Anthony Payne

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09/05/2026

We have to start looking at Black hair differently.

For generations, we’ve been taught to contain it, make it presentable, straighten it, chemically alter it, manipulate it, cover it, or constantly “protect” it.

And somewhere along the way, we forgot something very simple:

Black hair is beautiful.

You can wear it in its natural state and it can be beautiful.

But we haven’t even begun to explore all the ways to groom, shape, cut, and style Afro-textured hair while actually working with its natural structure.

I’m starting with the basics of grooming because I want to solve the problems underneath all the styling confusion.

We have generations of people who were never really taught how to work with this texture.

So we assume it’s dry.
We assume it’s difficult.
We assume it’s fighting us.

But maybe…

we’ve been fighting the hair.

And I think it’s time we learn what happens when we stop fighting it and start understanding it.

09/04/2026

Your hair isn’t a fidget toy.

Every time you pull, rub, push, brush, twist, or constantly rearrange your hair, you’re creating friction and mechanical stress.

Grooming should make your hair functional—not fragile.

Stop touching it just because you can. Learn how to groom your hair in a way that actually protects its ecosystem.

If you want to!

09/03/2026

I just watched a Black woman admit that most Black men know how to swim, but many Black women don’t.

And honestly, that’s a much bigger admission than y’all realize.

Because when you can’t wash your hair for two or three months, can’t get it wet, can’t sweat freely, can’t swim, can’t participate in certain experiences without worrying about destroying your hairstyle—you have to ask yourself:

At what point did the hairstyle become the thing controlling the human being?

This is the part nobody wants to talk about.

You have women who have been conditioned to believe they aren’t beautiful, grown, feminine, or presentable unless their hair is stretched, laid, braided, installed, pressed, or otherwise manipulated into a shape that conforms to somebody else’s idea of beauty.

Meanwhile, your actual hair is sitting on your head, shrinking, growing, breathing—and you’ve been taught to see that as something you have to escape from.

Imagine how different life could feel if you could simply wash your hair, let it shrink, let it dry, and go live.

Go swimming.
Go to the gym.
Get caught in the rain.
Travel.
Sleep.
Live.

Your hair should be part of your life—not the prison you have to organize your life around.

And if this is one area where we’ve been conditioned to restrict ourselves, I can only imagine the other places that conditioning shows up.

I’m looking forward to hearing more women tell the truth about it.

09/03/2026

See, they didn’t have to turn hair care into styling.

Black women were already asking for hair care.

We were talking about moisture. Detangling. Breakage. Growth. Retention. Learning our hair. Understanding our hair.

And then y’all came in and repackaged the styles, called them “protective,” made the braids bigger, looser, more expensive—and somehow we were still paying full price for less work. 😭

But I have a question…

Where did all the natural girlies go?

Because last I heard, it was reverse styling, mini twists, wash-and-gos, “let your hair breathe,” “stop manipulating your hair,” “learn your natural texture…”

And now?

👀

Did everybody finally learn how to do their hair?

Or did some of that hair start breaking off?

Did it get crunchy-munchy?

Did everybody have to disappear to Turkey for a little restoration, rejuvenation and reconstruction before coming back with the next hair-care revolution? 😂

Because I’m genuinely curious what the reboot is going to look like.

Are we going back to blowouts?

Floor-length installs?

Another “protective” style that somehow requires three hours of manipulation and a mortgage?

I’m watching.

Because I think we let the beauty industry take a genuine hair-care movement and turn it back into another styling economy.

And that matters.

Because true hair care isn’t just finding another way to style your hair.

It’s understanding the hair’s ecosystem well enough to know when to leave it alone.

Your hair doesn’t need to constantly be transformed to be cared for.

Sometimes the most respectful thing you can do for your hair…

is let it be hair.

09/02/2026

True to this. It’s not a trend for me boop.

09/02/2026

I think we need to talk about American locs differently.

When I say “American locs,” I’m not saying people shouldn’t wear them. I’m saying that I see them as a modern American hairstyle with cultural influence, rather than assuming every loc worn today carries the exact same cultural meaning as traditional loc practices.

To me, American locs are leisure hair.

There’s a soft connection to culture — “this is something my ancestors did,” “this is something people in the motherland did,” “this is part of our history.” But there is also a heavy emphasis on convenience, identity, and style.

And honestly, I understand why.

For a lot of people, locs can be a relief from having to figure out what to do with their natural hair. They can create consistency. They can eliminate daily styling. They can become a lifestyle and an aesthetic all at once.

But that doesn’t mean the hairstyle itself is historically or biologically neutral.

Traditional grooming practices developed in completely different environments, with different tools, different needs, and different cultural purposes. We can respect those practices without pretending that every modern interpretation is the same thing.

And this is where my concern begins:

Locs are a permanent style that progressively adds weight to the hair.

Hair is an ecosystem. It has a structure, a growth cycle, an attachment point, and a tolerance for manipulation and weight. Afro-textured hair can be incredibly strong, but strength does not mean unlimited weight tolerance.

When you continuously accumulate hair into a loc, you are creating a structure that becomes heavier as it grows.

So while I understand the cultural connection, the convenience, and the beauty of locs, I also think we need to have a much more honest conversation about what happens to the hair ecosystem underneath the style.

You can love the style.

You can honor the history.

And you can still question whether the modern version is actually healthy for the hair.

Culture deserves respect. Style deserves examination. And hair deserves science.

09/02/2026

Ladies, y’all might have to forgive me. 😂

I’ve been homosexual for most of my life, honey. I’ve been dealing with gay s**t, gay conversations, gay perspectives—and when I came out and started popping my s**t about Black hair, I honestly didn’t fully understand what Black women had been experiencing around their hair.

I was oblivious. I thought I understood the conversation because hair has been my entire lifestyle for 16 years, but I’m also realizing that there are parts of the experience I simply had not lived.

So I respectfully understand some of the backlash I get in my comments. I hear you. I’m listening. And I’m also going to keep talking. 😂

Because y’all are NOT kicking me out of the Black hair conversation.

I’ve been a licensed cosmetologist for 16 years. Hair has been my work, my education, my conversations, my observations, my experiments, and my everyday life. And the more I reflect on the conversations I heard Black women having about their hair years ago—and compare them to what I hear now—the more I realize just how much there is to unpack.

But here’s the distinction I want us to make:

If it’s specifically a WOMAN’S experience, tell me that. Seriously. I may not know. Educate me.

But if we’re talking about hair—hair health, grooming, damage, sun exposure, split ends, maintenance, styling, manipulation, and how we cultivate healthy hair—then honey, I’m UP IN IT. 😂

Because hair is not inherently female.

So welcome to my page. I’m Anthony Payne, a licensed cosmetologist of 16 years, and we’re going to figure out how to cultivate ALL hair types and ALL kinds of people.

Men. Women. Black. White. Children. Adults.

Hell, if your dog got split ends, bring that bitch too. 😂

We’re talking HAIR.

09/01/2026

When I made a video saying that skin tone isn’t the only way we identify Blackness—and that hair texture is a much more specific identifier—you all lost your minds.

Dark skin exists across multiple populations. Extremely tight coiled hair? That is far less universal. I genuinely don’t know many non-Black people walking around with naturally 4C hair.

So yes, I think textureism deserves the same level of conversation that colorism gets. And honestly, it’s fascinating how quickly y’all demand that I “shut up” when I talk about textureism, while nobody seems to have that same energy when somebody makes an entire video talking about dark skin and their experience with it.

And let’s be honest: there is absolutely a weird jealousy surrounding light skin within the Black community. Some of y’all act like being light-skinned automatically means you escaped every form of discrimination.

Baby, WE GOT IT TOO. 😂

The difference is, some of us have been conditioned to colonize our hair so heavily that you can’t even see the texture that would’ve gotten us treated differently in the first place.

That conversation deserves to be had too.

09/01/2026

You’ve had centuries to build, curate, design, and refine what you believed a “good life” was supposed to look like. And yet somehow, the systems created to produce comfort, beauty, status, productivity, and perfection have created an incredible amount of pressure and unease for everybody—including you.

I see it in hair.

There’s so much emphasis on maintaining an appearance, manipulating the hair, controlling the hair, perfecting the hair—but not nearly enough conversation about actually caring for the hair.

And I think that says something bigger.

You can create a standard and eventually become imprisoned by the standard you created.

That’s what I mean when I say y’all are in the shackles with us.

Not that our experiences are the same. They absolutely are not.

But some of the systems built through colonialism, racism, capitalism, beauty standards, and control have become so deeply embedded that everybody is now participating in maintaining them—even the people who historically had the most power to create them.

So when I talk about hair, I’m not just talking about hair.

I’m asking:

What happens when the thing you created to define beauty becomes the thing you can no longer escape?

08/31/2026

I’m honestly baffled by how comfortable we’ve become with children carrying adult beauty burdens.

And hair is one of the places I see this happening that we don’t talk about enough.

A child’s ecosystem is sensitive. Their body is developing, their confidence is forming, and they’re learning what it means to exist comfortably in their own skin. Hair care becomes part of that ecosystem too.

So when a little girl is in elementary school already worried about her edges, already learning that her natural hair needs to be controlled, covered, altered, or constantly maintained to be acceptable—what exactly are we teaching her?

And I don’t say this from the outside looking in. I’m saying this as a cosmetologist who has spent years studying hair, working with different textures, and watching how grooming practices affect the actual hair underneath the style.

Black hair has been so victimized that many people genuinely believe they cannot allow it to simply exist.

I think a lot of it is ignorance, not neglect. People were never taught that Black hair has an ecosystem. They were taught how to make it look a certain way.

But I don’t see enough people speaking up for Black children from a hair-health perspective.

And whenever I talk about this, I hear, “Stay out of Black women’s business.”

But this isn’t just Black women’s business.

These are our children. Our sons. Our daughters. Our community.

We have normalized so much discomfort, maintenance, insecurity, and suffering in the name of making Black people more acceptable to somebody else.

And children should not have to carry that burden.

Let them have a childhood.

Let them play. Sweat. Swim. Run around. Learn. Explore. Be messy.

They shouldn’t be in elementary school worried about whether their edges are laid.

That little girl deserves to know her hair is part of her body—not a problem she needs to solve.

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