Just watched this incredible 2009 documentary hosted by Chris Rock about the industry and issues surrounding hair for African-American women and men. (I’m white.)
I had no idea all of this went on. I do remember Oprah saying one time that all the issues white women have with their weight black women have with their hair.
It talks about the practically universal use of relaxers- sodium hydroxide- even on little girls as young as TWO. There was a chemist who put soda cans in a solution of sodium hydroxide and it dissolved the aluminum can after four hours.
Long section on weaves, which start around $1,000 and go waaaay up from there and are often used by regular working women who barely have the means to finance it. When men see a woman that they might be interested in, they give some thought to whether they can afford to support her hair habit. The hair for weaves comes from India mostly. Hair is India’s third largest export. Indian men, women, and children have their heads shaved at temples (much the way Catholics might light a candle) as a focal point of prayer or supplication or thanksgiving. The temples sell the hair and the people giving up their hair for free have no idea it’s part of a billion-dollar industry that benefits a whole bunch of other people all the way to the USA. Women can have their hair stolen- cut while they’re in a movie theater or asleep- but this is considered a legitimate business.
There was a whole thing where Chris was in a barber shop talking to black men about the issue of black women not wanting them to touch their hair if it has a weave.
The climax of the film was a black hair show in Atlanta that’s been going on for 60 years and is attended by stylists and hair industry professionals to learn about new products and styles.
The film was quite an eye-opener… fascinating to me who knew NOTHING about this stratum of hair society.
Disclaimer: No offense intended to African-Americans, black people, Indians, Catholics, hair stylists or anyone else. I did my best to make my descriptions neutral and non-inflammatory. If anyone was offended or put off by anything I said or the way I said it (including this disclaimer), I apologize in advance.
I just watched this recently. I was hoping for more in the way of background/history, but it was still an excellent movie. The scene that got me most was when Chris Rock asked that tiny little girl why she wanted to get her hair relaxed: “Cause you’re supposed to.”
I liked the “Keep your hands on the titties” advice, too.
I watched Black Hair on DVD at the insistence of a black co-worker who invited everyone in the deparment to watch at a house party because it would help us “understand” what she went through as a black women. The world depicted seemed utterly alien to me and quite frankly did nothing to help me understand my co-worker. For the record, women in my extended family and many women in my ethnic group have always covered at least part of our hair when we marry (the reason being it’s easier to spot that than a wedding ring to tell if a woman is married or not). I had a lot of questions after watching Black Hair, but didn’t really feel comfortable asking the co-worker about them as she seemed to believe the movie explained everything about the problems she had working with white women. It was an uncomfortable evening to say the least.
I saw it too. The only criticism that I had was that he did not focus at all on black women who wear their hair in its natural form. I think there was one of his celebrity interviewees (who reminded me of my older sis) who had her hair in natural twists, but that was it. He could have had India.Arie or someone else to offer a different perspective. If I were white, I would have left the movie thinking that all black women have relaxed, $1000 weave hair. That simply isn’t true.
But it is true that most black women have hair issues of some type. I have hair so short you can roll it up with rice (hehehe) and at it’s current length, it’s wavy/curly, and almost straight in some places. But I still have to deal with negativity from family (i.e., my mother) sometimes. She’ll recommend that I get a relaxer for the edges. (I always want to point out the scars from the lye burns on the nape of my neck, from all those years of getting my hair “done” to her satisfaction.) Even my father’s “positive” fixation on my hair makes me uncomfortable, given his history of favoring light-skinned women with “good” hair. Ugh.
But I enjoyed the film too. I wanted the white guy to win. He was ripped off.
My husband’s reaction to that documentary was hilarious. He was shocked shockedthat whoever that pretty long-haired black celebrity that did a lot of the interviews (sorry, can’t remember who it was) had a weave.
Really, though, it’s pretty freaking insane, all the money and pain and effort that goes into something so silly.
I’m curious how prevalent this phenomena is in Europe. I’ve never really taken notice of black women’s hair (or any hair) that much. Majority of black women over here (Finland) are Muslim so most are wearing a veil outside. Does the movie look into other countries?
I’m white and I too was astonished when I saw this documentary. Chris Rock didn’t have to work too hard in order to make comments about ridiculous situations. I’d like to point out that the cost of the weave doesn’t end with the cost of the hair ($1,000 starting and going waay up from there). Periodic re-tightenings cost money, removal of the weave, the hairdresser’s time, etc., all adds to the maintenance. There was a little attention paid to one woman with “natural” hair, but not much. It was amazing that most of the money being made was by Koreans, then whites. Some white women (not including me) have hair issues too, but it was really eye-opening to see the documentary.
To go back to what Oprah said about black women having issues with their hair at the level that white women have issues with their weight… if you call this hair thing “silly,” then by the same token, the size of the Diet Industry in the world of white women is also “silly.”
To me to call either of these silly is flippant. The depth of pain and self-loathing that drives both industries is too deep to be dismissed as silly. Both are signs of something… self-hatred, inability to see one’s own beauty in a natural state, belief that you have to be something different from who you are in order to be beautiful and desirable. It’s inhumane to apply sodium hydroxide to the head of a two-year old, but one episode (hell, the PREVIEWS of) “Toddlers and Tiaras” reveals a similar inhumanity.
I watched most of this the other day. My coworker got a weave right before Christmas, and believe me, it didn’t cost her $1000…and she got rid of it a week later. I am curious about how prevalent the tonsure ceremony was BEFORE temples found out it could bring them big bucks…seemed like there were little ersatz tonsure temples on every corner! I thought the whole “don’t touch the woman’s hair” thing was very sad (though my SO, who is white and was married to a white woman who was a model said she had the same rule) and I wondered the same thing someone in the movie did…do black men find it “easier” to date white women because not only could you touch their hair and get them wet, but you didn’t have to shell out the big bucks for hair maintenance? I just can’t fathom the money that even the average women were spending on their hair, much less what the celebrity commentators spent. I found the whole thing very enlightening, and the hair show quite bizarre, though I know there are white hairstyle competitions that are equally odd. However, I will NOT be shy about asking my coworker about all this stuff. She’s not a very stylish person generally, and pretty much lives at the poverty level, so her insight into this will be quite different from the higher-end people. I’ve always been amazed by the amount of time all that braiding can take. Unless I’m getting a perm, I consider it awful if I’m in the beauty parlor more than an hour…I can’t imagine spending six hours getting a weave.
I also can’t imagine my daughter ever sitting still for me to thread hundreds of pony beads into her hair, but I regularly see toddlers with a head full of clacking beads…how do they sleep comfortably? And how do you get them to sit still? And all the color-coordinated hairclips the tiny little girls wear…just unbelievable.
Love that movie!
I’m white, but I know/have known black women and I have actually come to really understand how fragile their hair gets. It’s such a horrible process to do to what ends up being very delicate hair.
Before I got a little smarter, I remember complimenting a few coworkers on how pretty their new hairdo was (I knew black women had some hair issues and was trying to be extra nice.) I would get the response “oh thanks honey, I put it on in the morning and take it off at night!” It took me a bit to get that they were saying ‘it’s a wig’.
I did know that most weave hair comes from India and that temple actually.
I had my SO watch it (he loved it). (Okay, he thinks black women are hot. I’m het and, frankly, I agree!! And I had told him–“I’m giving you a good piece of advice–we end in some way and you are lucky enough that some black woman finds you interesting? Don’t you EVER TOUCH HER HAIR.”) Now he understands why.
I watched it. My perspective is that of a white woman with ultra, ultra curly hair. I’m treading very lightly here, because I wince myself when I read white women telling black women that they have curly hair too so they know all their pain. :smack: I am well aware I do not, and that it’s very different. For example, even though my back definitely goes up when I read or hear people describing very curly hair like mine in its natural state as ‘wild’ or ‘unprofessional’ or a new hairdresser says she doesn’t know how to cut hair like mine, I get and agree that there are deeper and more ugly implications when this sort of thing is said about black hair in its natural state. Still, it does mean that I read a lot about how black curly hair can be treated for styles, how to care for it and ideas about how to wear my hair.
In general, the thing I liked most about this film was Chris Rock as an interviewer. I thought he showed a real flair for getting people to open up and also for asking the follow up questions that the interviewees’ answers prompted. So often, even seasoned prestigious interviewers obviously have a set list of questions that they just work through and then move on from, no matter what the person says. I liked that he was playful in exploring some of the problems the enormous upkeep that some of the hair cair choices cause, but without coming off that he was mocking the women themselves.
I thought Rock could have asked Al Sharpton some tougher questions, though. Sharpton was sympathetic to women spending thousands of dollars on their hair but he came off as critical too, implying he thought their hair care decisions were just economically frivolous. But the film really didn’t tackle much how women who refused to straighten their hair might also be economically disadvantaged. I may have missed it but I think the only time it really came up was when one of the young girls said how she’d always straighten her hair and how she couldn’t imagine anyone hiring a woman with “a big ol’ 'fro”. Or indeed whether he was sending out a mixed message given that he straightens his own hair.
I was disappointed in this too. Plus, it’s not like no-one has tried to challenge the cultural attitudes to hair previously. There could have been a lot devoted to things like the ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement to encourage black women to wear their curly hair in its natural state and the impact of women like Marsha Hunt and Angela Davis.
The other aspect of “don’t ever touch her hair” is that for those of us who wear our hair “natural” (no relaxers, no weaves) I bet almost every last one of us has a story of some white person who has tried to “pet” us to see what our hair feels like, which is seriously uncool.
I’m trying to think about Ethiopian women here in Israel; while some straighten their hair or wear it in cornrows, most just tie it back in a ponytail or under a bandanna, or just wear it free. Of course, Ethiopian Jewish culture is very different from African-American, and besides, I think East African hair tends to be slightly less kinky than West.
I hope you’re joking. That post is about being touched without permission by strangers; most people do not find that arousing. Do you like it when strangers treat you as an object of curiosity, perhaps by inspecting your teeth?
Not the same thing but I have red hair and people pat my hair all the time like I’m a dog. (I can get into a stabbing rage if they “fluff” or “flip” it) I am not a dog. Get your hands off of me before I break them off.
I agree that Chris Rock was an excellent interviewer. The key to this was that he approached the subject and the people with curiosity and respect.
I would love to see a followup on this documentary that deals with the Black Is Beautiful movement and natural hair. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think if I were black, I’d wear my hair in some kind of natural style. I have stick-straight brown hair that I color red, but on its best day it never swung and flowed like those California girls. It kills me when the stylists on What Not to Wear straighten and flatten the hair of the black contestants. Seems like that would be a good time to introduce a lower-maintenance but still attractive style.
I watched it twice and am still just absolutely blown away by the horrific chemicals the ladies used on their hair. It melted an aluminum can in a hour for pete’s sake!
Then the weaves just looked painful. But when they interviewed the man in India who ran the hair factory and explained the cleaning process to get rid of lice and bugs, my skin crawled. Gah.
I grew up when Afros were in their hey day and I have to have to say, as an owner of a head of very thin,limp blond hair, I envied my friends 'fros.
The documentary was great, Chris Rock did a fine job and I hope he gets some kind of nod for it.
My daughters and I watched it recently, I would have thought the black dudes would have been a bit more sympathetic or understanding!
And you know what I thought upon seeing Ted WIlliams, black homeless guy before he was cleaned up? That he had damn good hair, and why did they make him cut it? Did you see his hair, long, straight, flowing, blowing in the winds, straighter then Beyonce’s, with more body than any weave too!
