Just for me: The construction of Black girlhood in children's hair relaxer advertisements

This dissertation examines the history of racialized consumer markets within the U.S. hair care industry, culminating in the development of a children’s hair relaxer line marketed specifically to Black girls. The project was inspired by viral social media posts from Black women reflecting on their childhood desire to become the models on children’s hair relaxer boxes—an experience that resonated deeply with my own childhood desires. In the 1990s, the proliferation of Black girls featured on relaxer boxes invited a generation of Black girls to develop affective attachments to children’s hair relaxer marketing materials. Building on this sentiment, my study explores how the hair care industry, as an alternative market that both catered to and made visible the Black girl consumer identity as distinctly racialized, gendered, and youthful.The project expands scholarly debates about the marginalization of Black children in children’s consumer culture. Scholars have long argued that children’s consumer industries marginalize Black children in their marketing strategies, advertising images, and the creation of playthings. However, such scholarship has primarily focused on consumer industries that historically prioritized White children and their families, overlooking the hair care industry as a generative site of inquiry. Due to the historical existence of racialized markets, the Black hair care industry addressed the specific needs of Black consumers, particularly Black women. By the 1980s, following the success of Black-owned businesses in carving out a valuable and profitable market, White-owned firms began buying out Black businesses or emulating Black aesthetics in their advertising. In response, Pro-Line Corporation employed creative, innovative marketing strategies to maintain its status as a Black-owned business. Specifically, Pro-Line targeted Black girls seeking to foster lifelong brand loyalty and catering to them as distinct consumers. Using a case study approach, this dissertation examines Pro-Line’s direct marketing and advertising strategies to Black girls, situating the corporation at the intersection of children’s consumer industries and the hair care market. The project addresses the following questions: How did Pro-Line employ signifiers of Black culture through race, gender, and age in their advertising and marketing strategies? How did Pro-Line’s marketing to Black girls shape and contribute to children’s consumer culture? Drawing on archival materials—including advertisements, news articles, commercials, and a Tyco hairstyling doll named Kenya—I argue that Pro-Line’s marketing campaign broadened the hair care industry’s capacity to reach Black girls across industries and invited corporations to take them seriously as consumers. Ultimately, the project considers the visual politics of Black girls’ hair and the challenges of combating White supremacy through cultural commodities.