Pajiba

hair is pretty important in the african-american history and has continued to be a critical part of identity development for women - to go into how central and relevant hair can and has been for black folks would take awhile, but suffice it to say - it's not a pointless conversation/topic.

Quite frankly, as a former sylist, I find african-american hair and all of it's ummmm styles quite intersting. If it also explores the social and cultural significance of why it's so important, I think it could be very enlightening. I bet he weaves a good tale.

I was going to say something really erudite but then admin's pun got me.

It got me, ya'll!!!!!

Really, Dustin? Are you being obtuse?

I'm white and I know how important hair is in black culture, mostly for women, somewhat also for men. Can you imagine if Michele Obama kept her natural? How much fucking fuel on the fire that would be?

Did you see School Daze? Didja?

That said, who knows if Chris Rock's documentary will actually be worthwhile and add anything to the already lengthy discussion.

For the record, MO's hair is "natural" she just a really good press. No relaxer for the First Lady.

Like I said on another site that posted about his trailer, I have a BIG problem with anyone placing a negaive or postive value on anybody's personal choices.

I think you were in way over your white on this post, DR.

Any non white ethnic group still has one advantage with hair, they can cut it all off, and look perfectly fine. Hell, even black women can cut off all their hair and look fine, white people of both genders look like walking penis's without hair, and the only way to make up for it is to get a tattoo, grow a beard, or be Patrick Stewart.

I went to school in a majority black area and all the kids in my class of both genders would constantly play with my long, fine, straight blonde hair. All of them told me how lucky I was to have such "good" hair. When I went over to my friend's houses I would see stacks of styling products in their bathrooms, things I'd never heard of or used. They all got up earlier than me just to get their hair done, and all of them were going to the stylist even at elementary school age. One of my best friends was mixed race and no one believed her dad was black because she had smooth hair with fat curls in it instead of "black hair".

So, yeah, it's a big topic that relates to self esteem, self worth and self image for black women especially and the indoctrination starts early. I know Mr.Rock said that he made this movie after one of his daughters asked him why she didn't have "good hair" and so I have hopes that it will be a good documentary.

I think the hair you're born with, whatever texture, is "good hair." That's the message all kids need, regardless of race (but black kids may need to hear it more). No one should feel more or less worthy because of it - but the desire for straight hair and disdain for non-straight hair (and you should note that black people have a wide variety of hair types, not just kinky) goes back to the days of slavery.

I think it could be really interesting. It's an aspect I can only guess at as the owner of semi-fine straight hair. To be honest, I can barely style my own hair, much less anyone else's. So at slumber parties growing up, I certainly didn't try to play hairdresser. Plus, the black girls wouldn't let me near their hair. They knew I would fuck it up.

Whoopi Goldberg did a whole bit in one of her standup acts in the 80’s about a little black girl with a shirt draped over her head, telling all the adults that she had “long luxurious beautiful blonde hair”. I did that.

In the 70's and 80's almost all there ever were in catalogs, print ads, and on tv, were white women. White women with long luxurious hair, white women with short sassy hair, and the extremely rare black woman who either had her hair ironed bone straight and oiled with a bunch of muck to make it waterproof and shiny, or shaved down to half an inch. Incidentally, the black girl with the shaved head typically was very reedy and feminine and slight - wouldn't want anyone feeling threatened by a bra model.

All the products that worked on the white women’s hair got millions of dollars of ad revenue (Squeek! Gee Your Hair Smells Teriffic! "And she told two friends, and so on, and so on...") and the stuff was an absolute nightmare on MY hair (mom’s Italian, dad’s Black).

White people’s techniques never worked because my hair was too curly/frizzy/untameable (read: BLACK), and black people’s techniques never worked because they were merely slightly more sophisticated variants of the horrible and somewhat superstitious methods being used in the early and mid 1900’s. AND my hair is too thin (read: WHITE) for all that abuse.

And who the hell wants to burn their hair with an iron anyway? Or fry their scalp with lye? Or yank it all out with overtight braids?

Unfortunately, the white culture AND the black culture were both heavily implying that one absolutely HAD TO DO SOMETHING WITH THAT MESS.

And then one specific biracial woman got super famous in the 90’s. She had a huge curly bouncy mane of hair and she was totally in everyone’s face. She, accompanied by her white compatriots, worked her way into the collective subconscious, and despite the fact that she’s utterly trivial, she changed things. Biracial women started appearing in print ads about a year later. Just once every so often, but they all had long, huge, curly manes of hair. Not super tight afro curls, and not straight. I looked at that woman’s hair for a long time before I figured out how to get mine that way. No crazed hairdresser is ever doing ANYTHING to my hair again. Now the women in the ads look like me; it’s attainable now. (Fuck it, the President is the same “race” as me. Hah!) It's not unusual to see black people and biracial people all over mainstream advertising now, and trust me, I've been looking for them for years. They just weren't there before this chick.

Complete compliment me all the time for my hair. People want to bury their hands in it. People used to call it a bird’s nest, and now it’s the most noticeable thing about me. My dad told me he loves it. (OTOH my goddamn mother said, “When are you going to go get a trim?” NEVER. EVER. AGAIN. THAT'S WHEN. So kiss my ass.)

Who’s that one specific woman? Scary Spice, baby. Batshit crazy, but I love her anyway.

viodonna, I used to run around all the time with a Strawberry Shortcake towel clipped to my head pretending it was my "long hair." My mom kept cutting it, refusing to let it grow out until I agreed to regularly brush it and keep the tangles out. It seemed like agony, standing there while she wielded a giant yellow comb and scissors. There are quite a few childhood pictures of me looking like a strangely attired nun.

As retribution, I grew it out as soon as I could and by high school had hair past my waist. And when I cut it off to above my shoulders at 19, it was terrifying. Also, the next morning was confusing as I did the half asleep shampooing and shrieked, wondering where the hell all my hair went as I attempted to work it down and found nothing.

elsie

Are you referring to this article on theroot.com about a youtube video of a young black girl getting slapped around for not sitting still while getting hair brushed out?

We watch the mother/caregiver as she proceeds to “brush” the girl’s hair, pulling at it with a ferocity, yanking and yelling and telling the little girl to move her “goddamn hand.” “I’m trying to get these f****** naps out of your head so you can look like somebody,” she tells her.

This could be a very interesting documentary, and I bet it does well. Also, if Chris Rock narrates (a la Everybody Hates Chris), I'm there!

"But a documentary on hair? Really?
Maybe as a white guy who wears a baseball cap sixty-percent of my life, I just don’t understand the cultural relevance. Still, has America really been clamoring for this documentary?"

Well...
A documentary on two rich eccentrics sequestered in their East Hampton mansion? Really? Or on crossword puzzle champions? Really? And one on kids at the Scripps National Spelling Bee? Really?

America doesn't need to be "clamoring" for a documentary in order for it to be good. And maybe I'm just one of those "sensitive" minorities, but your unashamed ignorance on the relevance of this really grates.

My sister, who is adopted, has never really forgiven my mother for being white and not knowing what to do with her hair. When she was in high school she let it get really long and weighed it down with Vaseline. I cannot really express how nasty it was to have to dig all of that hair and grease out of the bathtub drain before I could take a shower. Blech!

Hmm... interesting thought. Is America ever really "clamoring" for a documentary? We won't even watch good independent narrative films. The only reason MMoore and Supersize Me did anything was because of MASSIVE marketing campaigns. Grey Gardens is a whole separate cult thing. Other than that, how many documentaries could a person actually name off the tops of their heads? Documentaries actually cause people to learn something, and most people don't want to learn anything. A large percentage of the American public already knows everything, why would we need to learn anything else?

I hope that because this is Chris Rock it will get a lot of exposure. Thanks for the link to the full trailer, jM, that's actually way better. I *am* kind of clamoring for this. (Of course, I actually love documentaries and learning. I'm kind of a rebel (read: nerd) that way.)

I remember when I was very young (read: 5 or 6) and spending the night at my best friend's house. Her mother dropped us both in the bath once, to save time, and I watched as Candice poured Baby Oil in her kinky hair. To make a long story short, my mother laughed so hard when she picked me up to find my super-fine blond wisps plastered to my head in oil. Cleaning that out was a miserable experience! We used to just sit around and play with each other's hair, trying to figure it out. Plus, the sweet, gorgeous little black baby my mother babysat for? She told her mother, "If you want her hair to look cute, you have to do it before you drop her off. All I know how to do is pull it into a ponytail." Which is true, so she and I had matching do's when we went out. Boy, did the small-town folk look at US funny...

Here's the full trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-4qxz08So

Wow, between the "sassy black characters" post and this one, I'm started to feel alienated from a site that I thought shared my views on movies and pop culture.

Your privilege is showing, Dustin, in full force. Surely, anything outside of your personal, "mainstream", "normal" reality is pointless, amiright? Maybe not everything has to relate to you, or exist just for your cultural tourism. Maybe you should research the realities of the people around you the same way they're made to research yours to exist and thrive in this society.

Since we are talking about hair just let me say that I hate women that shave themselves, I love a good thick bush. When I’m at the beach or at the pool there’s nothing sexier than a woman’s bush sticking out the sides of her bikini.

I'm not black (that I know of) but I have very curly hair, and even as a Latina the is enormous pressure to straighten and lighten your hair. Every time I go cut my hair someone tries to convince me to "at least" straighten it. And once a woman at a beauty salon told me to come back if I ever wanted to look attractive. I think a discussion of the underlying issues behind this is long overdue but, hey, even some acknowledgment of it is nice.

I've actually seen a cut of Good Hair a while back, and I loved it. (Disclosure: I'm a white male.) I thought it was entertaining, informative, surprising and fun. It touches on everything: the 'technology' of the products, the commercial aspects, the culture, etc.

Viodonna, thank you. As a Asian-Black-Haoli (Asiackaolian) chick, my hair was the cause of much consternation for myself and my parental unit when I was growing up. My Black father and Asian mother spent a lot of time playing "Not It!!" when it came to who had to deal with my mane that day. In Hawaii, back in those days, there were only about 5 black folks on the entire island (my dad and his friends, pretty much). The rest were Asian with long straight hair that never got frizzy in the rain. My cousins used to call me Chaka Khan. I totally had a complex. I didn't think I could be pretty with my curly-ass hair. I used to pray every night I would wake up with straight hair and no freckles (God never answered any of my voicemails).
Nowadays,my hair and I have finally come to an understanding (only took 30-odd years). I wear my hair completely natural, no straightners or hot irons, and it's grown down to my waist. Kinda looks like Keri Russell's but darker. I get a lot of compliments.
Hair is an INCREDIBLY important part of black culture, whether you're male or female. A good chunk of our days are spent dealing with our hair. We PLAN around our damn hair. Outfits are COMPLETED with the right hairstyle. Shoot. Seriously, Dustin, do you know ANY black folks? Cause if you do - you haven't had the hair conversation(s) yet? REALLY?????

Full trailer shows potential. As an East African gal myself, I guess I'm somewhere between "good" & "bad" hair, but I can say that growing up in rural Holland sometimes left me blind to the "good" bits. I like the premise of Chris Rock's daughters causing him to wonder about all this. I think this'll be an interesting if not enlightening little doc.

As a white female (Irish Italian with brown shoulder length hair), one of my fondest "amour" memories involved a black man's hair. When I was a senior in high school I dated my first black man(he was in college, named Max, from France, abs like the D'Angelo video "How Does It Feel?") After an amazing lovemaking session at his off campus apartment, he dozed on the bed in his boxer shorts while I went to the bathroom to freshen up a bit. When I came out I saw all the creams and pomades and powders on his bureau, and he laughed as I spent about ten minutes opening each one and smelling it. It wasn't that they smelled bad or weird, it was just I had never been with someone who had such completely different hair products than I did. He had the do-rag to sleep in, the cloth to wrap it in while playing soccer, and I just remember how gentle and soft his hair felt as we cuddled and laid in bed together. You hear so many white people say that black hair is coarse or unattractive, but I felt very womanly at the time. I was young, dating a guy a few years older than me (which was shocking at the time), and just seeing the ritual of the hair and all the smells that came with it seemed very erotic to me. Much more...historical and ritualistic that my VO5 and Suave mousse ever did.

This has been a wonderful set of comments. I have to add that I, too, am disappointed in and surprised at Dustin. As a white, middle-class woman who grew up in a 99% white, middle-class neighborhood and who barely knew any black people until well into adulthood, even *I* always knew about the significance hair has for black women. (And I can't wait to see this documentary.)

I will gladly see this movie. Like others have said, I don't know when, if ever, Americans need to be clamoring for a documentary for one to get made. This light skinned, half Mexican has spent many a time getting relaxers, touch-ups and, in between touch-ups, contemplating whether I really want to do it again. I know many women who would love to see this movie. Hair is such an important part of many women's lives.

Maybe Dustin was being ironic...? Anyone? ... Bueller?

@maylai
It's "haole" just fyi.

I grew up in Hawaii too and pin straight long asian hair was the norm, myself included. Having "good hair" I never really gave it a second thought until I read an essay by bell hooks saying something to the effect of she was sick of looking at black women wearing pounds of other people's hair. Then I started to understand how political hair can be and how extra oppressive the beauty standard is to black women.

Chris Rock has stated this project came about when one of his daughters was distraught about not having "good" hair, and as a father he was upset that his little girl already learned to feel bad about herself by internalizing cultural norms. Sorry, Dustin, but while you may think a documentary about "black hair" is frivolous, the topic is actually fraught with cultural implications and is extremely socially relevant.

And I'd just like to point out that by a MAN taking on this topic it actually has a shot at being taken seriously, and not pushed off as a "women's" issue that has no larger scope then just us gals bitching about hair.

Well, maybe it's just our different experiences, but I've never met a woman of any race who was totally fine with being overweight. I mean, my mom and sis used to be diet pill crazy and they're both black.

And besides there was a time where chubby was in for white women (the 18th century) and we all know the old white movie stars from the 60s and back were bigger. There isn't an entire society telling white women over and over again that they are ALL huge and that they need to go toward potentially unhealthy means to lose the weight. Humans of all races, genders, sexual orientations, etc. have experienced weight problems. Hell, dogs and cats can be overweight.

Black hair is inherently black hair. No one else has our type of hair or anything like it. Can you imagine someone saying to you from a very young age repeatedly that straight hair is ugly and that it's prettiest if you get a perm? 80% of black women drastically alter their hair to look exactly opposite of how it grows out of our scalp. I don't see 80% of white women downing diet pills. You know why? Because 100% of white women aren't fat while flipping through magazines showing 95% of skinny black women.

So, is this Dustin Rowles a fool, or a hit-count genius, or what? I literally have not seen this level of militant cultural ignorance from a white person since 1985. Gah, I want to strap him into a chair, prop his eyelids open with toothpicks, and force him to watch this over and over. With lye on his scalp. (Mama says: "Don't scratch!")

I can say without even having seen it that he is too goddamn white not to see this movie. HMFS.

Yet another case of a white dude with knapsack so heavy, he doesn't even know it's there.

I'm a female hispanic with light features and curly frizzy thick coarse hair. I'm enlightened with this documentary. All this time I've endured trial and error never realizing that their are others who are experiencing the same ordeal with their own hair. Back in my high school days I would pull it back in a tight ponytail bun on a daily basis slathered with gel to keep it from poufing up. Unfortunately I ended up prematurely balding on sides of scalp due to the tightness of the bun. It's not too noticeable since my hair is thick to begin with. The cabinet in my bathroom is filled with all types of hair products but what I've learned over time is to condition daily and shampoo once a week. I get compliments on it now but I would really like to have hair that is low maintenance and will still look presentable not have it looking like a rat's nest. I stock up on my favorite items when they go on sale. But the thing with this hair type is that it is super high maintenance. As well as costly. I've done just about everything to my hair except relax it or have that japanese straightening treatment. I've pulled stunts similar to Britney Spears shave it all off scenario. When I met my friend after not seeing her for months and she takes one look at me and I swear their was tears of sadness in her eyes seeing me in short cropped hair. I admit I did look awful. I regularly trim my hair on my own, done highlights on my own (mistake! See a stylist for drastic color changes), purchased pricey scissors for my hair cutting experiments. So far I'm happy with it but would like to cut back on time, money, products dealing with my hair. I can't just leave and go my hair needs to be tended to like a newborn infant on a daily basis. I worked for a drugstore selling numerous hair products and took advantage of employee discount to buy hundreds of dollars worth for my hair. So at this point I am getting tired and will consider letting it grow longer and will have it straightened. But I will see the stylist before I proceed on my own. The drama with my hair continues to this day. Curly hair is only worth it if you like playing with hair and having the time for it as well as the money. I've invested so much time and money on my hair that even friends have called me "Goldilocks". My hair is worth a fortune. Frankly like I've told numerous people if it all fell off my head it would be to my own benefit. Anyone see Tyra Banks testimonial on her hair revelation on her talk show? Even supermodels have their love-hate relationship with their own head of hair.