Zazie Beetz Natural Hair Care Routine — Interview

Beetz is one of True Botanicals’ “Band of Activists,” an ambassadorship she shares along with the likes of Laura Dern and Olivia Wilde. Though she religiously uses the brand for most of her skin-care regimen, she also likes to supplement with a little DIY beauty every so often. “If I’m super dry, I’ll make my own masks at home and that’ll be brown sugar, honey, and a little bit of oil for hydrating. I also do a lot of buttermilk in my at-home masks,” she says. As for wearing makeup? “It’s very on and off.”

But, there is one important beauty ritual she’s admitted to sleeping on: trims. “My first 20 years, I’d never got my hair cut, and since then I’ve maybe had it trimmed maybe five times.” For many of us, a trim is something we all mindlessly get every so often, but for Beetz (and many other women with her hair texture), those few inches of hair would be a sacrifice. “I just want it to be really long, but it never grows past my shoulders,” Beetz says. “I feel like there’s a point where your hair just reaches a certain length and that’s it, so maybe my hair has just reached the point where it’s going to grow.”

Could Beetz’s desire for longer hair be another example of subconsciously-embedded Eurocentric beauty standards placed on women in our society? Maybe, maybe not. But, as Beetz notes, things like trims, perms, and braids don’t always have an underlying significance. “I also think for many people, perming your hair or wearing weaves or using whatever they choose is also just a matter of ease,” she says. “If I have my hair in braids, I can just walk out the door. There is that aspect, too. I don’t think it’s necessarily all wrapped up in beauty ideals and your basis of self-worth and stuff like that. I don’t want to paint that picture, either.”

But, regardless of styling intent, Beetz puts it clearly: with natural hair textures, we’ve just barely gotten on the right track, but there’s much more work to be done. “A myriad of different things are in the process of shifting, but I think people need to and will continue to shift — hopefully.”