If you are a teen planning to mark your first day of high school with a pretty hairstyle — say, dreadlocks, cornrows, or twists — then don’t enroll at Butler Traditional High School in Louisville, Kentucky, which has explicitly banned the natural styles. The school’s policy came to light earlier this week when Attica Scott, a recently elected Kentucky state representative, tweeted a page from the school’s registration packet. Scott’s daughter is an incoming sophomore at the school and is equally upset at the school’s efforts to suppress natural hairstyles.
Curbing natural hairstyles isn’t exactly new. The military holds strict guidelines about natural hair and prohibits recruits from styling their hair into twists and dreadlocks. And, seemingly with increasing frequency, new policies come to light from other school districts that restrict similar so-called “distracting” hairstyles. However, Scott’s social-media outrage has sparked an emergency meeting with Butler High’s decision-making council to take place on Friday. Maybe the policy will be renounced then. You’d think Kardashian appropriation would have been helpful for something.
