Alike braids her mother Audrey's hair (36:15)

Another way the film examines Alike's gender and womanhood is through the hairstyles worn by her and her mother Audrey, a conservative Christian woman who tries to force a more traditionally adhered identity on her daughter. In a more tender scene between the two, Alike is braiding her mother's hair into tight twists and urges her to wear it naturally. Audrey declines, explaining Alike's father prefers her hair pulled back. In the black community, a woman's hair and how she wears it is often indicative of the way she chooses to live her life.

According to writer Cheryl Thompson, "For young black girls, hair is not just something to play with, it is something that is laden with messages, and it has the power to dictate how others treat you, and, in turn, how you feel about yourself." (Thompson) How you wear your hair and what is says about you and ingraned in young black girls early on, and the film argues this by representing Alike and her mother as wearing tight twists and braids, while the more confident Laura and Bina both wear their hair naturally. 

Alike loosens her hair and embraces her identity (1:17:28)

By the end of the film, while Alike hasn't taken her hair out of it's tight twists, she has allowed some of the natural curl and volume to grown out a bit rather than keeping it confined to her head, indicative that she is beginning to move past the strict rulings her abusive mother has dealt her and instead embracing a more authentic identity outside of societal expectations. 

In discussion with the meaning behind a woman's decision for her hair, Thompson argues that "black hair as a window into African American women's ethnic and gender identities, and black hair as a linguistic and cultural engagement with these identities... presents opportunities for learning and change, thus offering insights into the discursive and corporeal dynamics of African American women's being and becoming". (Thompson) Rees chooses to represent Alike embracing her identity as a means of transcending obligations to her racial, gender, and sexual identity. She recognizes that these traits are all involved, but not mutually exclusive.