Jezebel 
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New York, 9:22 PM
Sat Nov 28
17 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/14/09
You get the WTF award of the year! Congratulations. You are a super conformist with serious issues of self-worth, self-awareness and ultimately self-actualization.
My kids have been raised not do what others do just because they do it. What a strange world you live in.
10/14/09
10/14/09
The Jolie-Pitt kids are allowed to have their own personality.
Why should Zahara or her mother have to bow down to America's fucked up issues with black hair (yes I know these issues do exist in other countries but it's on another level in the States)?
I'm so sick of people talking smack about the hair that grows out of our heads.
Also her parents had bigger things to worry about when she was adopted, like whether or not she was going to live.
This article really pissed me off. Calling a kid's healthy head of hair "hot mess?" She's four.
10/14/09
It took about a year and you have no idea how many times my mom told me what she thought of my decision. She didn't think I was caring for it properly, it didn't look healthy, I couldn't do anything "nice" with it (practically had a conniption fit over the 'do for my sister's wedding).
I haven't been home in MONTHS (live outta the country), visited last month and it wasn't too long before she told me it wasn't "shiny" enough. With the way natural hair coils, if it's "shining", that means you have waaay too much product in it and you're getting close to a jheri curl.
Even though my mom makes comments here and there, she's never just full-on destructive with it. I understand that she comes from an older generation that sees Afros as a little too radical for her conservative upbringing. Fair enough. I still do what I want with my own hair.
It's every woman's decision what should be done with her hair and as far as everyone else goes, they can just screw themselves. It's really sad that this Black writer goes into how terrible it is that Black women think they have to force their hair into these European ideals and blah blah blah, but then tears down a toddler for rockin' what God gave her? She really doesn't help break down what she seems to see as the systematic oppression of Black women's hair and just let a a little Black girl's hair BE.
10/14/09
Samuels articule reads to me as someone form the old generation imparting her ideas about how you're supposed to do something. Zahara is not African-American. Thankfully her parents are instilling the idea in her that her personal worth is not related to her hair.
I'd sit here and write a thesis about women's fashion and how women gleefully play into a social construct which subjugates them, but who has the time.
10/14/09
10/14/09
It takes "European" kids' parents no time or effort to achieve "European-looking" hair. By having the "default" hair, white kids get the privilege of not having to worry about whether they are conforming to beauty standards at such a young age. For me, I just got a bob until I was old enough to choose how I wanted my hair cut, and to take care of it myself. Maybe Angelina Jolie remembers how nice it is not to feel the pressure to live up to certain beauty standards when you're 4.
It's pretty clear Jolie doesn't think the default has to be "white hair," even if that is attributable to ignorance. I'd have to assume that Samuels doesn't think it's fair that black girls should *have* to conform to white girl hair standards, so is her problem really that Angelina Jolie doesn't think so? And that it's unfair that a white woman is flouting black cultural hair norms with impunity, when these very norms were put into place because of a system of racism that was started, and is perpetuated by white people in the first place?
Maybe it is unfair, and maybe in the long-run it could hurt Zahara if the Jolie-Pitts didn't recognize the issues that Peterson has mentioned come up in interracial/cultural adoptions -- because Zahara probably will in fact have to deal with racism at some point in her life. But for now, she's only 4, and I really don't see how it would be better if Z's white mom told her that she needed to make her hair look more "European."
ADDED: and I think, objectively, Zahara's hair is cute, but I agree with the commenters below that a woman's looks should not be up for public debate. Still, cuter than my bowl-cut bob at 4.
10/14/09
I am having a hard time deciding which part of the sentence pisses me off the most.
10/14/09
And who knows. Maybe Zahara and Heidi Klum's two boys have started a trend. Won't that make the OP's head explode.
10/14/09
No one complains if a little White girl doesn't have her hair in a pony tail or braids every day. Mine would go all over the place and get in my eyes at that age but no one was writing articles about it. Zahara is four, let her have some time where she's free to be a kid and not subjected to society's notions of how a woman should look. Geez, she's an adorable little girl and looks happy and loved, leave her alone.
10/13/09
Female attractiveness is not like water usage, public parking, or mass transit; It is not a matter up for discussion. It's a private issue.
Actually, this is ironic that I'm writing this on a website that makes its living dissecting and analyzing female attractiveness.
But Zahara is just a little girl. Can't we wait until she is at least 18 before we start making crazy demands on her and her parents?
10/13/09
10/13/09
I can't believe that someone would take it upon themselves to critique a four-year-old's hair. Maybe, just maybe, she likes it that way? She doesn't want to sit still for cornrows? Hot combing sounds unbelievably painful?
A few threads up someone snarked about possible grey roots on Angelina's head (ZOMG SHE'S GETTING OLD WE NEED A NEW ONE). Do we think that maybe Ms Jolie recognises the ridiculousness that her children, particularly the girls, are going to go through in life about their looks and perhaps is giving them free reign to become the people they want to be?
10/13/09
It completely bums me out that the majority of the black female community has such a difficult relationship with their hair. If they could learn to feel beautiful as they were naturally made- something that is fostered by not having to have your hair painfully straightened (whether chemically or not) on a regular basis as a child in order to fit in with your family and those around you- there would be a lot less fake hair around.
10/13/09
Just a quick point:
I think we should avoid lumping all 'blacks' together. Z is Ethiopian. Thus, her ethnic roots are Cushitic. Most African-Americans ancestry is traced back to slavery and the majority of slaves to the United States were from West/Southern Africa, therefore their roots are from a entirely different ethnic groups from that of Zahara.
Cushitic's are Afro-Asiatic and have different facial features as well as hair texture than African Americans.
10/13/09
Zahara's and Mercy's parents shouldn't be compared anymore than Heidi Klum and Seal's kids should be held up as a template for other parents of biracial children. It's pretty obvious in this case, that their children's hairdos are not about neglect and more about lifestyle. The Jolie-Pitts are more Bohemian, whereas Madonna may be used to a much more traditional relationship with her daughter's hair, like she had with Lourdes.
My mother immigrated from Japan, with zero knowledge of American culture, black or white. Somehow she figured out the hair products that my father used would make her 6 biracial daughters hair more manageable. It was during the politically charged era of Angela Davis, who wore an afro that we all envied, but my mother was more focused on the importance of good conditioning.
When we were older, we could wear our hair whichever way we chose. Nappy, straightened, afros, curls. Zahara gets to do that now and I wish people like Samuels would stop saying things like, "To many, she'll be just a black little girl-and a black girl with bad hair at that.
10/13/09
It's hard for me to reconcile my memory of those beautiful women with the knowledge that Americans with the same type of hair seem to hate it so much. I hope that Zahara hangs onto that part of her African heritage and thinks of herself as strong and powerful, instead of being tied down by the American hang-ups over the "right" kind of hair.
10/13/09
Zahara is FOUR. There will be plenty of time for her to wrangle with our country's screwed up cultural standards as they intersect with the hair on her own head, should she and her family so choose.
10/13/09
Lamesauce.