Good Hair/Bad Hair

Black hairstyles are as diverse as the Black community itself. There are naturals, weaves, chemically relaxed styles, braids and dreadlocks, to name just a few. Black hair and its care go well beyond the multibillion-dollar industry it has become and is deeply rooted in Black identity and culture. For many Black parents, having a child walk around with unkempt hair is an almost unpardonable sin. That desire to be well groomed extends into adulthood. In the U.S., barbershops and beauty salons are perhaps second only to Black churches as the oldest institutions in the community. Black people want to look good from the cradle to the grave.

Notice how a Black man with dreadlocks perceived as opposed to say a Black man with short cropped or even with a shaved head. He is not as approachable with the locks. There is the perception and misconceptions of the “angry Black man.” There is no other racial or ethnic group in which hair comes to bear on someone's politics. For Black people, our hair has been infused with these racial politics. Not about hair per se, it's about what hair means, particularly for Black women in terms of racial identity. On one level, hair matters because some outdated ideal still linger, for instance if a Black woman straightens her hair she is "selling out the race" and/or "embracing the white standard of beauty" while women who wear their hair in natural styles are "blacker than thou. No one is saying that about White women, Yellow women or Brown women. If you don’t think so let’s take First Lady Michelle Obama. She has been criticized in certain areas as being radical or too outspoken about race. And this uneases some people. She is a tall dark-skinned woman and that intimidates some people. If now you add an Afro or twistees then she becomes really scary. Remember the cover that The New Yorker magazine ran with a drawing portraying Michelle Obama wearing an Angela Davis-style Afro while “fist bumping” (dapping) a turban wearing Barack Obama. I took it to poke fun at what people really fear. But we are not at the point where we can laugh at Black images, because we, as do others, feel that every Black image reflects on Black people as a whole.



When a child has straight hair, they are told they have “good hair” and while people aren't telling children with curly hair that they have “bad hair,” in reality that is what we are saying. But in reality good hair is not straight hair, but healthy hair is good hair. Chris Rock saw these same attitudes in his young daughters and it helped motivate his new documentary "Good Hair." The film is narrated by Rock and explores Black hair from a variety of angles, including the booming $9 billion Black hair industry and the science behind chemical relaxers used to straighten hair. The comedian spent nearly two years exploring the world of black hair for his documentary. He managed to sit down with a variety of Black celebrities, including actress Nia Long, Maya Angelou and Al Sharpton, and question them about their hair. In the movie, Chris Rock visits barbershops in Harlem, salons in Beverly Hills as well as the extravagant Bronner Brothers Hair Show in Atlanta, where stylists wield their shears in intense hair battles. In the documentary Rock even goes as far as India, which is a major place where the hair from many weaves worn by Black women actually comes from.