A F R O C H I C K M A G A Z I N E | Vol. 1 (December 2013) | Page 14

A F R O C H I C K | M A G A Z I N E 14

women. As she explains, “black hair as a window into African American women’s ethnic and
gender identities, and black hair as a linguistic and cultural engagement with these identities ...
presents opportunities for learning and change, thus offering insights into the discursive and
corporeal dynamics of African American women’s being and becoming [4]”(p. 4-5). Similar to
Jacobs-Huey, in this article, I present a cross-section of black hair, and am concerned with
women’s everyday conversations about hair care, but my intent is to extend the discussion
beyond black women’s lives, the beauty parlor, and “kitchen beauticians” [5] to the wider black
hair care industry and the external pressures (e.g. from the media and in the workplace). Further,
while in Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair In America, Ayana D. Byrd and Lori I.
Tharps (2001) provide a detailed survey of black hair from its historical roots to the business and
politicization of black hair, and they describe the ritualistic nature of black hair, and how
“straightening” serves as a rite of passage for most young black girls from childhood into
adolescence and womanhood (see p. 137-152), I attempt to move beyond surveying ritual and
community to examining the damage that years of hair alteration can cause, as well as the sociopsychological issues that underpin the ritualistic practice of altering one’s hair, and it serving as a
rite of passage. Ruth’s hairstory is the perfect tipping off point to the discussion.
Born in Trinidad, Ruth immigrated to Canada in 1970. Soon thereafter, she became very selfconscious about her hair. “My hair was short and it was natural and I begged my mother to buy
me a wig,” she recalls. “I begged and begged and harassed her until she actually bought me a
wig, it was an Afro wig, but still a wig. I remember one day we were playing jump rope in the
yard and my wig fell off. I was in grade six or seven and all the kids were laughing at me.
Looking back on it now, I would have been laughing, too.” Her decision to wear dreadlocks did
not happen because of her love of reggae music, or a conversion to Rastafari. A self-dubbed
“weave queen,” she used to straighten her hair (since age 15) and wear weaves and braids until
excessive damage, among other things, led her to rethink her hair choices. “I recognized the fact
that the reason I was perming and weaving my hair was because of self-hatred,” she says. Selfhatred seems like such a harsh word. Other women wear their hair in various hairstyles, too;
short hair, long hair, shaven, dyed, spiked, even wigs and weaves, and no one attributes their
hairstyling choices to self-hatred. “I think it would be unfair to say that you can compare another
race’s hair issues with ours,” argues Ruth. “People don’t understanding that we have to re-learn
how to take care of our hair,” says Ruth about the history of hair alteration. It seems almost hard
to believe. How is it possible that millions of black women do not know how to care for their
hair? And, why do so many feel they have to hide their natural hair? As a professional who sees
the end result of years of hair alteration, Ruth believes that women in large part see no option but
to alter their hair because of the images we are inundated with of women whose hair is very long,
silky, flowing and mostly blonde. In the media, many of the black women who are glorified for
their beauty tend to be women who also have long, wavy hair (Patton, p. 39-40, 2006). Further,
when you consider that for the past 100 years manufacturers have almost exclusively only
promoted the idea that natural black hair needs to be altered, it all begins to make sense. When
was the last time short, curly, kinky black hair was celebrated or promoted as equally as
beautiful? As sociologist Ann DuCille notes, “We have yet to see Miss America or Black Miss
Universe with an Afro or cornrows or dreadlocks” (cited in Byrd & Tharps, 2001, p. 125). To no
surprise, there have been several instances over the past few years where natural black hair has
been under attack.