From a young age, Victoria Okwudi, Nurs ’25, was drawn to the art of braiding and styling Black hair. She grew up in iration of her aunt, who owned her very own salon, and revered all the “grown folks” getting their hair done while chatting about their grown-up lives.
She quickly realized her aunt’s salon wasn’t only a place for primping and preening, but also an essential hub for connection in her local Black community.
“When you go [to the salon], it’s more than just hair—it’s a community,” Okwudi said in an interview with The Journal. “It’s where people come to talk about things that are bothering them in the midst of people they trust and know they can relate to.”
The sense of community fostered by hair is what fueled Okwudi’s ion for hair later in life, inspiring her to start her own braiding and hairstyling business, Nhayar Styles. Now, Okwudi finds herself providing the same emotional she saw in her aunt’s salon to the clients in her chair.
“When you come into the store and have something bothering you, you’re making your hair and talking to your hairstylist, and you guys are putting hairs together to figure out your problems,” Okwudi said. “By the time you leave, you’re not just leaving with a new hairstyle, you’re also leaving 10 pounds lighter because you’ve let out everything in your chest.”
A person’s hair can be closely tied to their mental health, according to Okwudi. When your mental health is struggling, it can be difficult to keep up with personal grooming. Likewise, a new hairstyle can be a source of rejuvenation.
“Hair isn’t only a source of empowerment, it’s almost an outward depiction of how you’re feeling on the inside,” Okwudi said. “Once you take care of your personal needs, you start to find this newfound motivation.”
In predominantly white areas like Kingston, hairstyling businesses like Nhayar Styles help Black people find a sense of belonging and community. However, when Okwudi first moved to Kingston four years ago, she found there was a glaring lack of these spaces.
“I realized when I came to Queen’s that there was this gap, and we [didn’t] really have people who worked with African American hair,” Okwudi said.
It was typical for Black students to drive hours outside Kingston to get their hair done in more culturally diverse cities like Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. Since Okwudi was familiar with braiding and styling Black hair from her childhood, she started doing her friends’ hair to provide a local option for Black students.
“In a way, I could rationalize how in the whole Kingston area, you might not have hair braiders to cater to the small Black population,” Okwudi said. “But you have to take into consideration that [Queen’s] is a federal university, and people from all walks of life come here.”
Okwudi realized there was a significant demand for her services among the Black student population, so she decided to start her business in her second year at Queen’s.
Starting a business and marketing herself to potential clients was somewhat daunting to Okwudi, who considers herself an introvert. However, she was able to overcome this feeling upon making a core realization about her clients.
“If you think of them as a customer but also as a friend, then it’s not as daunting,” Okwudi said.
Befriending her clients became a reality for Okwudi as her hairstyling business brought her closer to the Black community at Queen’s and in Kingston.
“Most of [my clients] have turned into friends,” Okwudi said. “It’s definitely made me feel more connected in the Black community, and it feels like I’m giving something to the community, and it’s being appreciated.”
When Okwudi started Nhayar Styles, she was one of the only hairstylists at Queen’s who specialized in Black hair. As Okwudi approaches graduation, she notices a drastic improvement in the number of personal care businesses that work with textured hair in Kingston.
“We have more Black braiders, we have more barbers, and it’s just so refreshing to see that,”
Okwudi said. “When I came [to Queen’s] in 2021, there was just one person […] it’s so much more diverse than I met it.”
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For Theresa Ibonye, HealthSci ’25, hair serves as a means of artistic expression and empowerment. Ibonye is the co-owner of T&R Crown Care, alongside her friend Rabeca Mengesha, ArtSci ’25, and is also a hairstylist for Queen’s Black Fashion Association (QBFA).
As a child, Ibonye never truly knew her natural hair. She ired curls from afar, yet her own strands were always straightened—tamed by chemical relaxers that made textured hair a mystery to her. For most of her childhood, silky-straight hair was all she
had ever known.
That changed the day she decided to put the relaxer down. Letting her natural hair grow in was like meeting a new version of herself—one she had never been properly introduced to. Her curls, once hidden, began to take shape, each coil and wave telling a story she was just beginning to understand.
But learning to work with her own texture wasn’t easy. There were tangles, trials and errors, and moments of frustration. Yet with every twist and braid, she grew more confident, not just in her hair but in herself. She practiced on her sister, on friends in high school, on anyone who would let her experiment. What started as self-discovery soon became a skill—a craft she would carry with her, woven into every curl she touched.
Once she came to Queen’s, Ibonye realized she could apply her skills in a creative manner as a hairstylist for QBFA.
“Hair has always been something that I love, so I decided to QBFA and just provide help wherever I could,” Ibonye said in an interview with The Journal. “Their projects are so creative, and they work with so many creative people, and I just wanted to continually be part of that and enhance my creative ability through working with them.”
For many Black students, QBFA provides a space to explore fashion trends, many of which have origins in Black culture, and properly pay homage to their history. Some modern trends with Black origins include nail extensions, hoop earrings, sneakers, and much of streetwear style.
“The fact these trends have Black origins, but the people who created them aren’t able to get their foot in the door and showcase their work is disheartening and such an insane thing to think about,” Ibonye said.
Ibonye also noted the struggles Black models experience in the fashion industry, often lacking the same quality of hair and makeup as their white counterparts since many stylists don’t know how to work with textured hair and darker complexions.
“It’s really important to me to pay homage to the people and the culture that these trends have originated from,” Ibonye said. “[We need to] make sure there’s inclusivity in these spaces so that these models who have different textured hair can still have the ability to look as good as the people they’re walking with and not face barriers because someone didn’t know how
to do their hair or makeup.”
As hairstylists in QBFA, Ibonye and Mengesha have created a number of looks that highlight the beauty and versatility of Black hair. As part of QBFA’s Colour Theory series, they have styled models’ hair adjacent to sculptures, capturing themes like metamorphosis using hair as their primary medium.
Learning to style textured hair has also helped Ibonye embrace her own natural hair.
“Being the primary caretaker of my hair, I’ve learned to love it, figure out what works and what doesn’t work, what looks good on my face, and what works with different hair lengths that I’ve had throughout the years,” Ibonye said. “Through that, I’ve been able to learn to accept my hair and find the beauty in it.”
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Black hair has been a core aspect of personal and cultural identity throughout history.
In pre-colonial African societies, hair indicated various facets of one’s identity. As far back as 3,000 B.C., unique cornrow styles were used to symbolize a person’s tribe, family, socioeconomic status, marital status, and rank. Hairstyles were also customized for each occasion, from weddings to pregnancies to soldiers going off to war. In this way, hair served as a vessel for communication in African societies that transcended spoken language.
This rich tradition was lost when the transatlantic slave trade began. Individuals forced into slavery were stripped of their dignity and identity by slave traders, who shaved their heads for “sanitary reasons.” In reality, this practice was the first step in erasing any connection slaves had to their African roots. Lacking the nonverbal indicators of identity that unique cornrow patterns conveyed, slaves entered North America alone, unable to find those with whom they shared identities.
“The hair of people of African descent has, historically, been a site for the expression of a violent and violating curiosity on the part of those who colonized, conquered, and trafficked people of African descent,” Dr. Jennifer Leath, associate professor of Black religion and undergraduate chair of the Black Studies program told The Journal.
During the slavery era, negative stereotypes surrounding Black hair were perpetuated to maintain the power dynamic that existed between slave owners and slaves. Black hair was seen as inferior
and even animalic, which was used to justify the gross racial inequality at the time. As Eurocentric beauty standards were continually reinforced, the idea that white features were the ideal began to leach into Black communities.
“Difference is a perennial tool of those who are dominant to reassert and reconfirm their dominance,” Leath said. “Sometimes hair connects communities of people of African descent and Black communities, and sometimes hair divides and distinguishes—because hair becomes cultural manifestation and cultures are varied, at times complementary and at times dissonant.”
In some areas of the United States, laws were enacted to further stigmatize Black hair. In 1786, New Orleans introduced the Tignon Laws, which forced Creole women of colour to conceal their hair with headscarves known as tignons. These laws were intended to oppress free women of colour by visually communicating they would never truly escape the slave class. However, Black women turned tignons into a creative expression of their autonomy by wearing colourful, ornate headscarves as opposed to the plain tignons they were expected to wear.
The Civil Rights Movement marked a significant shift in attitudes towards hair within Black communities in North America. Natural, textured hair became a symbol of resistance—resistance against the erasure of Black culture, as well as against the violence and injustices perpetrated against Black people for centuries. Natural hairstyles like the afro were worn by key civil rights activists, including Angela Davis and of the Black Panthers.
“There are all kinds of ways in the past and present that hair has served as a means of resistance or social activism – because a right or essential service was denied and alternatives were necessary,” Leath said. “The Black Nova Scotian Viola Desmond, is one of the greatest Canadian pioneers in this respect.”
With the rise in natural hair acceptance, there grew a need for hair salons that catered to those with textured hair. In the 1940s, Canadian civil rights activist Viola Desmond founded the Desmond School of Beauty Culture, the first integrated beauty school in Halifax. Desmond sold beauty products and trained students to work with a variety of hair textures. Not only did this provide Black women with the opportunity to embrace and style their natural hair, it also empowered them to pursue careers in hairstyling.
The stigma surrounding Black hair has not disappeared, but neither have efforts to tackle the stigma surrounding it. The CROWN Act, which stands for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” has been ed in 27 states in the United States, affirming a commitment to eradicate race-based hair discrimination in employment and educational settings.
While Leath recognizes progress has been made, they believe the stigma today is still quite significant and efforts must continue to fight for what is just.
“The challenge facing all of us is to use all that we are and all that we have to liberate our communities, ourselves, and others—and combat oppression in all of its forms,” Leath said. “All of us can and should fight for what is just now and restoratively respond to the harms done in the past from which [we] continue to benefit.”
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