Mariah Carey's hair "evolved" into straightness. What is behind and at stake in the "sleek" hair trend?

A rather questionable foray into hair that I have been saving up for a while... The Evolution of Mariah's Mane

Questionable captions care of OMG! yahoo writer Raechal Leone Shewfelt.

A writer with Yahoo's OMG! celebrity blog complained that Mariah Carey hadn't straightened her hair, labeling Mariah's natural hair of days past as a "hot mess we'd like to forget". The wording of the whole post was charged with (I assume) unconscious preference for a more monoracially White looking Mariah Carey without all that troubling "mess" to remind us of her multiracial heritage. When a few brave individuals pointed out that Mariah's "crazy coif" was a result of her mixed heritage, the politically correct quietests objected to anyone bringing up that icky idea that Mariah Carey is not a raceless (i.e. White) individual. And in a rather biased poll which pits "sleek" against "crazy" 85% of the 22,000+ respondents displayed preference for her sleek hair.

Many of the naysayers in the comments who objected to anyone "bringing race into this" (or rather, pointing out that the original article was presenting a racialist argument) pointed out that everyone these days loves straight hair. Yet the trend in hair styles is not taking place in a "race vacuum". In some ways the reaction to non-White hair is exactly the same reaction that the few people who pointed out the inherent racism of the piece received. Hair that is not beaten into straightness is "bringing race into it" because of course, it hints at the reality of difference. I have heard many people report of their experiences with their hair being labeled as unprofessional simply because they choose not to straighten it. Incidents like the Glamour corporate slide show that presented hairstyles that feature natural African hair as unprofessional and shocking or the way that a facebook natural black hair care page received multiple harrassing and racist wall posts that, among other things, criticized the look and feel of natural black hair show that hair is an integral part of the process of differentiation and discrimination, i.e. othering.

This blog post, by a Chicana in Atlanta, illustrates again how a small change like inadvertently growing out your hair marks you suddenly as an "other"