I honestly feel like it increased around early 2009 when natural hair was picking up traction. I noticed that when some women stopped getting relaxers to go natural they also began doing more protective styling/ wigs and weaves. But I think for some it became addicting.
Back in the 90’s and even early 2000’s weaves were worn but not as frequently. More bw wore relaxers. More bw found relaxed hair more acceptable and easier to maintain even though it was horrible on their hair. once they started going natural I noticed more weaves also started happening—as a mechanism to grow their natural hair out.
A lot of my friends with relaxed hair still or that wear their natural hair straight only, never wear weaves. My friends with natural hair that is easy for them to maintain(they can just do wash and gos, and they have looser textured hair) stay wearing their hair natural or in braids. But my friends that are natural but struggle with their natural hair, either with growth or just feeling cute in it, stay in weaves.
I’ve done it all—weaves, straight hair natural, natural, relaxers, etc. I’m now in locs—out of all the styles I’ve tried, this ended up being the easiest. I think weaves are fine when they look realistic and aren’t the only thing a woman wears. I think the issue now is that this current lace front trend is very wiggy looking/unnatural. My thing is if your a breh that hates weaves it’s simple to avoid women that wear them. But y’all know this is a sensitive topic for bw—these threads never end well.
