#BlackHairIsProfessional sets goal to educate 1 million hiring managers and workplace professionals on creating a more equitable and inclusive work environment by the end of 2023
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. /PRNewswire/ — As part of Dove’s ongoing commitment to help pass The CROWN Act and end race-based hair discrimination nationwide, the brand has partnered with LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, who is committed to creating equal access to economic opportunity and creating more equitable outcomes for all professionals. While progress has been made to end hair discrimination with the passage of The CROWN Act in some states across the US, race-based hair discrimination remains a systemic problem in the workplace – from hiring practices to daily workplace interactions – disproportionately impacting Black women’s employment opportunities and professional advancement. CROWN 2023 Workplace Research Study
The NEW CROWN 2023 Workplace Research Study, co-commissioned by Dove and LinkedIn, found that Black women’s hair is 2.5x more likely to be perceived as unprofessional, and details the systemic social and economic impact of hair bias and discrimination against Black women in the workplace. Additional findings from the CROWN 2023 Workplace Research Study include:
Bias against natural hair and protective styles can impact how Black women navigate the hiring process.
Approximately 2/3 of Black women (66%) change their hair for a job interview. Among them, 41% changed their hair from curly to straight.
Black women are 54% more likely (or over 1.5x more likely) to feel like they have to wear their hair straight to a job interview to be successful.
Hair discrimination has led Black women to have a negative experience or outcomes within the workplace.
Black women with coily/textured hair are 2x as likely to experience microaggressions in the workplace than Black women with straighter hair.
Over 20% of Black women 25-34 have been sent home from work because of their hair.
Young Black professionals are feeling the pressure from hair discrimination the most.
Nearly half (44%) of Black women under age 34 feel pressured to have a headshot with straight hair.
25% of Black women believe they have been denied a job interview because of their hair, which is even higher for women under 34 (1/3).
“For far too long, Black women and men have been subject to unfair treatment, outright discrimination and a myriad of inequities for simply wearing our natural hair texture and hair styles that are inherent to our cultural identity. This includes being denied employment, being sent home from work, being overlooked for promotions, and a range of micro-aggressions. This may be hard to believe, but it is real, clearly unwarranted, and unacceptable,” says Esi Eggleston Bracey, President & CEO of Unilever Personal Care in North America. “The goal of the partnership between Dove and LinkedIn is to help put an end to race-based hair discrimination in the workplace. We intend to shine a light on this issue and call upon employers, hiring managers, and professionals to adopt equitable and inclusive practices that create a respectful and open world for natural hair.”
In support of The CROWN Act, Dove and LinkedIn have partnered on a series of actions to help end race-based hair discrimination in the workplace nationwide. Together, we will:
Provide free access to 10 LinkedIn Learning courses focused on creating a more equitable and inclusive work environment, with a goal to educate 1 million hiring managers and workplace professionals by the end of 2023.
Illuminate the real and measurable adverse impact hair discrimination continues to have on Black women in the workplace through the CROWN 2023 Workplace Research Study.
Elevate and celebrate the real stories and voices of Black women professionals across LinkedIn and social media platforms using #BlackHairIsProfessional to help redefine what society deems “professional” at work.
While talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not. Cultural identifiers, like hair, are not determining factors for someone’s skills or experience, and no one should be denied employment opportunities or professional advancement because of their hair,” says Rosanna Durruthy, Global Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at LinkedIn. “As Dove works to change legislation, LinkedIn is working to change workplace behavior by training and educating one million hiring managers and human resources professionals on inclusive and equitable business practices. The mission of ending race-based hair discrimination is critically important to our own desire to make work, work better for everyone.”
Dove will continue to drive awareness of The CROWN Act across platforms, encourage petition signatures, and support the passing of The CROWN Act to help end race-based hair discrimination nationwide.
Dove co-founded the CROWN Coalition in 2019 alongside non-profits including the National Urban League, Color of Change, and Western Center on Law and Poverty to advance anti-hair discrimination legislation and create a more equitable and inclusive beauty experience for Black women and girls. Since then, the CROWN Coalition has grown to an alliance of more than 100 organizations that work together to pass the CROWN Act.
Everyone can take action to help pass The CROWN Act to end hair discrimination in the workplace. Visit Dove.com/LinkedIn to learn more, sign the CROWN Act petition and access free courses that support a more equitable and inclusive work environment because #BlackHairIsProfessional.
CROWN 2023 Workplace Research Study Methodology The 2023 CROWN Research Study surveyed 2,990 female identifying respondents in the US ages 25-64 (1,039 Black, 1,028 Hispanic, 1,064 White, with some respondents identifying as more than one race/ethnicity) between December 2022 and January 2023. All respondents were employed part or full time at the time of the study. The research was conducted on behalf of Dove by JOY Collective and Modulize, both specializing in marketing, data and analytics for polycultural communities.
About Dove Dove started its life in 1957 in the US, with the launch of the Beauty Bar, with its patented blend of mild cleansers and ¼ moisturizing cream. Dove’s heritage is based on moisturization, and it is proof not promises that enabled Dove to grow from a Beauty Bar into one of the world’s most beloved beauty brands.
Women have always been our inspiration and since the beginning, we have been wholly committed to providing superior care to all women and to championing real beauty in our advertising. Dove believes that beauty is for everyone. That beauty should be a source of confidence and not anxiety. Dove’s mission is to inspire women everywhere to develop a positive relationship with the way they look and realize their personal potential for beauty.
For 60 years, Dove has been committed to broadening the narrow definition of beauty in the work they do. With the ‘Dove Real Beauty Pledge,’ Dove vows to:
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Portray women with honesty, diversity and respect. We feature women of different ages, sizes, ethnicities, hair color, type, and style.
Portray women as they are in real life, with zero digital distortion and all images approved by the women they feature.
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About The CROWN Coalition The CROWN Coalition is a national alliance founded by Dove, National Urban League, Color Of Change and Western Center on Law & Poverty, to end race-based hair discrimination in America. The Coalition, now consisting of over 100 supporting organizations, is the founder of the CROWN Act movement and was the official sponsor of the inaugural CROWN Act legislation in California in 2019. For a full list of CROWN Coalition members, visit www.thecrownact.com.
The CROWN Coalition is proud to support anti-hair discrimination legislation to address unfair grooming policies that have a disparate impact on Black women, men and children and has drawn attention to cultural and racial discrimination taking place within workplaces and public schools. The CROWN Coalition members believe diversity and inclusion are key drivers of success across all industries and sectors.
About LinkedIn Founded in 2003, LinkedIn connects the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. With more than 850 million members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. The company has a diversified business model with revenue coming from Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Sales Solutions and Premium Subscriptions products. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, LinkedIn has offices across the globe.
Hulk Hogan and the unraveling of worker solidarity
Brian Jansen, University of Maine Hulk Hogan’s death by heart attack at age 71 came as a shock to many fans of the larger-than-life wrestler who’d earned the nickname “The Immortal.” But in many respects, the real surprise was that Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea, lived as long a life as he did. Despite the staged nature of its combat, professional wrestling is a notoriously dangerous career. Studies rank it among the riskiest professions. Wikipedia even maintains a comprehensive list of premature wrestler deaths. The reasons for professional wrestling’s dangers are largely tied up in the industry’s working conditions. And part of Hogan’s legacy may be his complicity in those conditions. In 1986, he allegedly played a key role in undercutting a unionization effort – arguably the closest pro wrestling has come to unionizing.
‘The Body’ sticks his neck out
WWE’s first WrestleMania was held in 1985. The pay-per-view event was enormously successful and established the company – then known as WWF – as the nation’s preeminent wrestling promotion. During the buildup to WrestleMania 2 the following year, wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura understood that performers had more leverage than they’d ever had. He began advocating behind the scenes for a wrestling union. The story, as recounted by Ventura, goes like this: An acquaintance of Ventura’s in the NFL encouraged him to start organizing behind the scenes. WWE was behind the ball: In 1956, the NFL became the first American pro sports league to have its union recognized. It was followed by the NBA in 1957, MLB in 1966 and the NHL in 1967. It helped that Ventura had little to lose. He’d be appearing in the forthcoming “Predator” film; should he get blackballed from wrestling for trying to form a union, he could probably earn a living as an actor. (Few could have predicted that he would go on to be elected governor of Minnesota in 1998.) As Ventura brought together his peers to hash out the details of what a pro wrestling union might look like, he also included the promotion’s reigning champion, Hogan, with the thinking that the support of the WWF’s biggest star would boost the cause and insulate others from retaliation. Instead, WWF owner Vince McMahon got wind of the effort and called his performers individually, threatening their jobs. The unionization effort sputtered, and McMahon eventually pushed Ventura out of wrestling.After Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura tried to unionize his fellow wrestlers, WWE owner Vince McMahon caught wind of the effort – and nipped it in the bud.WWE/Getty Images Ventura went on to sue the WWF over unpaid royalties. During the discovery process, Ventura testified that he had learned it was Hulk Hogan who snitched to McMahon and effectively sabotaged the union drive. Hogan never publicly admitted to telling McMahon about the rumblings of a union. The WWE has never confirmed nor denied the series of events. Either way, there have been no unionization campaigns in professional wrestling since then.
‘Do the job’
Today’s WWE performers are legally classified as “independent contractors.” They’re responsible for their own travel, training, costuming and insurance, even as their employer owns their likeness and is indemnified from liability due to injury or death. One of pro wrestling’s paradoxes is that the top promotion’s wrestlers aren’t unionized, even as its audience has historically skewed low income and blue collar. Wrestling has long been a family business, and most wrestlers are part-timers working additional jobs – often in blue-collar, union positions. Many of them are truck drivers and warehouse employees, construction workers and bouncers. Wrestler-turned-scholar Laurence de Garis has written about how the language of wrestling is rich with references to labor. A “work” in wrestling is a staged storyline; to “do the job” is to lose a match. The goal of many performers is to be considered a “good worker” by peers, and WWE performers wrestle as many as 300 nights per year. The company has no offseason. The steroid, painkiller and alcohol abuse that has been endemic to the industry may well stem from pressures on wrestlers to perform night after night, even if they’re in pain, for fear of losing their position. In the 1990s, Hogan himself confessed to extensive steroid use, which is known to contribute to heart disease. You’d think that these harsh working conditions would make wrestlers ripe for a union. Why that hasn’t happened is up for debate. WWE bought out its competitionin the early 2000s; perhaps its status as the last remaining major wrestling promotion in the nation has weakened the leverage of wrestlers. Or maybe the testosterone-driven, masculine nature of the sport makes solidarity seem like weakness.
Workers left holding the bag
The story of Ventura’s failed unionization bid is a story of what could have been. But in some sense, I see the story of the WWE as part of a broader story of the U.S. economy. After a period of relative stability after World War II, American work since the 1980s has become dominated by mergers, buyouts, deregulation and financialization. Profits are increasingly generated by financial means such as interest and capital gains instead of through offering genuine goods or services. Layoffs and precarious work have become the norm. WWE’s profits exploded in the 1990s and 2000s. The company went public in 1999 – though the McMahon family retained majority control – and dipped its toes into film production, reality television and online streaming. In 2023, WWE merged with UFC’s parent company Endeavor to form TKO Group Holdings. TKO’s revenue was more than US$2.8 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, Endeavor has been spun off as a Hollywood talent agency and was acquired by a private equity firm. The fruits of these new revenue streams and mergers haven’t trickled down to its in-ring performers. So far in 2025, WWE has laid off or released more than 30 wrestlers and at least 10 employees from the company’s corporate wing.According to Forbes, Vince McMahon’s net worth is $3.1 billion.Leon Halip/WireImage via Getty Images Much as professional wrestlers have remained independent contractors, this arrangement has become normalized in the broader American economy, with more than 36% of Americans participating in the gig economy. In 2022, Stanford researchers identified gig work as a “social determinant of health,” since most gig workers lack employer-sponsored health care, paid time off or sick days.
All for one and none for all
In today’s economy, luck or happenstance, rather than merit, seem more likely to influence who achieves financial security and who scrapes by, living paycheck to paycheck. Hulk Hogan, as professional wrestling’s biggest star for 20 years, certainly believed he earned his place at the top of the industry. But without diminishing his talents, it’s worth noting he arrived at precisely the correct moment in history to become that star. For many years, a wrestler was expected to have “shoot” skills – that is, actual wrestling expertise – should an opponent ever go rogue and turn a staged performance into a real fight. But as McMahon’s power and influence expanded, the look, the sound and the character of the wrestler became most important. How well could a wrestler perform for the camera? How well could he sell T-shirts to young fans? Despite Hogan’s limitations as a technical in-ring performer, his mullet, mustache and “24-inch pythons” – the nickname given to his enormous biceps – made him the right person at the right time. Hogan also succeeded because his opponents in the ring were willing to make him look like a star. They were able to “do the job” and do it safely. Another paradox of professional wrestling is that it requires performers to appear as if they are hurting one another. But their primary goal, in fact, is keeping one another safe. To me, that sounds a lot like solidarity. Brian Jansen, Assistant Professor of English and Media Studies, University of Maine This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ still speaks to a nation vacillating between hope and despair
Louis P. Masur, Rutgers University I was 18 when Bruce Springsteen’s third album, “Born to Run,” was released 50 years ago, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d just finished my freshman year in college, and I was lost. My high school girlfriend had broken up with me by letter. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was stuck back in my parents’ apartment in the Bronx. So when I dropped the record onto my Panasonic turntable and Springsteen sang, “So you’re scared and you’re thinking/That maybe we ain’t that young anymore” on the opening track, “Thunder Road,” I felt as if he were speaking directly to me. But no song moved me more than the album’s title track, “Born to Run.” How I longed for that sort of love – and how I also felt strangled by the “runaway American dream.” The song was about getting out, but also about searching for a companion. I, too, was a “scared and lonely rider” who craved arriving at a special place. Decades later, I combined the personal and the professional and wrote a book about the making and meaning of the album.
All eyes on the Boss
The album was shaped by the times, particularly the malaise of the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate American landscape. There was an energy crisis, and it wasn’t only oil that was in short supply. The excitement of the 1960s had passed, and rock ’n’ roll itself was in the doldrums. Elvis had become a Las Vegas lounge act; the Beatles had broken up; Bob Dylan had been a recluse since his motorcycle accident in 1966. The No. 1 hit in 1975 was “Love Will Keep Us Together,” by the Captain and Tennille. Obituaries to rock music appeared regularly. Springsteen went into the studio feeling the pressure to produce. His first two albums had received good reviews but sold poorly. After seeing a show in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974, writer Jon Landau proclaimed Springsteen “the future of rock ’n’ roll.” Springsteen wore the label uneasily, though he had more than enough ambition to try and fulfill the prophecy: He later called “Born to Run,” “my shot at the title, a 24-year-old kid aiming at the greatest rock ’n’ roll record ever.” But in the studio, he struggled. It took him six months to record the title song. He kept rewriting the lyrics and experimenting with different sounds. He was composing epics: “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” “Backstreets,” “Jungleland.” And he was trying to tie it all together thematically as his characters searched for love and connection and endured disappointment and heartbreak. When Springsteen was finally done with the album, he hated it. He even threw a test pressing into a pool. But Landau, who had come on to co-produce, convinced him to release it.
Poetry for the masses
Despite Springsteen’s apprehension, the response to “Born to Run” was remarkable. Hundreds of thousands of copies flew off the shelves. Springsteen appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time, where he was hailed as “Rock’s New Sensation.” Writing in Rolling Stone, critic Greil Marcus called it “a magnificent album that pays off on every bet ever placed on him.” There was backlash from some corners: critics who resented all the hype Springsteen had received and who thought the music bombastic. But most agreed with John Rockwell of The New York Times, who praised the album’s songs as “poetry that attains universality. … You owe it to yourself to buy this record.”
An operatic drama
The album pulsates between hope and despair. Side 1 carries listeners from the elation of “Thunder Road” to the heartbreak of “Backstreets,” and Side 2 repeats the trajectory, from the exhilaration of “Born to Run” to the anguish of “Jungleland.” I felt I knew the characters in these songs – Mary and Wendy, Terry and Eddie – and I identified with the narrator’s struggles and dreams. They all wrestled with feeling stuck. They longed for something bigger and more exciting. But what was the price to pay for taking the leap – whether for love or the open road? These lyrical, operatic songs about freedom and fate, triumph and tragedy, still resonate, even though today’s music is more likely to emphasize beats, samples and software than extended guitar and saxophone solos. Springsteen continues to tour, and fans young and old fill arenas and stadiums to hear him because rock ’n’ roll still has something to say, still makes you shout, still makes you feel alive. “It’s embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music,” Springsteen said in 2005, “except sometimes it happens – the Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Peppers, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born to Run – whoops, I meant to leave that one out.” In fall 1975, I played “Born to Run” over and over in my dorm room. I’d stare at Eric Meola’s cover photograph of a smiling Springsteen in leather jacket and torn T-shirt, his guitar pointing out and upward as he gazes toward his companion. Who wouldn’t want to join Springsteen and his legendary saxophonist, Clarence Clemons, on their journey? That October, I went on a first date with a girl. We’ve been married 44 years, and the stirring declaration from “Born to Run” has proven true time and again: “love is wild, love is real.”Saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Bruce Springsteen and guitarist Steven Van Zandt perform in the U.K. during the European leg of the ‘Born to Run’ tour.Andrew Putler/Redferns via Getty ImagesLouis P. Masur, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History, Rutgers University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Lady Gaga performs at Copacabana Beach on May 3, 2025, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live NationDavid Nemer, University of Virginia and Arthur Coelho Bezerra, Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (Ibict) The more than 2 million people who attended Lady Gaga’s free concert on Copacabana Beach on May 3, 2025, had no idea of a plot that, if successful, would have turned the event into a tragedy fueled by hate. Just hours before a sea of admirers waved fans in sync with the singer during the event, the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police thwarted a planned attack involving Molotov cocktails and improvised bombs – and targeting the American singer’s LGBTQ following. Two people have since been arrested over the plot, which was organized by users of digital platforms such as Discord. The intent, authorities say, was radicalizing and recruiting teenagers to carry out the planned attack. Those responsible hoped to entice these young people into actions that would gain online notoriety.More than 2 million people are said to have attended the Lady Gaga concert in Rio.Daniel Ramalho/AFP via Getty Images Although authorities were able to prevent the attack, the incident stands as a stark warning about the growth of hate networks among youth − and how platforms fuel the radicalization of teenagers, especially boys and young men. As experts in the anthropology of technologyand information science, we see something deeply generational about this phenomenon. The recent Netflix series “Adolescence” broke viewership records by portraying an environment in which young people live in hyperconnected online spheres, absent of state oversight and parental supervision. In these spheres, bullying toxic masculinity permeates, and violence – often targeted at women and sexual minorities – is normalized. The show was set in the U.K., but it holds up a mirror to the world. Data from polling company Gallup reveals a growing ideological divide between young men and women in Gen Z across the globe. Too often, that divide, in which young men and boys are turning against progressive values, is being expressed through actions associated with the “manosphere,” such as misogyny and incel behavior.
Platforms for hate
In the United States, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male counterparts, according to Gallup’s surveys. In Germany, where a right-wing coalition recently won national elections and the extreme-right AfD party is rising in popularity at an alarming rate, the gap is also 30 points. In Poland, although the far-right left power at the end of 2023 after eight years, nearly half of men ages 18 to 21 support far-right parties − compared with just one-sixth of women in the same age range. This polarization is emerging just as online platforms such as Discord, TikTok and Reddit have become formative spaces of identity. Instead of promoting diversity, however, many of these platforms have been used as machines for producing and spreading hate. The 2021 study Mapping Discord’s Darkside, published in the journal New Media & Society, shows that despite marketing efforts to distance itself from the far right, Discord hosts thousands of servers associated with neo-Nazi, misogynistic, racist, transphobic and conspiratorial discourse. Researchers identified 2,741 such servers − with more than 850,000 active members. These networks end up functioning as recruitment hubs, where young people − especially boys − are lured in by edgy memes, promises of belonging and identity games based on excluding others. Discord’s structure, which prioritizes privacy and decentralization, has become fertile ground for the emergence of what scholar Adrienne Massanari calls “toxic technocultures.” Services such as Disboard − an informal search engine for Discord servers − are used to recruit teens into communities that glorify Nazism, encourage hatred toward women and people from the LGBTQ+ community, and even offer “services” for coordinated attacks on other servers. And this appears to be the case in the thwarted attack on the Lady Gaga concert.
Presenting a challenge
A significant factor in the success of these radicalizing environments is gamification − the use of gamelike elements such as challenges, rewards and leaderboards in nongame contexts. When applied to social networks and extremist forums, gamification turns engagement into competition and hate speech into a playful challenge. This practice makes the entrance into extremism more palatable for young, impressionable people by masking violence behind seemingly harmless mechanics. As noted in the European Commission’s 2021 report Gamification and Online Hate Speech, gamification has become a powerful tool for normalizing and spreading hate, particularly among young people seeking recognition and belonging. This process, known as “bottom-up gamification,” occurs when users create the rules, symbolic rewards and challenges. For example, by turning hate speech into “challenges” that involve humiliating women or people from the LGBTQ+ community online, the dehumanization of targets is presented in playful, viral ways.
Turning hate into entertainment
The investigation into the foiled attack on Lady Gaga’s Copacabana concert revealed exactly this mechanism: The attack was treated as a “collective challenge,” with youths recruited to build Molotov cocktails and explosive backpacks in order to gain notoriety on social media. The logic of gamification also creates a structure of “achievement” and “scoring” that fosters competition and reinforces radical ideology. As shown in the 2022 study by criminologists Suraj Lakhani and Susann Wiedlitzka, attacks such as the 2019 mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed, were planned and executed with strong inspiration from gaming, including live broadcasts similar to “Let’s Play” sessions, in which people offer live commentary during walk-throughs of games, typically first-person shooting games, and viewer comments that treat the number of deaths as a “score.”More than 50 people were killed in the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques in New Zealand on March 15, 2019.Omer Kablan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images This aestheticization of violence serves as a bonding element among young men in digital spaces, especially those who already feel marginalized or frustrated and who find in these games of hate a sense of belonging and affirmation. In this way, gamification transforms hate into entertainment, strengthening ties in toxic communities and making it harder to recognize the behavior as extremism.
Turning a generation off hate
Society is, we believe, facing a dual challenge: the need for moderation of platforms and for support for measures preventing men and boys from being drawn into toxic digital spaces. The gender divide within Gen Z is no small matter, too. It reflects, in broad terms, a rift between a generation of young women who, empowered by #MeToo and other feminist movements, have embraced progressive causes, and a generation of men who, threatened by their perceived diminished power in this new environment, are being co-opted by far-right and misogynistic discourse in digital spaces. This gap has real consequences in personal relationships, in schools and for democracy at large. But it also reveals something that we believe must be stated clearly: Platform regulation is not just a technical issue. The future of a generation cannot be built on algorithms that reward hate and radicalization. This article is a translated and adapted version of a story that was originally published by The Conversation Brazil on May 8, 2025.David Nemer, Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies, University of Virginia and Arthur Coelho Bezerra, Professor titular, Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (Ibict) This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
