This is a very different post for AMERICAblog, but you may find it interesting, thought-provoking, and very much about American culture.
I have quite a few posts on the politics of having kinky hair over at my blog. In the past, people sometimes emailed me to say that they didn't understand how or why hair is political. After Don Imus and the whole "nappy-headed hos" mess, they got a taste of why it is very political. What the former radio talk show host did was touch upon the third rail of race in a way opened up discussions of matters not usually heard in public conversations.
Most black women know what it's like to have an arsenal of hair care products, particularly if you choose to wear your hair straightened with chemical relaxers. [Ironically, most of the Rutgers women's basketball team members had chemically straightened hair, which goes to show you that Imus reduced them to his assumption that black women=nappy hair=unattractive.] I had a cabinet full of "hair product" when I wore processed styles.
And oh, the dreaded hot comb. I am old enough to have experienced the "pleasure" of the thermal hot comb -- you rested it over the gas flame of the stove to heat it up. Then the pressing oil was carefully applied to your hair and that comb sizzled through the kinks till it was bone straight, hissing as you prayed the comb didn't touch your scalp. This is what black women did to emulate straight hair. I say emulate because all it took was water or merely a humid day to revert the hair back to its natural state. But that was the only acceptable style for the working black woman working in the dominant culture.
In 2005 I was interviewed by Heather Barnes, who was working on a documentary project on women and their relationship to their hair from a personal and political perspective. Her blog for the project, Hair Stories, is up and running.
The stories might relate to shaving, first haircuts, having long or short hair, losing their hair, hair and ethnicity, stigma about body hair (either too much or too little), and the cultural and social significance of hair in all its manifestations.
Here's my interview. She's intercut it with photos from my hair journey web page. When you watch it you'll see a tortured hair history in the school photos -- while I'm the product of two black parents, neither had kinky hair; it took a while for my mom to figure out how to take care of mine, particularly dealing with the humidity in NC.
Full freedom for me finally came when I decided in the 90s to toss out the relaxer and cut the dry damaged hair off. I wore a short natural for several years. I began the process of growing locs in November 2000, a style I wear today. Free from the burning hot comb sizzling my scalp, curling irons, flat irons or other instruments of hair torture.
The status quo is still straightened hair, even though we see more natural styles in vogue now. Black women are unfortunately still chastised by family and significant others not to 1) cut their hair or 2) let it be kinky. It's one of those "dirty laundry" matters that people don't want to discuss openly, but when you have such poisonous, enabled self-loathing, it needs sunlight upon it. Look at this ad. It implies that the woman got the job because her hair was chemically straightened. The self-loathing is so culturally ingrained, so pathological -- there is nothing wrong with our hair, but nearly every signal received by the dominant culture is that it needs to be "corrected."
