“I RELATE TO LAYLA TAYLOR’S ‘BAD HAIR’ DAYS IN MORMON WIVES BECAUSE I ALSO TRIED TO FIT WHITE BEAUTY STANDARDS”

Season three of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives hit our screens recently and it was a doozy. When it comes to sex scandals and friendship drama the Utah based show that follows a group of Tik-Toking Mormons does not disappoint. But this season, it wasn’t just the drama that got us talking. We followed 24-year-old Layla Taylor on a journey of self-discovery and in doing so, saw just how far the beauty industry, near and far, still needs to go to be fully inclusive. Something that is still lacking, no matter where you are in western society.

Like me, Layla is of mixed ethnicity, and her people pleasing nature and Barbie-like appearance spoke volumes to me about how desperately she wanted to fit into (white) Mormon Utah culture and how far removed from her Blackness - or ‘whitewashed’ as she herself puts it – she was. I say this kindly, but nowhere was this clearer than when looking at her hair. Production did Layla so dirty when it came to unfavourable back shots of her head in season 2, that viewers left hundreds of comments about her unhealthy tresses and poorly applied hair extensions online. “I feel bad for her,” said a viewer on Reddit. “She’s clearly trying to fit into white spaces. She needs a black stylist who understands her texture, can handle the upkeep of her natural hair, and uses hair that matches her texture.”

Season 3 saw the topic finally addressed on camera. Ultimately it was experiencing hair loss, and probably all the well-meaning (and just plain mean) comments on social media that finally spurred Layla on to switch from seeing stylist and co-star Jessi Ngatikaura – who admits that she didn’t learn about ethnic hair (as she puts it – eek) in beauty school – to a Black extension specialist who understands her hair texture.

Since the show aired, Layla has talked about this further on social, posting to Instagram; ‘I didn’t realize the effects of how growing up in a predominantly white community would continue to affect me to this day. I wish I could give little me a hug and tell her how beautiful she is. She doesn’t need to straighten her hair or lighten her skin. She can have pride in who she is and her beautiful heritage.'

Sadly, Layla’s experience is all-too common and unsurprisingly so when you look at the bigger picture. Insights from the "Good Hair" study conducted by the Perception Institute in the US, show that when it comes to attitudes toward black women's hair, white men and women displayed the strongest levels of implicit bias (embedded negative stereotypes that our brains automatically associate with a particular group of people, which are often inconsistent with our conscious beliefs).

The study found that white women have the strongest explicit attitudes (negative views and beliefs about a racial group, formed on a conscious level), rating textured hair less beautiful, less attractive and less professional than smooth hair. Add to that the Mormon church only renouncing the doctrine that Black skin is a curse in 2013, it’s little wonder that Layla – who says she’s a “product of my environment and was raised with predominantly white people,” – has been so intent on upholding white beauty standards. “For my whole life I avoided anything that made me feel different from my peers”, she says.

I can totally relate to Layla’s desire to fit in. Having grown up in a largely white area in London, and going to predominantly white private girls’ schools, I was acutely aware from a very young age that I did not fit Western beauty standards. My curls got tighter with age, so that by the time I got to primary school, my white, blonde straight-haired mother had no idea how to style my hair. So, it went up in a bun daily and I regularly sported a halo of frizz. I felt ugly compared to my friends with their smooth, easy to manage hair and those feelings intensified in secondary school.

I then discovered chemical straightening treatments at 16, and extensions at 25 and like Layla I always wore my hair straight. While I found it really hard to get extensions that matched my texture, and didn’t look frazzled with time, I was lucky enough to find a stylist who knew how to apply them perfectly. But this took time and research and I couldn’t just walk up to any salon and expect them to know how to treat my hair. This is the sad reality even now, even on the most diverse city’s high street.

It's a tale as old as time. Black women are often excluded in beauty spaces, making us feel othered. And while as mixed white and Black women both Layla and I have a closer proximity to whiteness, and therefore benefit from that, we also have similar salon experiences to our Black counterparts. In the show, Layla told Jessi why she had found herself a different stylist and Jessi took Layla’s comments well, insisting she would have understood if she’d come to her sooner. And since the episode aired, Jessi has brought Layla’s new stylist into her own salon to teach her and her staff about the gaps in their knowledge.

Here in the UK, things appear to be changing – slowly – too. Since 2021 all hairdressing students have been required to learn how to cut and style afro textured hair, though many awarding organisations are still yet to update their curriculum.

People with kinky, curly and coily hair should be able to go to a local salon wherever they live, whether it’s a big city or a small village, and be catered to. Hopefully the discourse online surrounding Layla’s hair journey will get hairdressers and salon owners thinking about how they can be more inclusive going forward.

The British Beauty Council Hair Equity Task Force have created an open letter to encourage the Government to mandate textured and Afro hair training in all government-funded hairdressing and barbering qualifications. Read more here.

2025-11-28T17:46:27Z