Crowning Glory: Black Olympians Embrace Natural Hair on the World Stage

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Elite athletes like Simone Biles and Sha’Carri Richardson are setting a new standard for beauty — is your salon prepared?

For athletes, there is no higher glory than competing at the Olympic Games. Those who qualify have spent their lives preparing for that opportunity and can count themselves among the most elite challengers of their chosen sports. The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are host to 10,000 competitors representing 184 countries. The best of the best. The leaders in their fields.

Yet for some of those Olympians, the conversation surrounding them isn’t about their feats of near-superhuman athleticism. It’s about their hair.

Even when competing among the best in the world, Black Olympians are expected to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. Those who don’t are called unprofessional, “unkempt,” a “distraction,” and “embarrassing.” The politicization of natural hair is nothing new, but the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad have a message for these hair critics: If you don’t like it, that’s your problem. This summer, the world’s most accomplished athletes are stepping onto the podium while wearing their natural hair with pride.

“Reclaiming their crown”

It didn’t start with the Paris Games.

Tokyo, 2021. The International Swimming Federation has banned the use of swimming caps designed for natural hair. Unlike traditional swim caps, the newer version from Soul Cap provides more space for afro hair that “grows up and defies gravity.” Yet according to the sport’s governing body, “Athletes competing at the international events never used, neither require… caps of such size and configuration,” which don’t fit “the natural form of the head.” The afro swimming cap was later approved — after the Olympic Games had concluded.

London, 2012. The United States women’s gymnastics squad has won its first team gold medal since the 1996 games in Atlanta. Sixteen-year-old Gabby Douglas then clinches the gold women’s artistic gymnastics individual all-around — and discovers that her hair is a more prominent topic of conversation than her gravity-defying acrobatics. “I just made history and people are focused on my hair?” she asked incredulously.

Atlanta, 1996. Dominique Dawes becomes the first Black person to win an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics, defying critics who called her hair “too askew.” “As gymnasts, we are not concerned about our hair,” she said over a decade later.

We could go back further, but you get the idea.

While Dawes and her successors would surely rather focus on their Olympic achievements, natural hair in athletics is still a controversial topic. But rather than defend their choices to the press, as some have done in the past, the Olympic class of 2024 is simply shaking it off — and changing the conversation.

This cultural shift is perhaps best represented by Sha’Carri Richardson’s wig toss heard ’round the world at the 2023 100m championships. Richardson’s outspoken personality and matching sense of style have made her a track-and-field icon, so it wasn’t a shock to see her in her signature bright orange wig ahead of this particular race. Before she reached the starting line, however, she took it off, revealing the braids underneath. She then won the race, became the U.S. champion, and helped secure her spot in the 2024 Olympic Games.

According to Ketra Armstrong, Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity in Sport at the University of Michigan, moments like the wig toss are part of a larger movement among Black athletes. “For a while, Black women have had to make themselves presentable in a way that wasn’t perceived to be unkept or unprofessional,” Armstrong said in an interview with NBC News. “Black women were judged by their hair, called not professional or not qualified. We’re at a point now where Black women are reclaiming their crown.”

For Kendall Ellis, a sprinter returning to the Games after winning a gold medal in Tokyo, sporting natural hair isn’t just a style choice — it’s a statement. “It’s important to have that representation on such a large stage,” she said in the same interview.

Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, was no stranger to hair criticism going into the 2024 Paris Games; she couldn’t even escape the comments on her wedding day. It took years (and therapy) for Biles to shut out the negativity, but she’s “finally learning to love my hair and the texture that I have and the styles that I can do,” she told Elle. “I used to worry about [my hair being considered] not professional… but I’m not embarrassed about it anymore.”

Or, as she put it in a social media post, “IDC IDC IDC.”

Merging personal style and hair care

While Simone Biles was busy shaking off the haters and leading the most diverse team in U.S. women’s gymnastics history to team all-around gold in the opening days of the 2024 Olympics, the defending gold medalist women’s water polo team got off to a strong start as well — in part thanks to goalkeeper Ashleigh Johnson, whom NBC calls “the last line of defense for the U.S. women’s water polo team.” Johnson made her Olympic debut in the 2016 Rio Games, which also marked the first time in history a Black woman was part of the water polo team.

Like Biles, Richardson, and others, Johnson’s relationship with her natural hair has been an ongoing journey. For her third Olympics, she’s prioritizing practicality and hair health over conforming to outdated beauty standards. “Having a protective style is a big part of maintaining my hair’s health right now,” Johnson told NBC News. “I feel like I’m helping my hair. I can reach my hair goals while also competing at this level.”

Johnson’s comments raise a point that’s often missed in these conversations about natural hair — the toll these athletic events can take on its health. “There is no one product for a Black athlete, but each athlete should have a routine,” said Jazmine Johnson, Simone Biles’ personal stylist.

In Ashleigh Johnson’s case, that means using products from Camille Rose, Rizos Curls, and Biolage to add hydration when the pool water leaves her hair dry. For others, it means learning to braid their own hair, as track star Brittany Brown did when she had trouble finding a stylist who could do her hair properly. “It’s a unique Black girl challenge,” Brown said.

How salon owners can carry the torch

While most Black people don’t have to worry about maintaining their personal styles while competing on the world stage, one challenge remains universal: finding stylists who know how to work with natural hair. The issue starts with a lack of education, according to salon owner Sarah Havas. Though she attended the elite Paul Mitchell cosmetology school, “The only [textured hair] training was to make curly hair straight… Never ‘What do you do with curly hair? How do you diffuse it? What if someone loves their curly hair?’ It was like, ‘No, just straighten it out.’”

Thankfully, organizations like the Texture Education Collective are working to close this knowledge gap and make textured hair education a standard part of the beauty school curriculum. In the meantime, salon owners have a responsibility to prioritize ongoing training and ensure their providers can work with all hair types. That means leveraging resources like Textured Hair EDU’s private classes, as well as in-person workshops like those led by instructor Tippi Shorter.

Ultimately, being able to serve more clients and master different kinds of hair is good for business. For example, mastering the art of edge-laying can open up new revenue streams for you and your stylists. Offering protective styles like cornrows, faux locs, or two-strand twists lets Black women know they’re in good hands in your salon.

For an example of just how diverse Black hair can be, look no further than gymnastics’ first all-Black podium after the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Floor Exercise final on August 5. While Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade rocked blonde-tinged French curl braids (and some killer graphic eyeliner) in the gold medal position, Team USA’s Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles embraced their own natural styles in the silver and bronze spots. Keep this in mind as you work to incorporate more natural hair services into your salon menu; there’s no single “correct” way to do it.

And in the words of Simone Biles, “Next time you wanna comment on a Black girl’s hair, just don’t.”