Afrobella (Patrice Grell Yursik) is considered one of the nine most influential black hair bloggers. She began her blog, Afrobella, in 2006 and has been a keynote speaker at Fro Fashion Week, has been featured in the NYTimes, and has even attended Oscars. If there’s anyone you can trust to give you great hair tips, it’s this lovely lady. Afrobella has been called the Godmother of Brown Beauty Blogging. As a Trinidadian-born writer, she uses her blog to "fill a void and to celebrate the inner and outer beauty of women all shades of beautiful." You can email her anything about black beauty, natural hair care, skin care, makeup advice, self esteem. She doesn't consider herself an expert, "just an opinionated product junkie who loves trying new things and learning about beauty." She reviews many products for natural black hair care and refuses to review hair straightening samples. She prefers to review hair products that do not include unhealythy ingredients like petrolatum, alcohol, and mineral oil. She has naturally curly hair and prefer to keep it that way. This website shows the ways that black women are embracing natural hair and using alternative means to create community, understanding, and embrace of this lifestyle and culture.
Nina Ellis-Hervey has been called “The Next Oprah,” and “The Hardest Working Naturalista.” In 2008, she created a blog, Beautiful Brown Baby Doll, that chronicled her more than 100 lb. weight loss that she has maintained for over six years. With over 90,000 subscribers and over six million video views nationally and internationally, Ellis-Hervey is one of the top five “YouTube Natural Hair Care Vloggers.” She has also appeared in magazines like Essence, Ebony, Black Hair, Sister 2 Sister, Hype Hair and several international magazines. She "sees her work as necessary, significant and loves to help others grow while reaching their potential... true to her quest of holistic health while educating and touching as many lives as possible."
Black Girl with Long Hair is a website all about natural hair created by Leila Noelliste. The creator is a former newspaper reporter who quite her job as a journalist in 2009 to start a blog about black women's natural hair, beauty and culture full-time. She cut off her permed hair in 2006 and then realized there were few sources of community and inspiration online that could help her.
As a black woman born in Jamaican and raised by a Haitian father and African American mother, Noelliste describes herself as someone who is "passionate about black beauty and self-image in a post-colonial world."
As a college student in Missouri, Nikki Walton described herself as "discovering deep-rooted things in her subconscious that had always existed but remained undetected" in relation to the politics of black women's natural hair. Today, she is a psychotherapist and is considered one of the most credible online sources about natural hair care, maintenance, and the psychological ties between black women and their hair. In October 2008, Walton launched her own site, CurlyNikki.com, and posted 30 articles about what she had learned about her own natural hair in the next two days. However, her site is not just about the styling but also about the psychology in relation to body image and self-esteem. In 2011, she created a free CurlyNikki mobile phone application for even more interaction and within 5 months of the app’s launch, there were 45,000 downloads. She describes her own journey to natural hair as one where she had "to look inside of herself and see that the cause of her psychological distress was an irrational belief about how her hair 'should' be. Her self-awareness of this fact... helped her get past the negativity."
Brittany, mostly known as B, is the editor at Clumps of Mascara and founder of Loc Rocker. She decided to start her blog right before she got her locs installed. The online natural hair community motivated her to go natural in 2005. While she uses Loc Rocker to track my journey into "loc'dom," she has created it as a blog that discusses the issues, emotions and lifestyles regarding natural hair too. She features fellow naturals, womanprenuers, brands, companies, art, products, and music and articles/photos all surrounding natural hair. According to her, "whether you agree or not, Black hair is quite relevant."
Madame Noire is a very popular website that incorporates discussions, issues, and events within the African American community. I will use this website for relevancy.
Madame Noire is very up-to-date with current issues pertaining to African American issues of everything: entertainment, business, hair, health, health and politics to name a few.
Under the tab of natural hair, Madame Noire focuses greately on trending fabs of celebrities; however, if you type "natural hair within corporate america" in the search bar, there will be lists of articles of up to 5 pages. "Does Natural Hair have A Place in Corporate America" is an article I plan on disecting and incorporating within my research to come.
UBB is an online publication created by two best friends, Cipriana & Nikisha, who call themselves "passionistas creating the definitive source for natural hair, fashion, health, lifestyle, music and arts & culture while living in NYC." They consider anyone an Urban Bush Babe who is willing to go beyond labels, step outside of the box, be comfortable in their own skin, and embrace others. Since the website was launched three years ago, UrbanBushBabes has had a weekly viewership of 250,000 readers, a combined social media platform of 120,000 and over 50,000 YouTube subscribers.