Connecting Black American Beauty Culture to Spaces and Places

Keywords: beauty, retail
Abstract Type: Virtual Lightning Paper Abstract

Abstract

Before the 1960s and throughout the Great Migration, ghettos were seen as welcome alternatives to life in the South (Freeman, 2019). This environment allowed Black-owned businesses to thrive while creating a race-based concentration of people from various socioeconomic backgrounds. During this period, beauty supply stores, which sell hair and beauty products for Black women, were also prominent fixtures in cities like Chicago and Detroit. Black beauty entrepreneurs like Bettie Esther Parham owned some of these stores around the country and stocked them with products from similar Black beauty activists (Gill, 2010) like Madam C. J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone. Parham's stores and products allowed Black beauty culture to flourish in less-than-ideal conditions. Due to the nature of ownership and location of Black beauty supply stores, they can also be case studies for entrepreneurship and small businesses. However, the angle for this paper is to uncover the narratives that relate to Black American beauty culture and connect those to place by separating beauty practices from the consumer experience. Contemporary retailing practices must be distinct from the style inspiration at the store and the process of purchasing products from there. This paper seeks to investigate what it means for Black American beauty styles and trends to be associated with spaces such as the Black beauty supply store and places like Chicago and Harlem.