Young Blonde Girl With Cornrows Hairstyle And Green Stockings On The Wooden Swing On Ropes

A traditional way of styling hair across the African continent, depictions of women with cornrows have been found in Stone Age paintings in the Tassili Plateau of the Sahara that have been dated as far back as 3000 B.C. Historically, male styling with cornrows can be traced as far back as the early nineteenth century to Ethiopia, where warriors and kings such as Tewodros II and Yohannes IV of Ethiopia were depicted wearing cornrows.
In the African diaspora, cornrows survived for centuries in the United States and other parts of the New World as a traditional style of hair preparation. In the United States the cornrow style regained popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s as part of the Black Nationalist Movement, which encouraged African Americans to embrace hairstyles that highlighted their natural hair texture and reject straightening with lye-based relaxers. In the wake of the Black pride movement, many shops and salons sprang up across the United States delivering services exclusively, or as part of a range of options, to African Americans who preferred natural unstraightened hairstyles such as cornrows.
Outside the African tradition, cornrow-like hairstyles have also been seen in Greek and Roman art, and may have had a similar presence in Celtic culture. Cornrows acquired some popularity among White Americans and Europeans after blonde actress Bo Derek wore beaded cornrows in the popular Blake Edwards 1979 movie 10, and became widely popular once again with the spread of hip-hop culture in the 1990s. Cornrow hairstyles are now often offered to tourists in resort areas of the Caribbean.
In the Asian tradition, Mixed Martial Arts fighters with long hair also often sport the cornrow hairstyle during matches to protect the hair from being ripped off while grappling.