considered a "business man's" hairstyle and was generally accepted by businesses and schools. It was not as subversive, controversial or threatening to non-African-Americans as the Afro, or long hair below the collar worn by those with straight hair. African-American women began wearing the Natural by 1970 and still do as of 2021. The conk was a major plot device in Spike Lee's film biography Malcolm X, based upon Malcolm X's own condemnation of the hairstyle in his autobiography due to its implications of the superiority of a more "white" appearance and because of the pain the process causes and the possibility of receiving severe burns to the scalp. The conk is all but extinct as a hairstyle among African-American men today, although more mildly and safely relaxed hairstyles such as the Jheri curl and the S-Curl were popular during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2009, actor, comedian, and director Chris Rock starred in a documentary called Good Hair, which focuses on the beliefs, origins and evolution of hairstyles among the African-American community. Culture In the 1965 book The Autobiography of Malcolm X, it is mentioned that at one point the prevalence of the conk hairstyle, "makes you wonder if the Negro has completely lost all sense of identity, lost touch with himself". See also List of hairstyles References External links 1920s fashion 1930s fashion 1940s fashion 1950s fashion 1960s fashion African-American hair Hairstyles