Let My Hair Be Me: An Investigation of Employee Authenticity and Organizational Appearance Policies Through the Lens of Black Women’s Hair

Appearance policies — formal or informal dress codes that set organizational expectations for how employees “should” appear at work (Pratt & Rafaeli, 1997; Society for Human Resource Management, 2016) are typically based on Eurocentric ideals of professionalism (Bell & Nkomo, 2003). Appearance policies are often enforced by well-intentioned managers striving to foster a professional workforce (Society for Human Resource Management, 2016), yet such policies may conflict with increasing organizational efforts to encourage employee authenticity. The current paper investigates how men, the primary decision-makers in the workplace, evaluate Black women’s Afrocentric hair at work. The paper focuses on Black women because they are often at the bottom of the workplace hierarchy (Catalyst, 2016b) and are confronted with both gender and racial inequities. The paper focuses on hair because it is a visual display of identity (Opie & Phillips, 2015) and fashion (Barnard, 2014) that may reflect how individuals choose to express their authenticity (Opie & Freeman, 2017). Further, hair is subjectively evaluated based on societal notions of professionalism, making Black women’s hair a helpful, intersectional lens through which to investigate the gendered and racialized bounds of workplace appearance.