Thank you very much for your answer, ZeroGravity, and I do feel that you are entirely qualified to answer, as well as anyone else. You may have sister(s) or daughter(s), and even if not, you may have a daughter in the future or a neice, and I am sure you would have an opinion in such a case.
Interesting question you posed. I first had my hair relaxed (or "permed"), when I was 12 years old, only because my mother gave me two options: pigtails in middle school or go under the lye. She felt that I looked too "grown" with my hair "down", because it was very thick and full of body. Her answer to the "problem" was to use chemicals to flatten the heck out of my tresses and burn every bit of shape out of my 'do.
During another visit to the hairdresser (when it was time for a "touch up"), I distinctly recall flipping through a hairstyles magazine, looking for a cut that would suit me for the new school year. Would you believe the style was on the head of a white girl in the magazine? In retrospect, I think we ALL must have been out of our minds; the hairdresser included. So I maintained the lye treatments up until I was about 25 years old, then decided to be natural. I decided to allow my hair to be freed again, to become liberated.
It is a joy to look at and feel my hair in its natural state and know that this is the real me, my real hair (not a chemically altered version). I feel proud to look in the mirror everyday and see that I do not have to "pretend" to look a certain way, and can recognize an astounding and real and unmatched beauty in naturalness that I see not only on my own head, but on the heads of others who are natural.