I Am Not My Hair... Or Yours

Since you've never seen me - well, if this is all you get of me, anyway - you wouldn't know that I change my hairstyles frequently.

I am blessed with good hair.  This isn't a boast; you reach my age, you get some sense of what works for you (my hair, my sense of style), and what doesn't (my weight) in terms of looks.  Or at least I do - I'm always a little amazed that others don't think about this stuff. 

Anyway, I have good hair - hairdressers love me.  And I give the love right back. 

My hair is naturally curly and dark.  I have colored it, straightened it, grown it out, cut it short, and had waist-length braids for a time. I like to be a chameleon, to leave the office on a Friday with straight hair and return on Monday with short and curly in an entirely different shade.

I've learned some things about people through my hair. Like the fact that if you can make it into your forties as a guy with a full head of hair, no matter what you do with it, in some ways you've already won. One of the deepest lessons, though, for me has been the power of societal norms (and actually, being bald is part of that, too).  Whenever I cut my hair into a short, fairly military style, with some curls on top, I know that I will get a number of this reaction: "Oh, you cut your hair!  It looks so... good!" [look of relief on face] "you look so much more... normal." Or some such.  People want boy haircuts on boys, girl haircuts on girls. (I have a number of close friends - my Mom included - who, when I bring this up, say "but your hair looks so nice when it's natural."  Perhaps.  But I stand for the proposition that mixing things up is good, and on the receiving end of these comments, I can tell you, the "thank God you now look like a boy and fit my expected norms" aspect is hard to miss.)  I haven't followed Sanjaya's travails on Idol that closely, but that Diana Ross 'do he's got going leapt out to me as someone challenging society's expectations... and paying for it.

One of the things that's kind of been swept aside as the Imus story unfolded is the "nappy headed" aspect of his "nappy headed hos" comment.  Since the Civil Rights era, at least, the hair and styles of African Americans, especially women, have been tied up in our politics.  Dealing with the tight, coarse kinks and curls of black hair - straightening, braiding, "naturals," etc - is frought with all kinds of meaning.  I remember vividly the moment in college when a black woman explained to me, patiently and somewhat incredulously, that Diana Ross had a hair weave.

(I've since had one done, mostly to understand what it entails.  It's a new sensation to have your hair sewn in.)

It's easy to miss both how offensive the "nappy-headed" comment was and how, like Ann Coulter's "faggot" comment, part of what this is about is a sensitivity to having something fundamental about who you are turned into a negative.  As much as I'm concerned with how I look, I am not my hair; no one look captures all of who I am or who I want to be.  Watching those polished women - I keep going back to those Rutgers women at their press conference - with their mostly straightened hair, I was struck by how their off-court look differed from their on-court look.  The mistake Imus (and others, since) made, most fundamentally, was to go with an "image is everything" approach to the way these women looked on court.  If they looked tough - braiding their hair close to their heads for ease and comfort, mainly - then that's what they must be: tough, mannish women who could beat up their opponents if needed. Street tough. Nappy headed.

I finally caught Spike Lee's Bamboozled yesterday morning - a fantasia about the notion that an old style black minstrel show could become a hit for a UPN like TV network - and I was struck most (because the film, while interesting, never quite gets where it needs to be - much like Do The Right Thing or Jungle Fever) by the images Lee selects from the past.  Nowhere does America's shallow emphasis on looks come hard up against its politics than in the question of racial differences.  And we can't have it all ways - saying that looks aren't everythng, while we continue as a society to act as if they are - without running into walls the way Don Imus did.

Jennifer keeps asking me "why can't we just move on" from the Imus/Rutgers incident (and, like yesterday, then raising topics that caused us to discuss it for nearly 25 minutes). I hope a discussion of hairstyles will help ease her pain; but I think the point is that there's a lot to examine here about what happened and why, what it means... and what it doesn't.  Personally, I bring this up, because I love any opportunity to thread in India.Arie's latest album, which I really liked, and which led off with "I Am Not My Hair".

The image of who we are is not necessarily all of who we are - and that, Red, is my point about America not knowing how to separate the notion of vibrant sexy black woman from the word whore - and part of dealing with the differences in our society is changing some of the notions about how we look at looks, including hair - straight, braided or nappy.  This one isn't going to go away.

Comments

[Jennifer]

I think you love any opportunity to thread in Ann Coulter.