Hot Takes and Hot Presses: The Hair Essay
My little brother recently began using my hair products, and I am honestly so proud. The
leave-in conditioner that has, for reasons unbeknownst to me, become too heavy
for my coils has taken his hair from bad to boujee. God is good.
Everyone in the Evans clan, with the exception of my bald-headed dad, has gone
natural. For those of you who aren’t hip to modern African-American lingo,
“gone/going natural” refers to the transition from relaxed (chemically
straightened) hair to luscious, kinky, curly locks that grows naturally from
the scalp. The hair culture in my household has changed significantly these
past few years. Save for a wedding here or there, my older sister, Rachel,
doesn’t even apply heat to her hair anymore. I have spent the year wearing my
hair in Afros, with some box or
crochet braids when I have time and the budget allows. Ryan, the aforementioned
little brother, gives himself waves rather than shaving his hair to the
quick.
The changes in my house were most recently exemplified last Saturday night.
While I am certainly not the sportiest person, my family is made up of ballers.
The time was (roughly) 9:30 PM, and 4/5 of the Evans family sat watching Game 4
of the NBA Finals in various rooms of the house. Mom sat by her CapTel phone,
eyes glued to Chef Curry, regrettably missing most of his shots. Rachel was in
her bedroom, clad in a shining blue and gold #30 Jersey. Dad was doing
something forgettable, and I, of course, was on my phone. My interest in
American sports is almost entirely dependent on the number of friends I can
piss off by re-tweeting trash-talk on Twitter.
Me, pre-Twitter fingers
I was searching for inflammatory Draymond Green gifs as the Dubs lost Game 4 (a
loss my sister had successfully predicted earlier in the week) and caught an
Ava DuVernay tweet about the Black Panther teaser premiering during the game.
Besides my first name, I don’t relate much to DC or Marvel comics. I’ve always
been more of a non-graphic novel fan, but when this Black girl heard of a
majority Black cast in a major superhero film, she decided to give it a chance.
I was hopeful, but not expectant as the teaser began to play, though I very
quickly lost myself in it.
By the time “Black Panther” branded itself on the TV screen, my knees were
pressed against my chest and I could feel my eyes warming with tears. My sister
ran into the dining room, and we both looked at our mother. I completely forgot
about Wonder Woman; the image of Angela Bassett and her GRAY DREADLOCKS
burned into my soul.
“Mom, they all have hair like me!” I screamed, “And none of them are
light-skinned or blue eyed.”
Lupita Nyong'o and Florence Kasumba in Black Panther
There’s something magical about seeing brown people on screen, lit correctly,
with natural hair that doesn’t necessarily hit their asses. When Black
Panther hits theaters, I intend on rolling up to the cinema with
Kendrick Lamar playing in the background as I wear a dashiki.
The blockbusting Black dollars it’ll make will send a clear message to the
world: Black is beautiful in all its blues and purples, curls and kinks, and
unbothered blackness. I look forward to Halloweens when little kids will dress
up as the King of Wakanda, his friends and foes, without feeling out of place.
And maybe, just maybe, more teenage boys will feel comfortable enough to buy
the natural hair care products they steal from their sisters. And their sisters
will be more affirmed in their identities, complicated and all, as it pertains
to hair.
Hair is such an important part of my identity as a Black woman and a writer. In
a world where Beyoncé’s “Formation,” a song about self-loving “Negro nose[s]
and Afros” is painted as anti-cop and controversial, including people of color
(PoC) in literature, film, and music is a necessary risk to take. One of the
ways I do this, besides mentioning brown skin or ethnic background directly, is
describing hair. And even that is sometimes overlooked by friends and
classmates. There’s a whole generation of readers who think Hermione Granger
and Katniss Everdeen are white, for God’s sake.
This is not to say that hair and its complications concerning identity are
exclusively confined to PoC communities or fictional representation. Hair,
whether you have it or not, touches everyone. I’m not even close to fully
understanding my own head of hair, and I’m sure the rest of the world has a
ways to go. I am, however, an extremely curious individual blessed enough to
have friends willing to answer questions about their hair experiences.
Many of the friends with whom I spoke identify as female, and the topics they
touched upon in conversation often related hair with their femininity. “Ever
since I cut [my hair] short in September, I’ve realized that I definitely felt
more secure in my identity when I had long hair,” NYU rising sophomore Amelia
Murray says. Sabeena N Singhani, another rising sophomore at NYU, expressed
similar thoughts, sharing her experience of “growing [her] hair out really long
[…] almost to prove [her] femininity” before also cutting her hair for a Locks
of Love when she was 16 years-old. Reflecting on her decision to donate her
hair, Sabeena says that she “realized hair has nothing to do with how ‘woman’
you are,” which is a hard, but important value for many people to learn.
Diamond Naga Siu, a rising junior at NYU, says that her crisp, short cut
“shapes how I think people perceive me,” explaining that, in her experience,
people “second guess a girl without hair.” Diamond Naga’s hair is also significant
within the context of her faith, Buddhism. Each strand of hair is a secular
attachment, and shaving gives up those attachments. Despite public perception,
Diamond Naga says she is happier with short hair because “when it’s longer, it
weighs [her] down.”
I spoke with Alia Warsco, another rising sophomore at NYU, about hair and
identity, and our discussion quickly focused on hair and artistic expression.
Regardless of gender identity, the body is a canvas—this is why gender is a
performative presentation. Rather than using hair as means to subscribe to
binary understandings of masculinity and femininity (long hair=woman, short
hair=man) Alia’s hair affirms their craft as an artist. “I started to cut [my
hair] shorter and dye it unnatural colors and it turned into a really cool
outlet for me,” Alia says, “…the more I really got interested in art, the more
I started expressing myself through my hair, so the different stages of hair
has […] captured my journey as an artist.” They continued to explain that
their hair “acts as another medium that [they] can push some creativity onto
[…] like tattooing,” but temporary. Towards the end of our discussion, Alia
expressed upsides and downsides to having hair that isn’t necessarily
conventional. “I think my hair kind of opens a cool conversation with people
[…] most conversations I have with strangers tend to start with my hair,” Alia
says, before continuing, “People just touching my hair is definitely way more
uncomfortable.… It just feels like my personal space is being invaded,” a
sentiment to which I can relate. For me, hair being touched can either feel
extremely dehumanizing—much like an unwanted hug—or one of the warmest, most
intimate ways I can connect with someone.
Growing up socialized to view straight tresses as the norm, I
often felt my difference was detrimental to my image. NYU sophomore Syanne Rios
remembers the first time her mother flat-ironed her hair. “I looked damn good,”
she says, but “grew an addiction to the straight hair look […] and really
damaged my hair.” Even though she has grown to embrace the natural waves and
curls of her hair, Syanne admits that “when everyone tells you that you look
better with straight hair, you feel incredibly ugly when it isn’t.”
My yearning for a supposed normal led to a solid year of
begging to get a perm before my mother, reluctantly, allowed me to change my
hair. I’ll never forget the feeling of beauticians dragging a comb through my
hair, slathering cold relaxer onto my roots, and telling me to call them over
when it started to burn. It is truly a miracle I’m not bald from all the
chemical burns I sustained for silky, curl-less hair. When I finally decided
that the pain and cost of perming my hair were no longer worth my own
self-loathing, I went natural, and discovered a whole new world. My experience
is not dissimilar to those of Black women around the world.
According to market research from Mintel, relaxer sales
have experienced “a drop of 24 percent since 2009” signaling a shift in
practices regarding Afro-textured hair. Going natural has become more
mainstream, with actors like Lupita Nyong’o and Viola Davis flaunting their
afros on Oscar red carpets with reckless abandon. Unfortunately, a movement as
uplifting and dramatic as that of the natural hair community is not free from
the swift rebuke of Eurocentric society. A little over two years ago, Giuliana
Rancic said Zendaya seemed like she “smell[ed] like patchouli oils. . . . and weed”
for wearing faux locs to the Academy Awards, and micro-aggressive comments like
those are not confined to celebrity circuits. Last month, a high school junior
was told her afro was “out of control” and began to “sit in the back so
[her hair] wouldn’t cause a distraction.” Despite the judgment, discrimination,
and nastiness, Black women, as per usual, persist.
The world of natural hair care is vibrant, dynamic, and full of life, with its
own unique vernacular to boot. FIT rising junior Ashley Grissom puts it best
saying, “Hair is a part of my identity, especially as a Black woman.” A useful
bit of knowledge for newcomers is the Andre Walker hair typing system. Made up
of two categories (1-4, A-C), Walker’s hair typing aims to make it easier to
find products that work best for every kind of hair because, like people, all
hair is different. When asked to discuss her hair, Morgan Smith, a sophomore at
NYU, says “my first thought as a Black woman [is] 3C” a type that, according to NaturallyCurly.com,
“resembles tight corkscrews” and is “fine in texture, though packed tightly
together on the head.” While I use the Walker system to characterize my hair
when discussing it, this is of course not the case for all Black folks. NYU
rising junior Esther Phambu describes her hair as being “its own person:
beautiful, stubborn […] hav[ing] a hard time when she’s ignored.” Malikia
Hamilton, a student at St. John’s University, also doesn’t subscribe to hair
typing, exclaiming instead that her hair is “cute, actually—all natural.”
Having grown up in spaces where Black hair isn’t always celebrated, the
uplifting diction of these women is just as encouraging as the increasing
on-screen representation I mentioned before.
Ashley, Esther, Malikia, and Morgan also discussed their transitions from
relaxed to natural hair, an important topic to broach when thinking of
blackness and hair. I asked everyone I spoke with about their definitions of
“good hair,” and the only people to discuss the connections between that term
and race were the Black women interviewed. Morgan is currently “working on
deconstructing [her] definition of good hair,” continuing to say that her
“family members instilled in [her] the idea of good hair being relaxed.” Esther
expressed a similar sentiment, saying that “good [hair] used to be silky hair,
now it’s whatever makes me look like me.” That can be a hard concept to grasp
for all types of people, but with time and effort, self-image changes. A lot of
practices help to adjust perception—Malikia makes her own shampoos and
conditioners, and often wears different head wraps and scarves to protect her
hair. “When I wear those cultural pieces, I feel really confident,” Malikia
says, describing her actions as a display of “Black Girl Magic.”
“I own me. I own myself,” Malikia says. And that’s what this is
all about, right? Owning oneself as both an individual and member of
overlapping communities. I understand this as a Black woman more than anything
else, and my decision to go natural has served to strengthen my sense of self
and relationships with Black women. “Spiritually, Black hair definitely
connects specifically Black women to one another,” Morgan says, “I feel
validated by the spiritual connection we all have to one another.”
The relationship I have with my hair is ever-changing, and
there are many damaging ideas about how it relates to my beauty, blackness, and
womanhood I still have to unlearn. Bonding over twist-out horror stories,
botched haircuts, and heat damage has validated my identity. I hope my story
and the other stories told can help someone along in their own journey, even if
that bit of progress is knocking on your sister’s door one morning and asking
for some conditioner.
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