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Khiara Keating of Manchester City and England Manchester City This article is part of The Athletic’s series marking UK Black History Month. To view the whole collection,  click here. It was July 2024 during an England national team camp in the Netherlands, and goalkeeper Khiara Keating was facing a crisis that had nothing to do with her exploits between the sticks. Advertisement The 21-year-old had just used the last of her Gummy Wax, the quintessential ingredient to her signature bun when she plays, ensuring every last one of her strands stays in place for the duration of play. Keating is a Manchester native who plays for City, and on October 25, she became the first Black goalkeeper to represent the Lionesses. She told The Athletic that she positions her bun high atop her head to take up more space inside the goal. This is her hair ritual, and in the environment of national team camps in elite sport, routine is paramount. But without that Gummy Wax, there was no styling to be done — nor did there appear to be any alternatives within reach. “She was hoping maybe that I brought Gummy Wax to camp, ” fellow Lioness and Tottenham forward Jessica Naz told The Athletic. But Naz, who alternates between braids and a high bun of her own, uses different products for her hair. “She’s like, ‘Oh my God. I have none left. How the hell am I gonna slick my bun? ” Naz recalled. That was how they found themselves on a trek to the closest shop they could find — in a place Naz called “the most dodgy area” — that sold the hair-styling product. The matter of hair for many Black female footballers in the UK isn’t as simple as a ponytail, a finger-swoop of gel and a headband or prewrap. Players such as Keating and Naz, alongside others of African descent, including Bunny Shaw, Kerolin, Lauren James, Sandy Baltimore, Michelle Agyemang, and Deanne Rose, have tapped into the rich heritage of Black hair culture that is their birthright. By doing so, they’ve flipped that gaze around — not so much demanding to be seen as refusing to hide or blend in. With box braids, cornrows, extensions, sew-ins, or licked-back buns with intricately laid edges that swirl across the hairline, Black footballers are taking the “look good, play good” mantra to new heights. Advertisement It’s unclear exactly how many Black footballers are in the Women’s Super League. A league spokesperson told The Athletic they “do not hold that information centrally, ” but the eye test leaves no doubt that they, and players of colour, are in the minority. That lack of diversity is also apparent at the national team level: of the 28 players called up to that July camp last year, four were Black. When England won the Euros in 2022, there were three Black players out of 23 on the roster. The figure improved to four in their repeat campaign this summer. The disparity casts an inevitable gaze upon the relatively few Black female footballers who compete in the UK. Keating’s earliest memories of getting her hair done with her younger sisters were traumatic. “My mum’s white, so she didn’t really understand ’til we got a bit older… our hair used to knot way easier than her hair used to knot, ” she told The Athletic. Keating’s mum tried to brush through those knots when she encountered them — and it didn’t go over well. “She never understood why we were crying, but then the older you get and the longer she keeps doing it, the more she understands. ” Keating and her sisters began watching You Tube Black hair tutorials. “When you get into high school and you’re around all your friends, you kind of get speaking to them, seeing how they do their hair on Face Time and stuff, ” Keating added. (As Keating spoke, she kept her hands busy by twirling a tube of Topicals lip balm, a Black-owned skincare brand. ) As with Keating, Naz’s mother was also the first to care for her hair, plaiting her and her sister’s into cornrows, a simple style that didn’t require young children to sit still for hours like box braids do. Naz, now 25, said back then it was more about looking neat and presentable than styled, necessarily. Advertisement With time, Naz said, “You’re like, ‘Oh, let’s add some beads in it. Can I do different colours? ’ and all of that, so I think it got to a point where it was really exciting. ” Long before they sit for a new style, Keating and Naz find joy in the scouting process. Keating and Shaw trade photos of trends on Pinterest and Instagram, and Naz has long drawn inspiration from other Black female footballers, especially when she started playing. The pool of inspiration was shallower back then; there weren’t many Black female footballers around. But now, Naz says: “I’ll see someone else have a hairstyle and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s actually quite nice. I’m gonna try that next time. ’” Now that Naz and Keating are responsible for their own hair, they’ve hired stylists and braiders. Naz also applies a relaxer to chemically straighten her natural curl pattern (a process her mum taught her) and alternates between pulling it back into a high bun and braids. Keating goes with her slicked-back bun when she’s in season and usually saves her braids for longer stretches of time off; for the past three years, she’s gone to the best friend of one of her aunties. The first person to touch Naz’s hair after her mum was a high-school friend who had opened up her own salon. Booking hair appointments as a professional footballer is a complex exercise: braids, twists and extensions can take as long as six hours depending on the techniques employed. Keating, who got extensions a day before her interview with The Athletic, had to travel to London to achieve the look she wanted. That’s three or four hours on the train, plus the time it takes to install them. In those cases, players have to dedicate their full day off to beautification. But even that is an imprecise science. Naz has lived in London all her life, with access to an array of Black hair stylists, but football is her priority. Any changes to her carefully crafted schedule trickle down. Advertisement “There have been times I’ve had to cancel my appointment, and then when I cancel, all the other slots have been booked, ” Naz said. Her last resort when this happens is to squeeze it in after training, sitting in the salon chair late into the night. Ideally, she does this when she has the following day off so she can sleep in. Black hair aesthetics are deeply rooted in precolonial African traditions in countries and cultures across the continent, where adornments such as cowrie shells and braid patterns were imbued with meaning. Black hair can be manipulated into a variety of textures, shapes and lengths, and it can withstand a spectrum of colours. The ability to embrace so many different looks (and embody the attitudes they carry) is a privilege many Black people embrace with pride. It’s also proven difficult at times for other communities to understand or keep up with it — even as many adopt and appropriate those same styles for themselves. When Keating arrived at City training after her latest hair appointment, “one of the Japanese girls, as soon as I walked in, her eyes were like…” Keating said, her own bulging wide on the screen of our Zoom call. “’Cause she’s never seen my hair down. She looked like she’d just seen a ghost, which was quite funny, but when I used to come in with braids, they all used to say it looked really sick. ” Moments like that, Keating said, are due more to surprise at the switch-up than negative feelings about her hair. And with the diversity across the club, she’s never the only one causing a stir like that. (In fact, when Brazilian striker Kerolin joined City last year from North Carolina in the NWSL, it was Keating who passed along her hair braider’s contact when she sought recommendations. ) Other times, team-mates ask questions that make Black hair feel like a spectacle, so the person asking can better distinguish what is “real” from what is not. Advertisement “A question I get asked a lot is, ‘How long is your natural hair? ’ Or, ‘Oh, does your hair feel heavy? ’ Because they always see me in extensions, ” Naz said. “Sometimes people have to be a bit cautious about some of the things they say. ” Like Keating, Naz noted the strength in numbers; now that she has Black team-mates such as Lenna Gunning-Williams, Drew Spence and Araya Dennis at Tottenham, there’s less pressure to speak for the entire Black community. Naz has also seen the way mainstream culture tends to move toward Black style, gradually normalising that which used to be considered exotic. “Everyone in the changing rooms is using edge control brushes, ” she said. “Back then, everyone was asking, like, ‘What’s that? What would you use it for? ’ So, I think it’s becoming a lot easier. “People are a lot more cultured now, even wearing bonnets and do-rags and stuff like that. ” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Tamerra Griffin is a women’s soccer writer for The Athletic covering the women’s game around the world. She also hosts the weekly “Full Time” women’s soccer podcast. As a freelance journalist, she covered the 2023 World Cup in Australia and the CONCACAF W Gold Cup for The Athletic, as well as women’s soccer stories for ESPN Andscape, USA Today’s Pro Soccer Wire, and other publications. Prior to that, she was an international correspondent based in Kenya, where she reported on presidential elections and political movements, LGBTQ and women’s rights, climate change, and much more across East and Southern Africa. Follow Tamerra on Twitter @tamerra_nikol