Latest news with #Afro-textured
The Citizen
23-07-2025
- Health
- The Citizen
No hairline? How to stop hair loss in Afro-textured hair today!
Thinning edges, receding hairlines, and patchy scalps reveal experiences that often go unnoticed. Here's some advice on how to stop it getting worse. In South Africa, hair is never just hair. It's history, heritage, identity, and a personal signature rolled into one. For many with Afro-textured hair, keeping that crown intact has become a silent struggle, as thinning edges, receding hairlines, and patchy scalps tell stories that too often go unheard. The culprit? Picture: iStock Not just genetics. According to Dr Kashmal Kalan, medical director at Alvi Armani South Africa, the way we wear and treat our hair plays a huge role, and for many, those everyday styling habits may be leading them straight to hair loss. When culture meets compromise 'Hair loss doesn't discriminate,' says Dr Kalan, 'but the causes can look very different depending on your hair type.' Hair loss. Picture: iStock In the case of Afro-textured hair, traction alopecia, hair loss from repeated tension, is alarmingly common, especially in women. 'Tight braids, cornrows, weaves, these are beautiful and culturally significant styles, but when done too tightly or too frequently, they place enormous stress on the follicles,' he explains. Cornrow hairstyle. Picture: iStock And while the aesthetic of sleek, chemically-straightened hair is still popular, those relaxers come at a cost. 'Each time a chemical touches your scalp, it alters the hair follicle's structure. Over time, that damage becomes irreversible.' For men, keeping hair short or shaved may seem like low maintenance, but it can hide early signs of hair thinning until it's too late to act. ALSO READ:WATCH: Dancing queens Somizi and Real Housewives Christall Kay show off their power dance moves Rethinking haircare, not hair culture Dreadlocks. Picture: iStock The solution isn't to give up cultural hairstyles, Dr Kalan stresses, but to approach them with a bit more care. 'Avoid styles that pull tightly at the roots, give your scalp time to breathe between weaves or wigs, and limit the use of harsh chemicals,' he advises. 'Protective styling can still be protective if you're not causing long-term damage in the process.' When prevention isn't enough Woman getting a hair treatment at spa. Picture: iStock For those already experiencing hair loss, all is not lost. Hair transplants, once considered a solution for straight-haired men only, have evolved. Now, thanks to specialised techniques developed for afro-textured hair, curly-haired clients are seeing powerful results. 'Curly follicles curve under the skin, which makes transplantation more complex,' says Dr Kalan. 'You need fewer grafts per session and a surgeon who truly understands Black hair; otherwise, you risk poor results or even scarring.' Keloid scarring is also a concern for many African patients, which is why clinics like Alvi Armani perform test patches first to assess healing. ALSO READ:'Unlocked': Rugby star Eben Etzebeth launches first book Debunking the myths A woman suffering from alopecia. Picture: iStock Still think hair transplants are just for men with receding hairlines? Think again. 'One of the biggest myths we hear is that people with curly hair aren't good candidates, or that women shouldn't bother,' says Dr Kalan. 'But hair restoration is not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you start early and get the right advice, your hair journey doesn't have to end at hair loss.' His parting shot: 'Find a clinic that understands the nuances of your texture. If someone tells you Afro hair is the same as straight hair, walk out.' Because your crown deserves nothing less than royal treatment.
CBC
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Video games are spotty at getting Black hair right. Black artists are forging ahead to fix that
Black characters were largely missing from the video games Fūnk-é Joseph played growing up — or portrayed as a negative stereotype — and typically depicted in just one or two ways: with an afro or a short haircut. "It was hard to see characters that looked like me," the 26-year-old said in Toronto. It was only five years ago that they recall being able to — for the first time ever — create a playable character that actually looked like them. Their avatar in the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons had freeform dreads up top, fade on the sides and the right skin tone. "I was pretty excited. But then it got me reflecting on, 'Why hasn't this been a thing before? And why haven't other people been doing this?'" said Joseph. The game industry has since made strides in featuring Black characters, but Joseph — now a video game designer and director of indie studio Play Underground Games — still admits to scrutinizing new releases. "Every time a new game comes out with a character customization, I'm looking for those things." Portraying Black hair authentically hasn't seemed top of mind in many video games and digital media productions, but Black-led initiatives helping designers and developers better understand Afro-textured hair and hairstyles are driving change behind the scenes, aiming to expand authentic representations and spark innovation. Like Joseph, A.M. Darke similarly recalls earlier gaming culture defaulting to a handful of Black hairstyles. Since Black representation of any kind was so rare, meagre efforts got a pass, she told Day 6. "They're not quite right, [but] your standards and your expectations are already so low." When she started working on developing digital characters herself, however, she got a shock: not only were 3D resources and imagery depicting Black hair scarce, but harmful, racist caricatures ("straight out of Jim Crow [era], like minstrels and mammies") were also what regularly turned up. That spurred her into action. She's since created a free, open-source database of 3D models showcasing hairstyles created by Black artists. She's also collaborating with computer science colleagues at Yale University to define different characteristics of tightly coiled, Afro-textured hair and create algorithms for animating these features. The team published their work in a recent study and presented it at an international computer graphics research conference in December. "A lot of times games are approximating Black hair, but they don't recognize exactly what details should be attended to fully communicate that this hair was done with care," said Darke, an artist and associate professor in performance, play and design at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Darke pointed to the release of Marvel's blockbuster film Black Panther in 2018 as a pop culture inflection point: "We have that iconic moment where Michael B. Jordan is onscreen and he just looks so cool ... His hair in that film is iconic." She hopes her tools can inspire a better understanding of Black hair overall and open more game designers and digital artists up to creating myriad new possibilities. "Hopefully when people start to see the different features of Black hair, then they start to understand how they can sort of remix things and create different styles instead of just saying, 'Here's one and that's been done right, so let's just copy and paste it everywhere,'" she said. "I have high hopes for what Black hair representation will look like in the next few years." Digital depictions 'the new frontier' In the real world, there's been tangible progress in removing the stigma surrounding naturally textured Black hair, says Toronto professor Cheryl Thompson, so it makes sense the digital world "is the new frontier for this conversation." Since they're programmed by people, "algorithms only do what they know to do ... They're reproducing information that's known," explained Thompson, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of the book Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada's Black Beauty Culture. That's why it's vital to have Black people involved as creators bringing their lived experiences and knowledge to producing content, she said, which goes further than simply the inclusion of Black characters. That deeper level of involvement fosters more nuance and authenticity, like knowing a cut isn't complete without keen attention to the edges (or hairline), Thompson noted. Or that if a Black woman wears the same hairstyle as a Black man, the texture will differ since she's more likely to have used a chemical relaxer — which permanently loosens one's coils — at some point. "You're just not gonna know that unless you know that," she said. Thompson believes that over the past decade, we've grown more receptive to recognizing that a diversity of voices contributes to digital innovation. "And creativity — it breeds innovation. It's going to make you better to see what other people are doing," she said. Normalizing Black hair in digital spaces Making games is incredibly hard work, game designer Joseph noted, so access to tools that help artists, designers and developers more authentically animate Black hair is terrific. But creators must know resources like this are available in the first place, they added, and the industry must support them. "Normalizing just the existence of Black people and Black hair, you create a better ecosystem where people are more understanding," Joseph said, adding that video games are a great way to teach people about the world. "It's amazing when you're playing a fantasy game and you see shreds of real life in that — it makes you reflect and you connect those things." However, Joseph agrees that inclusion means more than just a detailed coif. "I'm wary of people just like putting in hairstyles to throw us a bone and for us to not care about anything else," they said. "Hair is just one facet of the wider issue of representation."
