Entry · catalog no. 1197
box braids
/ /bɑks breɪdz/ /BOKS braydz
noun · Harlem and Black shops nationwide; mainstreamed out of Los Angeles by film · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Individual three-strand braids worked from square or box-shaped sections of the scalp, nearly always with synthetic hair added for length and weight. The name is about the parting: clean squares, visible in the scalp, is the mark of the work. Also called plaits, dookie braids, and kassamas depending on who is talking and where.
“She sat from eight in the morning to nine at night and came out with box braids down her back.”
2.
A protective style in the practical sense — hair put away for weeks at a time, out of the weather and out of daily handling.
“I'm getting box braids before the trip so I don't have to think about my hair for a month.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American, 1980s into the 1990s, as a named style. The braiding itself is far older and African, and there is real archaeological evidence of three-strand braids and hair extensions in Egypt around 1300 BC. But box braids as a style with this name were carried in Black American shops through the 1980s and mainstreamed in 1993. John Singleton has said plainly where the film got them: from a dancer, Jossie Harris, who had worn them in Michael Jackson's Remember the Time video in 1992. In his words, they got the hairstyle from Harlem and put it in a West Coast movie.
1992
Jossie Harris wears the braids in Michael Jackson's Remember the Time, released February — a dated instance more than a year before the film usually credited
1993
Poetic Justice opens 23 July with Janet Jackson in the style; it opens at number one and the term Poetic Justice braids enters general use
2013
John Singleton tells Essence on the film's twentieth anniversary that the look came from Jossie Harris and that they got the hairstyle from Harlem
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem and Black shops nationwide; mainstreamed out of Los Angeles by film · 1990s
Spoken by
Black women and girls nationwide; the shops, the aunties, and the all-day chairs
$BOXBRAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring34 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1992
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
■
Lathleen Ade-Brown, John Singleton on the 20th Anniversary of Poetic Justice, Essence, 23 July 2013
magazine · online
■
Poetic Justice, dir. John Singleton, Columbia Pictures, released 23 July 1993
film · released
■
Michael Jackson, Remember the Time, February 1992
video · released
■
+ Cite a sourceJolanda Bos, on hair and extensions at the South Tombs Cemetery, Amarna, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 2014
journal · printed
See also