Black TV news reporters share why they wear their braids on-air: 'Just because I work in TV, it should not prohibit me from being able to experience my hair'

When Houston-based news anchor and reporter Briana Conner went on vacation to Belize in March, she had no idea the tropical getaway would lead to a major breakthrough when it came to her relationship with her hair.

"For Black women, your vacation style is typically braids, especially when you're going on a beach vacation. You want a protective style that's easy, that you don't have to mess with, so when you're in the water your hair isn't a factor," Conner tells Yahoo Life.

But due to her onscreen presence as a reporter, for which she typically wore her hair in a curly bob, Conner felt she couldn't "invest" in such a style. She compromised by opting for a "sew-in," a method that involves braiding down the natural hair and sewing wefts of extensions onto the braids. Unfortunately, the style was incompatible with her water activities and led to extreme matting.

"I just thought, I'm going to do what every other Black girl does. Just because I work in TV, it should not prohibit me from being able to experience my hair and experience my culture in its fullness," she recalls.

She booked an appointment to get braids, leading to her rocking the style on-air for the first time. Conner says that seeing other Black women wear their protective styles on TV before her, including Janai Norman of Good Morning America, helped her take the plunge.

"It was getting hotter in Houston. I was seeing protective styles pop up everywhere on Black women, and I was like, 'That's it. I'm doing it.'"

Now Conner joins a growing number of Black women who are wearing braids on-air — including ABC 11's Akilah Davis, who has marked the date of her "natural hair liberation" to commemorate achieving "hair freedom," and Joneé Lewis, a Fox 13 reporter in Tampa Bay, Fla., who says that she had steered clear of such on-air styles because of early-career encounters with hair-based discrimination.

"A reporter at one of the places I interned came to work with her natural hair, and one of the white managers told her, 'Hey. You have to do something with that,'" recalls Lewis. She says she carried that experience with her, telling herself, "If I want to get into this industry, which is already difficult to get into for Black women, then I need to have a certain type of look to be accepted by news directors."

Black hairstyles at work

This mindset goes beyond the newsroom, as Black women in all career arenas have dealt with some level of worry surrounding the perceived professionalism of their hair. According to a 2023 CROWN workplace study about race-based hair discrimination, Black women's hair was two and a half times more likely to be perceived as unprofessional than that of non-Black women; Black women with coiled or textured hair were two times more likely to experience workplace microaggressions than Black women with straight hair; and about 66% of Black women change their hair for job interviews, with 41% of those women changing their hair from curly to straight.

But the parameters for what counts as "professional" have been largely shaped by a standard that excludes the hair profiles of Black people, says diversity and inclusion expert Chela Gage.

"In corporate America, at the executive tables a lot of people [are not Black]," Gage tells Yahoo Life, explaining that this lack of familiarity can often translate into exclusionary practices. "I think that's the reason why our natural hair hasn't been appreciated, because there's not enough [Black people] at the top to wear it and make it mainstream."

This, explains Lori L. Tharps, co-author of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America and founder of Read, Write and Create, has led to a standard of ignorance surrounding the nuances of Black hair in professional settings.

"Diversity in all levels of businesses is really important, because so much of the discrimination fostered upon Black people regarding their hair is due to lack of knowledge," Tharps tells Yahoo Life. "Representation is education."

Without it, such workplace othering is often furthered by newsrooms prioritizing "consistency," explains Lewis.

"How I presented myself on my résumé tape, that is what they're going to expect every single day," says Lewis, who points out that this goes against the versatile nature of Black hair.

"The reality is, you don't feel the same every day, you don't look the same every day. So the hair is not going to be the same every day," she says, noting that she decided to live that reality starting in the summer of 2020, when the combined impact of a global pandemic and racial reckoning forced her to make a change.

"I saw a shift among my colleagues and I where we were like, 'We have to speak up more in meetings. We're going to be confident,'" says Lewis. "And I remember seeing on my Twitter timeline so many Black women across the country popping up with braids. And with each picture, I felt inspired and confident and empowered enough to wear the braids."

She and Conner both explain that it was not easy to get past the preconceived notions of what a reporter was supposed to look like.

"My mom actually was a television news reporter out of college," says Conner, who grew up wanting to be just like her, down to her "traditional" newsroom hair. "It's that clean, short bob with volume and height at the top, that classic female news anchor look."

Adds Lewis, "Going into this industry, they tell you that you have to have a certain presentation about yourself regarding your speech, your clothing, your makeup. For me, that translated over into how I have to wear my hair as well."

Gage notes that there is still "a long way to go" in terms of undoing the years of damage imposed by hair-based discrimination — and that the CROWN Act, a law prohibiting race-based hair discrimination that's been passed in 23 states and counting, is a start — but having public-facing figures embrace their protective styles is a major step forward. "For those who want to be authentically themselves, there's a model as to what that can be in the workplace," she says.

This sentiment is duly noted by Lewis, who says the positive messages from viewers affirm that she is doing something right.

"I get emails saying, 'My granddaughter watches you on the news, and she's like, "Grandma, she looks like me,"'" says Lewis. "The importance and power of representation, it's bigger — and it's beyond just one person."

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