Kitsch Magazine: Fall 2015

than just a hairstyle, it was an incredibly powerful symbol of
the civil rights movement.” It is radical in its rejection of the
idea that “‘nappy’ hair [is] unattractive and undesirable” and
that “possessing nappy hair was negative and shameful.” This
article identifies the extent to which wearing your hair in this
“
And as I was realizing this,
certain hairsyles on certain
women began piquing
my interest—women with
long blonde hair, but worn
in dreadlocks; my gut
reaction was a mix of envy,
proprietary anger, and
disdain
”
style was a marker of political affiliation—many women who
had afros did so in imitation of civil rights activist Angela Davis:
“a black person wearing a ‘fro was dubbed as militant and
threatening.” The politicization of black hair was something
you could not escape in the 70s, and as much as wearing a ‘fro
was a symbol of participating in the movement, not wearing
one was by default not participating.
The political nature of black hair didn’t leave us in
the 70s. In the same article, Edwards later comments that the
movement towards natural hair in our own time, a period of
renewed interest in the need for social change around race
issues in America, is parallel to the natural hair movement
of the 1970s. In a similar (though perhaps less intense) way,
wearing your hair natural today makes a statement that you
believe that aesthetic to have as much, if not more worth
than the “European standards,” and carry a subtle but implicit
rejection of those standards. With her light condemning of
“abrasive methods” to “alter who [she] was naturally” and hope
that “it’s not just a style” for her readers, she clearly points to
the unavoidable political affiliations that black women make
with their hair.
This brings us back to the present, to a younger me
thrust into the realization that in America (the magnified
and intensified college-campus version), the way I wear my
hair carries a very particular and very heavy weight. The ten
cornrows my mother learned how to plait across my head are
from a centuries-old African tradition that used to express
kinship, status, religion—a tradition that then moved through
American history, picking up traces of devaluation, critique,
and eventually empowerment. My relaxed hair wasn’t just
something I decided to do when I was 12, it was me participating
in one of the first industries led by and for a marginalized and
excluded social group.
In my new collegiate context I started to work through
all of this new information. I had to come to terms with the
history of women of color in America. I had to learn what new
codes applied to me now that I occupied a new social space. I
realized that I could no longer be blissfully ignorant of the fact
that even if I do my hair based on a whim, it will always carry
the history of people with hair like mine.
And as I was realizing this, certain hairstyles on certain
women began piquing my interest—women with long blonde
hair, but worn in dreadlocks; women braiding thin cornrows
into their straight dark hair, fixing them with beads. Every time
I saw them, my gut reaction was a mix of envy, proprietary
anger, and disdain. At first I tried to quash my negative kneejerk
response to these hairstyles, telling myself that judging
other women for their hair choices was participating in the
practice that I fell victim to. Maybe they weren’t thoughtlessly
following what they assumed was a fad, or callously assuming
wearing their hair that way gave them cultural capital. Perhaps
they know more about the importance of the hairstyle than I;
who am I to judge a prominent scholar or devout Rastafarian
based only on the color of their skin or texture of their hair?
But try as I might I couldn’t wrangle the anger into a generous
benefit of the doubt.
I existed in this limbo for ages, feeling anxious about
how my hair was perceived, about how it was and wasn’t
what I wanted it to be, and anxious about what I thought
was irrational anger. I spent my time resenting that anxiety,
and searching for a way to tame my mane while in Ithaca
(my daunting experience of trying to find a place to get my
hair done as a freshmen in this town is a story for another
time). And then I started hearing grumbles from corners of the
Internet that I stumbled upon during my hair research. I read
about Bo Derek, a white actress, who is famed for popularizing
cornrows in 1979 when Cicely Tyson had been wearing them
on screen in the early 70s. I read about how Madonna wore an
afro in the 90s as one of her many “out there” looks, and how
Lady Gaga did the same with dreadlocks in 2013. I read about
magazines like Elle and Marie Claire touting Gwen Stefani and
Katy Perry as trendsetters of styles like bantu knots and babyhairs
which had been black hairstyles without fanfare for ages.
25