frohawk

The term frohawk is a blend of the words mohawk and fro, used to describe a mohawk hairstyle worn by people with Afro-textured (fro) hair.

Though the contemporary frohawk takes part of its name from the Native American Mohawk tribe, the actual frohawk hairstyle has a long history in Africa, worn by tribes such as the Mandinka. It was these Mandinka roots that inspired actor Mr. T to don a frohawk in the 1980s, which popularized the hairstyle when he became a star on the TV series The A-Team. While Mr. T made it more popular for people to wear this Mandinka-inspired look, the exact origins of the term frohawk are unclear. Urban Dictionary entered frohawk in 2003 and the term appears on an internet message-group in 2004. Frohawk first appeared on Twitter toward the latter half of 2007.

Regardless of origin, the frohawk hairstyle underwent a revival in the 2010s, when it was worn by Usher on the cover of his 2012 album Looking 4 Myself. Following this, the term frohawk gained popularity, with Google Trends showing that searches for frohawk spiked throughout the 2010s. The term may have been additionally popularized in the 2000s by visual artist Umar Rashid, who goes by the name Frohawk Two-Feathers, though Rashid does not wear a frohawk hairstyle.

The popularity of frohawks—particularly when worn by women—may be further due to the increasing acceptance of natural black hair, previously deterred by the societal pressure for black women to adopt whiter, straighter, more European hairstyles.