ARCTICLE: GOOD HAIR REVIEW
August 8, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
Good Hair: Review: Investigating the psychological and economic motives that fuel the black hair industry.
For many white people, the documentary Good Hair will be revelatory as well as entertaining. For many black people, it’s not news; what is new is that Rock is talking about it — in a movie aimed at the mainstream. As the movie opens, Rock says in the voice-over that he decided to investigate the meaning of good hair after his little daughter asked him one day, “Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?” Now where did she get that idea?
In Good Hair, Rock sets out to explore the historically fraught concept of “good hair,” which for African Americans burdened by the twin legacies of slavery and racism has traditionally been defined as hair more like white people’s. He ponders the concept that black women, commit to countless hours and throw away massive amounts of money in hair salons to make their hair straighter and silkier because they want to look white?
In the film, to make a satiric point that no one wants black people’s hair, Rock gathers some up and tries to flog it on the streets of L.A — and fails to sell a single strand. The deeper issue continues to be glossed over, which is why do minority women in America feel so much pressure to conform to a mainstream standard of beauty that is hard to attain? The hair on a woman’s head is her crowning glory but yet black women all over the world choose to either strip it theirs of their uniqueness and authenticity or hide it under someone else’s dead hair; succumbing to the pressure to fit in with Caucasians in this western society.
Do you know that straightening your hair was just as bad as bleaching your skin? Black is beautiful, in so many ways, and by conforming to society’s view of Good Hair we are stripping ourselves of what ultimately defines us a people. “What’s more pain, a chemical burn or childbirth?” Chris Rock asks a roomful of women getting their hair relaxed. (Afro hair can only be straightened with the highly toxic sodium hydroxide-infused relaxer otherwise known as “creamy crack”.) In my opinion, “creamy crack” is an apt description of relaxer because once you get hooked the first time there is no going back. It’s going to take drastic measures to beat that addiction because that in-between stage when you hair is half natural and half relaxed will have some women feigning for a box of Dark and Lovely No Lye Relaxer.
What amazes me is the alarming practice of some parents by putting toxic relaxer chemicals on toddlers’ hair. This all stems from an internalized racism, and the fact that the European standard of beauty is so pervasive that some women will literally burn their scalps or buy astronomically priced weaves in order to get straight “white” hair. In the film, Rock says he was surprised by what he found out about hair. “I knew women wanted to be beautiful, but I didn’t know the lengths they would go to, the time they would spend — and not complain about it,” he says. “In fact, they appear to look forward to it.”
If you look beyond the psychological influence and pain, there is a world of economic injustice. The $9bn/£17bn black hair industry is owned almost entirely by Asian manufacturers and the lucrative weave business, which constitutes more than half of that market, depends on a hair supply from India, where unsuspecting and unremunerated women sacrifice their hair in religious rituals. In a country marred by enormous poverty, hair is worth more than gold. The black hair care industry makes more money than the drug trade and we as a people do not reap the gross profits from it. We are manipulated and brainwashed into thinking that by sowing, weaving and gluing Asian and Caucasian hair into our hair that somehow improves our appearances and increases our level of attractiveness. Somehow along the way between slavery and segregation we lost a sense of who we are. Women, our hair is our crowning glory and I think it is time we work with what God gave us instead of trying to conform to western society.
By: Nichole Jackson for MEBB
