Having Black hair is unique in that Black women change up styles a lot.
You can walk down one street block in New York City and see 10 different
hairstyles that Black women are wearing:
straight curls, short cuts, braids - we really run the gamut.
- Queen Latifah
Hair in the Sims
Hair. Our hair comes in many different shapes, sizes, patterns, and forms. We as a community have come a long way when it comes to appreciating and loving our hair. From the kinkiest of coils to the loose spiral curls. After being told our hair was ugly and unproffessional for centuries,and still to this day, we are fighting to make a change in the world when it comes to how our hair is viewed. We have made alot of progress when it comes to fighting hair discrimination in the work place, as well as overcoming texturisms in the real world.And now we are finally getting more options for hairstyles in video games! It has taken a long time for sure, but we are moving in the right direction.
When the sims 4 first came out in 2014, there were maybe 30 to 40 hair options for people of color. And only 10 skin tone swatches out of 38-but thats a discussion for another time. While the game has been out for 10 years now, they have added quite a afro centric hairstyles in the past 4 years. Before them. simmers looking to have more diverse sims with unique and cultural hairstyles had to look towards talenterd content creators for more diverse hairstyles.
Ebonix
"My name is Dani and I am the Sims custom content creator Ebonix. I create custom content for The Sims 4! I have been a creator for TS4 since November 2015, but I have been playing The Sims since it first came out in 2000. I have many years of simming experience under my belt and I love the opportunities it has presented to me.
One thing that concerned me about the franchise, was the lack of content available for sims and simmers of colour to give them the freedom to create sims that represent themselves. The lack of representation lead to a lack of self love and worth on my part. I never made sims that looked like me. I thought their skin tones looked horrible, as did the hair!! The two afro and cornrow styles just weren't cutting it!
I have made it my mission to rid the game of the lack of representation and have spent the last year and a half dedicating my time to creating and converting custom content for sims and simmers of colour. I have since seen an increase in the number of sims of colour, especially black sims, increase and I only want it to increase further."
- Ebonix
Sheabuttyr
Sheabuttyr creates beuatiful Maxis-Match hairstyles for all textures and curls!
Gege Sims
"Two things I'm obsessed with: Creating and The Sims! I finally gathered up the courage to start sharing a few of my creations with you and decided to create this platform in order to do so. I'm starting off with making custom loading screens for TS4 but I plan on venturing into other custom content for the Sims. I hope you love what you find here and I deeply appreciate the support!
Lots of love,"
- Gege
Kinks, Curls, and Coils
The Sims 4 base game came with only 41 afro-textured hairstyles. Thats not nearly enough to properly represent how versatile and creative afro textured hairstyles can be! From weaves, wigs, braids to curls, afro-textured hairstyle options are limitless. So to be given only 40 options just seems pretty lazy. So I, like many others, looked for other hair options from the sims community.