involve the social experience of black women. Grier and Cobbs cite a dominant American "ethos" that has always included a presumption of black inferiority, hence fostered a sense of cultural and societal alienation. This would help explain the nexus of cultural assimilation and the use of straightened hair by such black entertainers as Michael Jackson, Nat King Cole, and Sammy Davis, Jr.
Along the same lines, Middleton-Moz describes the feelings of inferiority of a black woman who had grown up in a white environment and who had effectively been obliged by her upwardly mobile family to deny her racial heritage, who was a walking (WASP) fashion plate (and in debt because of it), and who eventually acknowledged, "I guess I hide my 'blackness' under my expensive suits and makeup." Her family "suffered tremendous cultural self-hate. And through their only daughter had attempted to erase any signs of cultural heritage. . . . Her focus on 'image' had caused her to spend thousands on makeup, hair appointments and clothes." In other words
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