—isn’t good enough. It’s not that you have to get the practical knowledge to care for natural hair from your mother—that can easily be learned through watching online tutorials, as many people still do. It’s that we risk passing down to little Black girls the deeper belief that our natural hair is unworthy, unprofessional, and unlovable.

At the core of Sharon’s argument is a passionate desire to see Black women love and accept themselves wholly—including their natural texture. “My videos were never intended to get Black women to stop wearing wigs,” says Sharon. “I just want them to feel confident in their natural hair, in the hair that grows from their scalp. I want them to understand that you can feel so beautiful just rocking the curls on your head.”

Whether or not this conversation will result in Black women wearing wigs and weaves less in favor of their natural texture remains to be seen. But if it does happen, the new natural hair movement will undoubtedly look different. There will be an authentic celebration of all natural hair textures and a greater emphasis on education—fewer mentions of curl patterns, and better instruction from professionals on things like density, porosity, and scalp health. “This is a big opportunity for hairstylists to really show up and support Black women by showing them how to work with their hair type,” says Ashley, who notes that, hopefully, this will help avoid the fatigue that Black women developed in the last wave of the movement.

Wigs, weaves, and straight styles like the silk press will likely still be in rotation, but no longer at the expense of healthy hair. In this reprise, Black women are free to try different hairstyles—not in an effort to conceal their hair but for the sake of exploration—while holding their natural texture in high regard and tending to their curls and coils with care, patience, and love.

Discover more stories about natural hair:

• The Top Natural Hair Trends of 2026 Prioritize Low Tension
• My “Heat-Trained Hair” May Actually Be Heat-Damaged
• Why Some Black Women Are Going Back to Relaxers

Now, watch Cardi B react to TikTok trends: