Girl, Your Hair is Unbeweavably Natural: Untangling the Social Politics Around African American Hair

“Is that all yours, Daysha?” my good white friend from home inquired one day over the summer.

“Yes,” I replied.

“It’s so long now. I love it. You should keep it this way.”

While my friend meant no disrespect by her comment, I could feel this bittersweet taste smacking against my tongue as I replied, “Yes, I like it too.” But often I wonder whether or not I actually told her the truth.

For years it has puzzled me as to why my hair has always ended up as the topic of discussion; the inquisitive stares, the symphonies of “oo’s and ah’s” as unwanted hands and invasive fingers wiggled their way into my hair. “It’s just my hair,” I wanted to scream as people continued to pet me like some poodle but for African-American women, it is not just hair, it is a revolutionary statement.

As one of the women in Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, put it, I have been addicted to “creamy crack” since the seventh grade. More commonly known as a perm, relaxer, or in a milder form, a texturizer, these products have allowed many African-American women the ability to achieve a more European standard of beauty. Many African-American women, for at least some part in their lives, have succumbed to this dangerous addiction.

Rock discovers in his documentary that relaxers are mainly composed of sodium hydroxide, a chemical that, when left on the scalp long enough, not only alters the curl pattern of one’s hair to make it straighter, but physically and mentally strips away pieces of African-American women’s lives as it has done for over two hundred years.

Like Rock, I have been on the quest for “good hair” since birth. As a child, I never understood why my hair did not bounce or fall smoothly down my back like my best friend’s hair– why I didn’t have that “good hair.” My hair was thick, nappy and completely unmanageable. I vividly remember the startling snaps of brushes and combs ringing through my ears followed by my mother’s heavy sighs.

Heaven forbid I asked her to hot comb my hair, which involved putting a metal comb over a fire and pressing my hair straight. This process always took a long time only to last a few hours or a day at best. I hated my hair, but what I did not realize was that society hated my hair, and I had fallen prey to its oppressive and expensive cycle. Rock reveals in Good Hair that just making the relaxer is a $9 billion industry alone. Additionally properly applying the relaxer in a salon costs between $60-80 per visit every six-to-eight weeks.

Despite the economic strains having a relaxer places on African-American women, in Good Hair, Comedian Paul Mooney reminds the viewers of the timeless adage among the African-American community: “If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed but if your hair is nappy, white people ain’t happy.” Though my friend from home loved my “hair,” the hair that she loved was not even really my own, and I wondered if she still would have had the same loving feelings towards my naturally nappy hair.

African-American women with natural hair or contemplating going natural often wonder whether their hair choice will affect their job prospects. In a candid conversation with a group of young African-American females at Santa Monica High School, Rock asked them how they felt their hair might affect their job searches. A lump of anger swelled in my throat when all the women began to unintentionally attack the lone woman who decided to keep her hair natural. One woman claimed that having a big afro and a business suit just seemed “out of place.” Despite the harshness of their comments, I had to admit that these young women were right.

In every ad, image, or portrayal of a “successful” African-American woman in the media, advertisers usually depict her with straight, sometimes light colored, hair. Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, Tyra Banks: all beautiful, successful women either rocking a weave or a perm. So why wouldn’t young African-American women link success with straight hair? The media throws it in our faces every day. Diane Simon exposes in her book Hair that when relaxers first became available on the market, many white-owned beauty companies targeted black newspapers and filled thirty to forty percent of the ad space available with ads that seduced African-American women into believing they would not obtain success, love, or happiness without straight hair.

While relaxers developed out of a racially oppressive climate in America, they now play an integral part in African-American culture. The hair salon has become a sacred place in the African-American community, like a town meeting house where women indulge in each other’s stories, company, and advice– a place of healing on a multitude of levels.

Yet I am still grappling with the fact that African-American women have been cornered into making a statement with whatever hairstyle they choose to maintain. In my home town of Cambridge, MA, almost every African-American woman I knew either chemically treated their hair or wore wigs and weaves; I rarely saw people with afros or dreadlocks.

Upon coming to Scripps, however, I felt overjoyed and conflicted at the number of natural hairstyles I saw around campus. I faced an internal struggle with myself where I felt less “authentic,” especially whenever I had in a weave or a wig. “To keep my hair the same texture as it grows out of my head,” however, as articulated by Tracie Thoms in Good Hair, “ is looked at as revolutionary.” This notion most likely harkens back to the civil rights period where the afro symbolized revolution and radical change.

I did not want to be an oppressed conformist, but I did not want to be a radical revolutionary. I just wanted to be me. African-American women, like all women, indulge in getting their hair done and changing up their appearance, and it is unjust and unfair that society critically labels us every time we do so.  Now reaching a critical point on my quest for hair acceptance, I have recognized that I may never obtain “good hair.” But that’s okay; no matter what way I choose to style my hair, it will always be “good enough” hair.