"Good Hair"

florabundance

florabundance

Well-known member
Good Hair | Sundance Festival 2009

Quote:
When Chris Rock’s daughter, Lola, came up to him crying and asked, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” the bewildered comic committed himself to search the ends of the earth and the depths of black culture to find out who had put that question into his little girl's head! Director Jeff Stilson’s camera followed the funnyman, and the result is Good Hair, a wonderfully insightful and entertaining, yet remarkably serious, documentary about African American hair culture.An exposé of comic proportions that only Chris Rock could pull off, Good Hair visits hair salons and styling battles, scientific laboratories, and Indian temples to explore the way black hairstyles impact the activities, pocketbooks, sexual relationships, and self-esteem of black people. Celebrities such as Ice-T, Kerry Washington, Nia Long, Paul Mooney, Raven Symoné, Maya Angelou, and Reverend Al Sharpton all candidly offer their stories and observations to Rock while he struggles with the task of figuring out how to respond to his daughter’s question. What he discovers is that black hair is a big business that doesn’t always benefit the black community and little Lola’s question might well be bigger than his ability to convince her that the stuff on top of her head is nowhere near as important as what is inside.

YouTube - Meet the Artists: Chris Rock

I think this is a great thing he's doing. My two young nieces are half Nigerian, (aged 2 and 4), and the eldest always tells me how my hair is nicer and prettier than hers. Her mum, my cousin (we're of mediterranean descent) is forever complaining about how difficult the girls' hair is to manage (she keeps it long, so she can take them to get their hair braided), and she plans to get them relaxers when they're "old enough". I don't know if that makes hair more manageable or whatever, or if it is solely to fit a Western beauty ideal..but I kind of hate that my nieces are going to think that their natural look is something that needs to be improved upon. Thoughts??
 
leenybeeny

leenybeeny

Well-known member
I would love to see this.. we are a very racially mixed family, and my nieces are always comparing howcome one has super curly hair that has to have so much product put in and the other has pin straight hair. This would be so interesting to watch!
 
mtrimier

mtrimier

Well-known member
I'd like to see this as well. I HATE it when my family members go on about "good hair" vs. "bad hair" and how I should be soooo grateful that I got the "good hair" side of the family. ridiculous.
 
MiCHiE

MiCHiE

Well-known member
I can't even believe people still used the term "good hair". As long as this does not turn into "I hate my skin, therefore, I relax my hair", I'm all for it.
 
florabundance

florabundance

Well-known member
Quote:
Editor's Note: Charisse Jones is a New York correspondent for USA Today. A former staff writer for The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, she is co-author of the American Book Award-winning "Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America," published by HarperCollins.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- For too many little black girls, it was a childhood ritual, like pouring make-believe tea.


I would take a pajama top, drape it over my head, and with its sleeves trailing down my back, pretend that the cotton nightshirt was, instead, a flowing mane of hair, like the Breck girl's, or maybe Jaclyn Smith's on "Charlie's Angels" -- neither of whom looked a thing like me.


Now mind you, I was no self-hater. I grew up with scholarly, professional parents who instilled in their children a love of blackness that ranged from the muted to the bellicose; from the dashiki my mother sewed for me to match the one worn by my father, to the Liberian middle name Monsio they bestowed upon me at birth.


But as much as I was black, I was also American and a girl who wanted to be called pretty, and in the 1970s, I knew that to be cute you were supposed to have long, lustrous hair.



Historically, long, straight tresses -- along with pale, white skin -- defined beauty in the United States. Black women, our complexions the hues of a cocoa rainbow and our hair often kinky and short, didn't fit the Eurocentric ideal, and we were made to feel less soft, less lovely, less womanly.



Hair became a thing that we obsessed over, searing it into contrition with hot combs and lye, and assigning it the attributes of good (straight/wavy) and evil (naturally nappy.) Indeed, Madam C.J. Walker, a black woman widely regarded as America's first black female millionaire, earned her fortune devising products and techniques that made our hair "behave."


But while black women may spend the equivalent of a small nation's gross domestic product getting our hair woven, twisted, or permed, it is not sheer vanity that drives us. Rightly or wrongly, the broader world sometimes sees our hair as a window into who we are. Right or wrong, hair does matter. And as Michelle Obama, a black woman who may become the next first lady, undergoes scrutiny, some African-Americans believe there is no better time than now to examine how black women are frequently prejudged and mischaracterized.


It's not surprising. In a society where stereotypes remain a convenient shorthand to sum up others, something as simple as the way a black woman wears her hair could hardly be innocuous. Wear twists or dreadlocks in some circles and you might be seen as too independent, too different -- too black. I know women who have purposely unbraided their cornrows before a job interview to ensure that a hairstyle didn't cost them a job. It might have been a nonissue, but they weren't taking any chances.


In my first book, my co-author, Dr. Kumea Shorter-Gooden, and I spoke of the "shifting'' black women have to do, straddling the tightrope between race and gender, constantly having to put others at ease, and endlessly dodging the minefield of stereotypes. Call out a wrong, and you're angry. Speak too loudly and you must have been raised "in the ghetto." Perform a task less than perfectly and you're unqualified.


Ponder for a moment the controversy surrounding Michelle Obama, most recently caricatured with her husband, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, on the cover of The New Yorker. Her well-coiffed hairdo is not usually a topic of discussion. In fact, her elegant style is often likened to Jackie O's. But on the New Yorker' cover, which satirized many of the smears leveled at the Obamas by some conservative critics, she sports an afro -- along with an assault rifle and battle fatigues.



Some blacks believe that Michelle Obama, with all her complexity, is being reduced to the age-old stereotype of the angry black woman. They view many of her detractors' comments as updated versions of the critiques historically leveled at blacks who made whites uncomfortable. When some of her critics call her arrogant, do they mean "uppity"? Is she unpatriotic or simply "not like us''?


And yet, there is no denying that society's attitudes and perceptions have evolved with time. There is a tolerance of diversity in personal style as well as ethnic background that didn't exist even a generation ago.


Black women in particular are more fully embracing the versatility of that distinct aspect of their beauty -- their fabulously kinky hair.


I doubt many little black girls today are putting nightshirts on their heads and pretending to be Britney or Miley. At least I hope not. As for me, I do straighten my locks, but it's out of habit rather than any deep-seated feeling that straighter, longer hair is prettier than my natural 'fro.


In fact, I'm contemplating a change -- sporting my kinky crown of glory full-time. And I'll greet anyone who questions it with a modified quote from the 19th century abolitionist and suffragist, Sojourner Truth -- "Ain't I -- still -- a woman?''

Commentary: Why it matters how black women wear their hair - CNN.com
 
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