Braid today, weave tomorrow

ASK any black woman about her earliest hair memories, and she’ll more than likely recall incidents where the kinky mass was tugged and pulled by a parent insistent on getting all and every knot out.

American author Lonnice Brittenum Bonner in her book Good Hair: For Coloured Girls Who’ve Considered Weaves When the Chemicals Became Too Ruff, spells out the scene brilliantly, also commenting on the prevailing attitude in many black communities – that phobia against “nappy” hair.

“There’s an attitude amongst us that manifests itself in the way of a notorious disease. It’s called the Nappy Hair Phobia, also known as fear of naps,” she writes. “NHP usually starts in early childhood. Mothers bearing the instrument of torture – a comb – closed in on unsuspecting toddlers with curly African hair. Once caught, the poor babies were subjected to their first genuine hair combing. Toddlers blessed with strong, springy hair were in double jeopardy. Not only did they have “really bad hair”, but if they cried, their mothers declared that they were tender-headed. Your head would feel tender too if you tried to pull all your springs through a comb.”

She recalls the experiences with the pressing comb, the relaxers and the braids, as she tried to get into the “good hair” culture, exacerbated by the integration era when she went to school with white children, and the effort was made to keep her hair straight to keep up appearances.

Tall hair. Long hair. Straight hair. Indian hair.

Call it what you will, decades after the early 20th Century inventor of the pressing comb Madame CJ Walker revolutionised the hair care and cosmetics industry for black women, the trend towards the straightened ideal continued with the relaxer and the jherri curl; and today a vast number of black women are embracing the newest way to tame the hair – the weave. And while the other races occasionally indulge, according to reports, some 8 out of 10 Black women wear some type of hair weave and black women in the US alone spend at least 20 billion dollars on hair care products and services each year.

Hair sellers have been rolling in cash from buyers of hair locally, newer varieties of which continue to flood the market each year. More popular for the moment are Milky Way, to give a Chinese appearance; Romano and Paradise Curl; Jherri Curl human hair; Deep Wave; and the ponytail, used to add length to the upswept hair. There are half wigs; Afro Kinky; Afro Curl and Jamaican Bulk, sold in almost every store, in every section of the country and there are always takers, as soon as a new one hits the shelves.

Many women admit that the ease of wear and the new look is the draw.

“I wear a wig to feel comfortable with myself,” Belinda Myrie, a professed wig enthusiast said. “I don’t like how my natural hair looks,” she laughs. “I don’t wear it to please anyone else, but it makes me feel good about myself.”

Her sister, Chadia, also wearing a wig nodded. “Natural hair is hard to manage, with the wig you just draw it on!”

In fact they declared that when all woman stopped them in downtown Kingston, they were on their way from Seaview to the wholesale to purchase hair for braiding.

“We are tired of the wig now, it is getting old, so we have decided to braid. That will last longer,” Belinda laughed. She explained that some time ago she had cut her natural hair and since it was taking quite a while to grow back, she felt it was time to braid.

For other women, weave wearing is about giving them a heads up in the mating game.

“Men go for women with hair style,” says Keresha Johnson from Janice’s Beauty Salon in Spanish Town. “Put two women to walk together, one with a nice braided hairstyle [or wig], and the other with her own natural hair cornrowed, and see which one gets more attention,” she suggested. “The one with the nice hair style would.”

Added Antonette Batson, who is now trying out the Superwave: “People keep asking me if it’s my hair because it looks natural. It makes me look polished. More guys notice me, than when I had short, creme hair. I’ve gotten many text-message compliments over it.”

Some experts will quote the need to be like the white woman; the carry over from slavery; the desire to blend into a culture where whites rule – others like Dr Kingsley ‘Ragashanti’ Stewart, sociocultural anthropologist and lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at UWI and Dr Aleric Josephs, lecturer in the history department, are willing to commit to the trend just being about style for the most part.

“In Jamaica presentation or image is very important. But adhering to image requirement doesn’t necessarily mean that they have deep rooted problematic issues. A convincing argument can be that the choice of hairstyle of women in Jamaica reflects a distancing from the core African-centered collective self,” Dr Stewart said.

He noted that this distancing is also a manifestation of the need to prove that she is willing to go with a hairstyle she is comfortable with, as against what is culturally required in order to be successful.

Added Dr Josephs, “It is a matter of what is considered fashionable,” and this she explained are braids, other hair extensions and locks these days. But both referred to the post-colonial influence as well – Dr Josephs explained that men may prefer natural long flowing hair because of the socialisation and Christian and colonial cultural legacy; while said Dr Stewart: “Our plantation heritage is still having a profound impact of interpretation around us. There are still a significant number of men who see hairstyles consistent with a western European/Caucasian ethos as being more attractive. There are even some women who would tell you that they are marrying a man with ‘pretty hair’ to have a ‘pretty hair’ baby.”

Good hair, bad hair, pretty hair

Pretty hair.

British MP Diane Abbott, in a Sunday Observer column in January titled Shaking off slavery’s malignant legacy , comments on the issue of our loss of identity, and the unwillingness to embrace the “black is beautiful” mentality centuries after slavery.

“The 1970s were the era of “black is beautiful” … skin bleaching was scorned. Now, the media is saturated with images of light-skinned black women with long (false) straight hair. Improvements in false hair technology (the weave) mean that many black women think long flowing hair can be theirs. They do not seem to stop and think whether it actually suits them; what it will look like when it starts to grow out and looks matted; and what it says about their racial pride.”

Added author Robyn McGee, writer of the book Hungry for More a Keeping-It-Real Guide for Black Women on Weight and Body Image in an Internet discussion about black hair: ” …The length and texture of black hair have been a source of classism, political identity, and mainstream acceptance. As slaves, black women covered their hair with “do rags,” or cut it off or wore plaits while working the fields. However, when a white slave-owner fathered a child by a black woman, that newborn’s hair often was more straight than nappy. Thus, Caucasian-type hair gradually came to be considered “good” hair (as in white) while tresses that were naturally tightly curled or “nappy” were labelled “bad”.

Unfortunately this kind of thinking still exists in the black community, influenced not only by intraracial prejudices but also by the Eurocentric mass media that equates beauty with looking white. As a result, many black women press, perm, or weave their hair straight in order to be considered attractive and conventional.”

Back home, the good hair/bad hair debate continues to haunt some families, even as efforts are made to embrace our Afrocentric roots.

“My now deceased grandmother made sure to warn all her grandchildren not to carry home anyone who was too black, or with hair too kinky,” Samantha Reid said from her home in South Manchester. “She was quick to point out that she was half Jewish, Syrian and Indian and that she had given her children bad hair by marrying a black man. She was esctatic when my mother married a “half coolie”. She traced his background, and encouraged my mother to have lots of girls. When she saw our hair she was even happier.

She loved combing the “baby hair” and loved showing us off. And when my sister brought home a black man, she didn’t talk to her for years, and refused to bond with my niece who had gotten her father’s hair. My sister pressed my niece’s hair early, then relaxed it, and she is now a weave wearer, and I think it has a lot to do with what my grandmother did.

Dr Stewart: “In the views of many, someone who has pretty hair fits the code of something that ‘looks good’. And pretty hair is one of the factors that determine this look-good code. Also, there are those who believe that people who look good – who have pretty hair – will be more successful in life. If you look good, it affords you access to needed resources.”