While encouraging women to embrace a love for their hair might initially sound like promoting vanity, that's not the point of Kelly Rowland's new video for her song, "Crown." Instead, Rowland wants to inspire women to embrace their natural, cultural appearance and love their looks. "Crown" is Rowland's latest power song, and is a call for women everywhere to embrace self-identity through their hair styles. In fact, many women have felt bullied in the past for wearing their hair certain ways, and Rowland is no exception.
Rowland's own experience with her hair as a child created a huge amount of embarrassment for the singer. In fact, she told Essence, "It just made me think about what I went through with my hair as a kid. I was five or six when my mother put a perm in my hair and all of my hair fell out."
Not only does Rowland's power ballad reflect her own personal experiences as a child, the theme of "Crown" connects with women everywhere. Once Rowland started sharing her own hair struggles with the general public, other stories started to emerge about other women. According to Teen Vogue, back in August, two sixth-grade girls, Tyrelle Davis and Faith Fennidy, from Terrytown, Louisiana, arrived at school in braided extensions and were sent home. After hearing about their experience, Rowland decided to feature the two girls in her video as symbols of young women who have experienced public shaming over their hair, and also as a reminder of how women can overcome that type of shaming.
