It is no surprise hair texture varies based on ethnic background. But what exactly determines the hair texture of someone based on their ethnic background? In today’s society, image is everything and hair is a great part of one’s image. In fact, the total revenue of the hair care industry in 2013 was $64.8 billion, according to the 2013 Professional Salon Industry Haircare Study. Because the hair industry is so lucrative, it is safe to say that hair is important to many.
When researching a topic on genetics or human adaptation, there are limitations in understanding the connection between the texture of human hair and ethnicity. Such limitations include the variation of hair textures amongst a specific ethnicity. Because there is no uniform hair texture for each ethnicity, my research will require more digging to figure out the cause of this. This makes it more complex to figure out what determines what type of hair texture someone will have. Caucasians are a prime example of an ethnicity with different hair textures since they could have straight, wavy, or curly hair. Another limitation would be the fact that everyone in the world has mixed ancestry. No human’s ethnic DNA is 100% anything. This wouldn’t be possible considering the fact that humans all have a single origin, which will be discussed later on. One problem that is also considered a limitation is understanding the meaning of ethnicity. Figuring out if it is a social term or a biological term is hard because there is no correct answer. In Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology by James People and Garrick Bailey, an ethnic group is defined as “ a named social category of people based on perceptions of shared social experience or ancestry”(People; Bailey 389)...
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...ased on will either be answered or very close to being answered. When the original question is answered, maybe hair care products can be made to work for all hair textures. By discovering exactly why hair differs among ethnicities, society can see that one should not be judged based on their hair.
In conclusion, the question of how hair texture among an ethnicity is determined has yet to be answered. However, new developments such as the evidence that all humans have the same single origin in Africa and mutations in the P2RY5 gene can determine the hair texture of a human, have shown that researchers are quite close in determining the hair texture of an ethnicity. These developments have the possibility of leading to new hair removal and hair growth treatments. The future looks bright for hair research and hopefully in the next 20-50 years the question is answered.
This variation has no substantial ties to skin color, but does show genetic variation from different geographical locations in the world. These variations are not categorized in groups of what people call race, but rather ethnicity. Ethnicity, defined by Stephen Cornell, is a sense of common ancestry based on cultural attachments, past linguistic heritage, religious affiliations, claimed kinship, or some physical traits. Race, as most people catoragize it, encompuses many ethnicitys. Ethnicities are local populations, this makes sense that they would tend to have less genetic variation compared to each other then the rest of the world as they would share genetic adaptations resulting from the environment they live in. This can include skin color, but can also
In the recent past year or two, a woman’s natural hair has become a big thing. Before, African American women, to be specific, were so disgusted by their hair. They would do anything in their power to change the “nappy” aspect of their hair to “beautiful”. They would use relaxers very so often and hot combs.
Anthropologists argue that race is a social construct and not a biological reality. Race and ethnicity are two different subjects that happen to be misunderstood and used as two terms of the same meaning. The definition of race and ethnicity is related to biological a sociological factors respectively. Race refers to a person’s physical appearance, such as skin color, eye color, hair color, bone/jaw structure, facial features, etc. Ethnicity on the other hand, relates to cultural factors such as nationality, culture ancestry, language and beliefs.
skin color, etc. DNA differs in all people except for identical twins. All cellular matter
I’ve often heard that “humans came from monkeys,” or something similar. It is true that humans’ ancestors were primates, who first resided in warm and sunny Africa; they had similar features to today’s apes, such as a hairy body. The purpose of the vast amount of hair was to protect the body from the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays and to prevent overheating, mainly by acting as a barrier for the skin underneath the hair (Jablonski, 598). Some parts of the body such as palms were not covered with hair, but with sweat glands. Sweat glands allowed the body to cool off via evaporation at the surface of the skin; sweat glands were more efficient at thermoregulation. Overtime, early humans with a high amount of sweat glands were selected for since they had the best method at the time to keep themselves cool in warm environments (Kirchweger). This meant that overtime, humans lost most of their hair on their bodies, leaving their skin exposed. Sweat glands were going to help the body to cool down, but they couldn’t protect the skin from harmful UV rays. This is where melanin worked its magic, and it’s the reason for the diversity in skin color today.
Through research of DNA samples, scientists have been able to declare that race is not biologically constructed due to the similarities between human genes. Nevertheless, in reality, people still emphasized on biological aspects such as skin color, or hair texture to categorize others into different races. This in turn, denied the true identity of race, which it is culturally constructed. Ethnicity, by definition is also culturally constructed, therefore it greatly resemble race. There is no real clear line to distinct the two.
The origin of the controversy surrounding African American hair dates back to slavery. It was a major phenotypic characteristic used to classify African Americans’ racial identity, intelligence and attractiveness (Guthrie, 1998). European culture was used as the reference group of comparison. Whiteness became identified with all that is civilized, virtuous and beautiful, whereas Blackness was deemed as inferior, rebellious, and inadequate. Guthrie (1998) reported that the hair of the black man was wool, not hair. Subsequently, this racist ideology was internalized by many African Americans, which resulted in what Jones and Shorter-G...
According to biological traits, racial categories are considered to be visible genetic traits which are face structures, shape of the body, and skin color. However, certain differences and
African-American culture is known for thick, coarse hair, which is extremely time consuming when maintaining it in it’s natural state. The natural state of hair varies depending on the ethnicity. For African Americans, natural hair is hair that has not been altered by chemical straighteners, such as perms. From trying to maintain healthy hair to paying for extensions, my hair was one of my biggest battles I faced during my upbringing. This paper engages a sociological analysis my personal hair situation I faced when I was an adolescent. I will directly focus toward social aspects of this phenomenon. Specifically, I will discuss the issue of race and hair in relation to the dominant culture and the consequences this has for individuals.
Rees, J.L. “The genetics of skin and hair pigmentation in man.” The University of Edinburgh :UK 842-843 (2003)
Firstly, in order to compresence the complexity of our debate, we have to take in mind the definition of nature and nurture. Yes, is true that some of our characteristics are inherited by our ancestors, most of our physical characteristics, such as hair color and type; the pigmentation of our skin, those are a product of our genes thus our DNA (Jewel, 2007).
In Ancient Rome makeup was a big thing. Makeup and how someone smelled meant a lot. Women who had a decent smell were presumed to be wealthy. The Romans disliked wrinkles, freckles, sunspots, skin flakes, and blemishes. Everyone had to be attractive in Rome. Most of the things could have been treated though. Freckles were treated by ashes of snails and to get rid of wrinkles they used bean meal and milk. You would think hair would be attractive to women right? Well not in Rome. Hair was considered unattractive to beautiful women. Not only women in all cases, men as well. Men had to cut their hair to become handsome but men removing too much hair were viewed as effeminate. So you need to make sure it was perfect because the people will judge and you will do things for the nothing.
There is no denying that there are different skin colors and physical characteristics of people around the globe and common phenotypes among groups of similar descent. But unlike elements of nature and biology, race cannot exist without people, collectively, establishing and accepting it as a reality. Contrary to popular thinking, race isn’t defined by one’s skin color or phenotypes, but rather how society ranks and categorize people with particular skin colors or phenotypes. Ashley Crossman stipulates that “race and racial categories are social constructs that are unstable and shifting, and [that] can be seen to have changed over time in relation to historical and political events... and defined in large part by context.” The views of a particular “race” can vary by time period and location. Race is in no way objective - the fact that Crossman states that the term “Black” means one thing in the United States, another in India, and has an entirely different connotation in Brazil amplifies the notion that race has no concrete premise, but is subjective to the culture and dominant group of any given society. [In addition, there is a common misconception that all people of a given race share a culture; but it isn’t the biological aspects like skin color or physical features that determines said culture, rather it is the common history and region of descent that contributes to a lifestyle and its
First, it is important to note the differences in facial features and hair in predominant Asian ethnic groups in the United States. A major facial difference in Chinese people is that they are more likely to have bushy eyebrows and a thicker head of hair than people of both Korean and Japanese ethnicity.
The principal shared traits are an agricultural livelihood and some generally similar physical features. As sedentary farmers, the economic lifestyles of Somali Bantu were a contrast to the idealized pastoralist lifestyles of much of the ethnic Somali majority, but the professed physical differences between ethnic and non-ethnic Somalis are arguably the most entrenched. These 'Negroid' traits include darker skin and broader facial features than ethnic Somalis, and 'kinky' hair. The difference between ethnic and non-ethnic Somalis is often reduced to 'kinky' or 'hard' hair, called jareer in Somali, and 'soft' hair, called jilec. While there are, as with any physical feature, numerous degrees of jareer hair, any amount of 'hardness' is enough to associate the individual in question with a slave ancestry. As Catherine Besteman explains, "...the [Bantu] category is equated with 'African'—and thus slave—ancestry, as distinguished from the (mythical) 'Arabic' ancestry of [ethnic, nomadic] Somalis." Thus the riverine valleys of southern Somalia, where the 'Somali Bantu' are concentrated, became a racialized space, one which Bantu peoples had chosen, but which became the means of segregating them from the