I am a black girl who loves her giant box braids. Recently, I was invited to a conference for one of the largest accounting firms in the world. When I told my mom with all the excitement a second-year college student can have, the first thing she told me was “Make sure you take out your braids and straighten your hair.”

The average person of African descent has kinky, curly hair. This texture is nearly the antithesis of white beauty standards that black Americans and people of African descent, namely women, have been subject to dating back to slavery in America.

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