Keke Palmer
When Keke Palmer got her start in the entertainment industry with early 2000s movies like Akeelah and the Bee, it seemed inevitable that the young actress-slash-singer’s star would quickly rise. But as her career progressed, Palmer ran into a few challenges — one of which, she told StyleCaster in 2018, was her natural hair.
“People say, ‘Why do black girls perm their hair? Why do black girls wear weaves?’ A lot of the time, that’s the only way you can get a job. A lot of the time in entertainment, black people couldn’t even get jobs if they came in with an Afro,” she said.
Although Palmer readily admits she will still wear her hair relaxed for roles, she looks at doing so as part of the job. Outside of work, though, she routinely embraces her natural texture, telling Essence in 2015, “I like leaving the top part of my hair natural because it leaves me more flexibility.”
