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New York, 3:23 AM
Wed Nov 25
57 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/12/09
I know i'm preaching to the choir here but this is all at root less a discussion on racial standards of beauty and more a discussion on the intersection of race and gender IMHO. If it was treated more like that by Chris Rock the full damaging psychology of "perceived blackness" would become apparent. The ways in which that notion of perceived blackness is used to masculinize women of color, and subsequently to marginalize them would come to the forefront. And, as a result, the ways in which a ton of this beauty and hair stuff is black women's unconscious and sad effort to resist this marginalization could be brought up for discussion.
Long hair or a weave doesn't just make you "more white" or "more acceptable" as a black woman(sorry Barbara Walters); it makes you more womanly. And black men's own equation of natural hair with masculinity, of darker skin with masculinity, of anything that codes a woman as "more black" making her less feminine, is an irretrievable part of this discussion.
10/12/09
:-)
10/12/09
10/12/09
"But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering."
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10/12/09
She is black, but comely.
BUT????
That really pissed me off when I was a kid.
10/13/09
10/13/09
10/12/09
Are there a few moms who relax their daughters' hair at age 3? Sure, but that didn't happen to me or to any black women I know.
Are there occasions when getting a relaxer is a dramatic, painful, epically burning experience? Yes, but that's not a common occurrence AT ALL for me or any black women that I know. Most of us don't even use the chemical he mentioned - sodium hydroxide, commonly known as lye - to relax our hair anymore. And no-lye relaxers do have a lower pH so as to be less irritating to the scalp. So the all of the scary soda can dissolving and trauma he expressed came across as a bit overwrought.
Are there foolish people out there who spend $1000+ on a weave, perhaps instead of paying their rent? Yes, but no black woman I've ever met or spoken to ever in life has done such a thing - instead they say that weaves generally run a couple hundred dollars, maybe $500 on a really expensive day. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people spending a thousand bucks they don't have on a weave are the same people doing all sorts of questionable things with their money (maybe rims? unnecessary bling?) and being generally fiscally irresponsible.
I'm not saying Chris Rock lied or anything - people do get burned by relaxers, put chemicals in tiny little girls' hair, and spend beyond their means for the sake of their appearance. But for him to present the more extreme cases and NOTHING ELSE AT ALL in the movie was really irresponsible. Because not only did it not present a really accurate portrait of black women's experience with our hair, it absolutely DID feed into the perception of "OH THOSE CRAZY VAIN BLACK WOMEN!! LOOK AT THE CRAZY, SCARY LENGTHS THEY'LL GO TO IN ORDER TO LOOK WHITE!!!! (Or Indian, as the case may apparently be.) HAHAHAH SO FUNNY!!"
Is that really what anyone needs right now? For black women to be even more otherized, and the choices we make about hair to be portrayed as even more exotic and crazy?
And that's not even touching the gender relations crap that was going on in there. "Never touch a black woman's hair"? Really? Men are perfectly allowed to touch my hair in intimate situations, and again, the vast majority of people I know feel the same way. Oh, and no one is paying for my relaxers either.
There was a lot of generalizing going on in that movie. So while I found it entertaining, funny, and illuminating (especially the segment in India), the worst thing any person could do is walk out of the theater after seeing it and think "Now I know all about black women and their hair!"
Apologies for the length.
10/12/09
I find the space African-Americans inhabit in the world of global consumption terribly fascinating (by which I mean African-Americans inhabit this space of American impoverishment relative to the dominant group a result of hundreds of years of structural inequality but yet also simultaneously inhabit this space of relative privilege to the rest of the brown-skinned "third world" by virtue of the power of the almighty dollar) and I think the weave industry is a really good entry point to have that discussion without judgement or ethnocentrism. If the movie had had time to flesh that out that interesting dichotomy a bit more I would have been so thrilled.
Perhaps that is another movie for another time...
10/12/09
10/12/09
Dodai speaks with regret about the fact that Rock does not counter the high school girls' rejection of natural hair by brining in "someone BRILLIANT with natural hair," and that's a point that the women on this panel bring up as a way to effect change.
It's a great discussion, and it made me even more excited to see Good Hair.
[www.npr.org]
10/12/09
10/12/09
Basically, people need to stop assuming that people who have a weave or extension are just mindless drones who feed into the "nappy hair is bad" mentality. I love when people who can get away with it wear their hair in a natural style, but painting those who don't in a bad light is hypocritical.
And I'm not talking about any commenter on this particular thread, this has been building up for a while, since the whole "Glamour writer says natural hair is bad in the workplace" incident.
10/12/09
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10/12/09
[www.angelrockproject.com]
seems strange to me, but for all we know, her part(s) were edited out of the film.
10/12/09
10/12/09
But I don't know that I want to see the movie, because my fear is it paints us all with a brush that mocks and fetishizes black women (even more than we already are) because we sometimes do crazy things with our hair.
10/12/09
I work at one of the top firms in my industry and there are as many women in my office with natural hair as there are women with relaxed hair.
Maybe it's not the norm to work in an environment where people are valued not for their cosmetic abilities but for their ability to get a job done though I suspect there's a fair amount of mirroring going on in this scene. Having no experience themselves, are they just parroting their mother's / sister's / aunt's beliefs that natural hair is unprofessional or undesirable?
10/12/09
I think which women in America choose to wear their hair natural encompasses several levels of history and access. In my experience natural hair in this country is almost classed to a degree, in that you are more likely to find natural hair on black women in a certain SES (middle to high) or in college or graduate school. The stigma against natural hair still exists in those circles to a high degree but it's almost like a black woman who dares to have natural hair has to be highly credentialed in other areas of her life, to even have a shot at making it in the work world.
10/12/09
But the Daily Beast has an article about how India is the new it place for surrogacy.
[www.thedailybeast.com]
I just feel weird, that if my parents hadn't migrated to this country, I might have been one of those women.
10/12/09
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10/12/09
Though I'm sure some do sell the hair without the supplicant's knowledge.
10/12/09
10/12/09
07/02/09
07/02/09
And weekend? I was totally convinced it was Tuesday until I saw those tags, and checked. Ooof.
07/02/09