Black Women Wearing Their Natural Hair: Fad Or New Normal?

Serenity Salon and spa owners Juana Young, has her own reasons for the change.

"We're more confident in ourselves as a people, and we realize that it's our difference that makes us who we are," said young.

She said over the past few years, her clientele has grown in leaps. Young said she actually decided to "go natural" two years ago.

"You know wearing natural hair has more to do with spiritual and self-awareness, you know just being free being me."

That's a realization that took UTPB College Junior Imperial Lopez a while to accept. She's been natural her whole life, but she admits societies un-written rules of acceptability influenced her hair experiences.

"They had the long pretty straight hair and I was the kid with the frizz you know. I didn't know how to make myself feel good about that," said Lopez.

That was a struggle man young and old black women felt: The sense that their hair wasn't good enough. Even so, as many still face that "good enough" challenge the number of natural hair websites and YouTube vloggers are growing and through that teaching and encouraging other naturals by giving them the strength to believe that they're hair is fine.

Lopez said, now that she's older, she feels like her hair is good enough. She said growing up she found out that the same people she was jealous of, later admitted to being jealous of the versatility of her natural hair.

On the other hand, Young said she never quite experience those feelings, but her clients have ranges of similar stories. However, she's happy to see the trend.

"I think as we embrace one another and we embrace who we really are we're just more comfortable in expressing it to the world," said Young.

In the meantime, Lopez looks back on her childhood and is hopeful for the self-image of upcoming African American youth.