Entry · catalog no. 1136
big chop
/ /ˌbɪɡ ˈtʃɑp/ /big CHOP
noun phrase · United States, nationwide, and internationally wherever the anglophone Black natural hair community reaches · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
The act of cutting off every inch of chemically straightened hair at once, leaving only the untreated new growth at the root, in order to restart with natural texture. It is one of two recognized routes out of a relaxer — the other being to transition, growing the relaxed ends out gradually over months while managing two textures at the same time — and it is the faster and more absolute of the two, usually leaving the person with an inch or less of hair. The phrase carries weight beyond the mechanics: because a relaxer cannot be undone, the cut is irreversible, and in the online natural hair community it functions as a threshold event that people date, photograph, announce, and count anniversaries from. It applies most often to Black women, is used as both noun and verb, and is commonly shortened to BC in forum and comment writing.
“I transitioned for eleven months, got tired of fighting two textures, and did the big chop on a Tuesday in my kitchen.”
Origin & Attribution
The phrase comes out of the Black online natural hair community of the early 2000s, not from salons or the beauty industry. Its documented home is Nappturality.com, launched in 2002 by Patricia Gaines — posting as Deecoily — after she broke off from a general curly-hair forum with a small group of Black women who had nowhere to discuss kinkier textures. That forum is credited with producing the working vocabulary the movement still uses, including big chop, transitioning, stretching, and TWA (teeny weeny Afro). The term spread through the blog and YouTube generation that followed — CurlyNikki launched in 2008 — and reached mainstream Black women's media around the turn of the 2010s. The big chop is not a 2010s invention of natural-hair marketing. The practice of cutting relaxed hair off obviously predates the phrase — readers writing in to Essence date their own big chops as far back as 1997 — but they are using a term they acquired later.
2002
Patricia Gaines launches Nappturality.com, the forum credited with generating "big chop," "transitioning," "stretching" and "TWA"
2008
Nikki Walton launches CurlyNikki.com, carrying the vocabulary from forums into the blog era
2011
Essence runs a reader feature framed as "Transitioning vs. The Big Chop," marking the term's arrival in mainstream Black women's press
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
United States, nationwide, and internationally wherever the anglophone Black natural hair community reaches · 2000s
Spoken by
Black women primarily; also Black men and mixed-texture wearers going natural
$BIGCHOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady24 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
72/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2002
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Julee Wilson, "3 Natural Hair Bloggers Reminisce About The Early Days Of The Movement," HuffPost Voices, 2020 — first-person account from Patricia Gaines dating Nappturality to 2002
news · reported
■
Essence, "What You Said: Transitioning vs. 'The Big Chop'" (essence.com, c. 2011)
magazine · reported
■
+ Cite a sourceNappturality — record of Patricia Gaines / "Deecoily" founding the site in 2002 as the largest Black natural hair community
reference · archival
See also