I’m trying to describe a person I grew up with in something I’m writing and I don’t know the term for his hair.
He was a black guy who wore his hair short and you could see the scalp of his head in most places, but in others the hair was knotted in little “tiger stripes” that he could comb out to cover the rest of his head. Does anybody know what this style is called? I still see it sometimes, but not as frequently as I once did.
But that bit about combing out parts of his hair to cover his scalp makes it sound like “a hot mess.”
Not sure, but the description does sound kinda like cornrows.
Could be a form of braids.
Okay, it’s just cornwrows. (For somNe reason I thought these were cornrows.)
On a more historic note, before current African-American hair care products, how did black people take care of their hair? Just regular household grease or cholesterol or…? (I know that Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire [of any color] got her start by tapping the need for black haircare products.)
It was almost between cornrows and that. He had cornrows, but they were about the circumference of a cigar.
Sampiro,
I think that last sentence is exactly the description you should use; the juxtaposition of normal cornrow style with the alliterative of circumference/cigar is muy nice.
What you’ve described sounds more like dreadlocks to me. The link shows some pretty extreme examples, but if you scroll down, there are some beginners.
Cholesterol?
Queen Helene makes a hair treatment called Cholesterol. which I used to use on my very dry curly hair, before I discovered Kiehl’s Silk Groom. I always wondered where the name came from.
Well I’ll be dipped. I learn something here everyday. Before now, I couldn’t imagine a cholesterol hair product. Though I do wonder if that is the main ingredient, or just a marketing angle.
I waited and waited for monstro to turn up and answer this, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I did a little research on my own.
Historically, the Ashanti, Ibo, Yoruba, Wolof, Mende and Mandingo peoples of West Africa (among others) adorned their hair in various styles of cornrows, braided, beaded and cowrie-shelled hair and shaved scalps, on women and men, with different hairstyles conferring different cultural meanings toward courtship, fertility, rites of passage and ceremonial adornment. Their skin and scalps were massaged with plant oils, including palm oil, castor oil, shea nut butter and cocoa butter.
African hair styles and grooming techniques throughout the diaspora are usually very time-consuming, requiring considerable skill and precise tools. African combs were typically heavy items used for taming the nappy nature of our often coarse, tight curls. Their appearance startled slave traders because even the smallest of them were akin to weapons, and were confiscated from black captives. Thus all throughout during slavery in the West Indies and the Americas African styled combs were denied to slaves. These captives typically did not keep their hairstyles upon enslavement: blacks frequently had their braids and heads shaved, or cut short, before being sold for auction.
When black hair could not be made acceptable in the eyes of the whites or the satisfaction of the slave, it was often simply covered, both for assimilating the appearance of house slaves and offering protection from the sun to slaves in the field. In the colonies of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries in woodcuts, reliefs, cartoons and photographs that you see black men and women’s naturally nappy (and often short) hair routinely covered, with a few notable exceptions.
Hair care remedies for enslaved blacks were as scarce as clothes and good food, so chances are they simply did without, although I imagine they washed their hair with clean water. A cheap and popular 19th century hair oil for white backwoodsmen was using bear grease, made from lard, and I wouldn’t be surprised if black slaves used similar remedies mixed with honey and plant oils when they could, although this is speculation on my part, and not a particularly well-researched facet of chattel slavery. (I could be looking in the wrong places.)
One of the psychological scars of slavery is that black hair was denigrated and dismissed by European slavers, who described it as “woolly” – like a sheep’s – and considered it self-evident “proof” of blacks’ subhumanity and a justification for their enslavement. Many blacks, particularly light-skinned Creoles, mulattoes and octaroons, began to embrace these attitudes themselves, which set the stage for later hair remedies designed to straighten and lengthen hair and often dye hair to Eurocentric standards of beauty. This in turn paved the way for Madame C.J. Walker’s resounding success: her hair care products both helped groom and style black women’s hair to European standards.
Sampiro. I’m not sure there’s a specific name for your friend’s hairstyle. See if this site helps. http://www.braidsbysabrina.com/gallery.htm#
Thanks Askia, that’s really fascinating.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X goes into incredible detail on the congulene eras (when hair was essentially chemically fried to make it seem white). I think the Afro was one of the most perfect forms of self-expression when the Civil Rights movement started gaining headway. It’s a shame that I have as many memories of whites with Afros as I do of blacks (and even my very southern status-quo mother wore a dashiki).
Most white people’s ignorance about black people’s hair is approaching total. One of my first jobs was in a home for retarded adults and the pint sized she-martinet who ran it (formally uneducated, but the wife of a retired brigadier general- therefore she knew all) insisted that all residents wash and shampoo their hair everyday, including black ones. The black employees were indignant- this was tantamount to abuse- but she wouldn’t budge, nor would she allow the purchase of any black hair products with the home’s budget. The black employees basically ignored her and marked the daily washing as “done” and supplied products from their own supply. That was the first time I knew that black people can’t wash their hair everyday.
I also worked with a lady from a midwestern area who had married (and divorced) one of the few black men she had ever met and had two daughters with him. African hair is of course the dominant gene, so though the children were clearly biracial their hair was their fathers, and without any other black people around for most of their childhood she treated it like her own hair and it was a disaster. It wasn’t until she moved to Alabama (a city that’s about 50-50 racially) when her black co-workers almost screamed when they saw her daughters (pre-school/early elementary school age) with their hair long and combed into really awkward ponytails, that “help was available” as her co-workers essentially kidnapped the kids to undo years of hair damage.
(Note: I’m aware that there is no such thing as race in the strictest sense, but…) Hair texture is far more important than skin color or other superficial differences in determining and distinguishing ethnicity. I’m surprised it doesn’t play a larger role in our literature and music.
Misy Copy Editor adds that cornrows and dreadlocks are not “African-American” hairstyles; they are more probably African and Jamaican, respectively.
Hey, Sampiro, just to add, it really depends on your hair type and how you style it. When I had a close fade, I washed my hair every day. It might not be the greatest tactic, as you will be quite dry-headed. Grease or oil can help avoid this, but at least in my case, washing daily didn’t do any harm. (I should point out that I am in my… mid thirties and have a full head of hair.)
People with perms and heat-treated hair have to wash with caution, however. But I think there is no catastrophic harm if one chooses to wash it every day with a natural style.
Black hair is bad ass. (Don’t touch mine without asking, though.) I remember breaking an “unbreakable” comb when I was trying to plow through my naps. (Rectified by the liberal use of grease and water.) I hated how kids used to act like my hair was greasy and I remember having a soapbox moment as a third grader: “Black people sometimes put grease in their hair because our hair is very dry, not because we have greasy heads!”
I was going to add that Black hair is immune to lice, but apparently I’m wrong. But it is true that we have lower frequencies of lice infestations than most other folks…
happily nappy,
HH.
That’s funny, and fairly common. When I was a kid and we saw a light-skinned kid with busted hair, we figured that their mama was White. In all fairness, I knew a woman who adopted a Black child and immediately learned how to plait, grease, and comb her hair. Gotta love the willingness to keep her kid’s head together.
Maybe it’s something we do one-on-one, but any conversation of depth I have with a Black person invariably involves hair or ass-whuppins…
I’m sorry, I’m confused. Black people’s hair is naturally dry, so dry that it can be damaged unless you add oil to it? How exactly does “damaged” hair look?
Sampiro. Glad I could help.
Hippy Hollow. Hair, ass-whuppins, cooking, your love life, and you and your families’ accomplishments. Yup.
Eve. I dunno. Like saying “spaghetti sauce and noodles aren’t Italian-American foods, they’re more probably Italian and Chinese, respectively.” How 'bout… “African-American hairstyles originating in West Africa and Jamaica.” It makes no sense to say they’re not African-American when that’s what I’ve grown up seeing all my life.
ivylass. It’s extraordinarily hard to find black people with natural, jacked-up dry hair on the web – I wouldn’t allow a picture like that to be taken of me, but – here’s a dude you might recognize with a jacked up process. Voila. Heh.
Picture straw. Now…picture that straw sitting in the sun all day with the wind blowing over it. Eventually it will become brittle and ragged. That’s how damaged hair (regardless of race) will look.
Strangely, when my hair was long and permed, people rarely asked what ethnicity I was. They either figured I was black or biracial…my African heritage was rarely questioned.
But when I cut my hair and started wearing it in its natural curliness, suddenly my “blackness” was not as readily apparent. You would think it would be the other way around. My hypothesis is that my natural hair doesn’t fit into anyone’s idea of what “black” hair is. This goes for black people as well as white. We’ve been conditioned to believe that processed straighted hair and styled a certain way = black.
I think people think there is homogeneity in black people’s hair. Not true. We have different textures and thickness, just like everyone else. We even have different colors. Unfortunately, because most black women keep their hair straightened for pretty much their whole life, they never discover this.
Hair plays a huge role in the black community, especially for women.
You did a good job! I’m not a hair expert by any means. (Ha! If you could see me you’d know exactly why).
Before the modern-day crop of hair treatments, black women would straighten their hair by means of a “hot comb.” This was a metal instrument heated over a fire (or later, by electricity). The hair was partially protected by a liberal application of hair grease or petroleum jelly to prevent burning and the heated comb run through the hair until it lost it’s curl. This was only effective till the next hair wash though.
In the 50’s, a lot of black men would “conk” their hair. This is the process (it was also called “processing”) of applying a lye-based product to the hair to chemically straighten it. As you can imagine, processing was harsh and really took it’s toll on hair. More men did this than women (who wanted longer hair) because of the destruction it caused.
Both methods were notorious for causing scalp burns, and it was the mark of a good beautician/barber who could put you through the process with no burns.
