Most women of a certain age (and that would be any age) can chart their life cycles through their hair follicles. Every decade, fad, trend, moment, passion of their life journey is recorded through their series of hairdos — and hairdon’ts.
A few years ago, I attended a friend’s 40th birthday celebration. Her family decorated the venue with pictures from her past, and we all had a good laugh at all the styles of her youth; the colors, the curly perms, the highlights, lowlights and lengths.
Some of us remember those old, old commercials of “Does she, or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure,” from back in the days when coloring your roots was treated like a shameful state secret.
I even have a good story of having my sanity saved by a pastor from a neighboring church, who advised, “if your kid wants to wear black clothes and dye their hair blue, just let them. It’s just clothes and hair.” At the time my adolescent daughter, who was going through her goth phase with the all-black attire (no matter how many pretty outfits I bought her), convinced me she also needed a blue streak in her bangs.
Of course there are plenty of men who also have hilarious and/or embarrassing hairdon’ts, from the bowl cut, to the boy’s regular, slicked back, Mohawks (with or without dye), ducktails, mullets, curly perms and combovers.
We won’t even talk about wigs, weaves and hair plugs.
Some hairstyles are undoubtedly crimes of fashion (see mullets, above).
However, all kidding aside, what shouldn’t have to be legislated, but apparently has, is how your hair grows naturally out of your head.
For those who don’t understand what people of color mean when they talk of institutional racism and privilege, here’s a small example. Don’t get your hackles up, but raise your hand, run your fingers through your hair (or on your head if you happen to be bald or balding), and imagine if someone told you how you choose to style your natural tresses is distracting, unprofessional, and unworthy. What if you were told that in order for you to be considered worthy and ahem, normal, your hair had to look more like theirs and less like yours? How would you react? Before you shrug your shoulders and say, of course you would go along to get along, imagine if “normal” meant subjecting yourself to expensive lye-based chemicals that would burn your scalp if left on too long, or a comb hot enough to cause second and third-degree burns? Also, this “normal” could eventually cause you to lose your hair, because the effects were damaging to your follicles over the years.
Of course the idea that someone should be discriminated against because of their hairstyle sounds stupid. It’s not dirty, it’s just different. The cell structure and texture is different from people of European lineage, but who gets to decide how much personal expense and torture one should endure to try and “fit in?”
Like most women, I’ve spent a lot of years fighting with my hair. If you get any two or three black women in a room, we can recount those long-ago days of straightening combs, burned ears, and avoiding the pool, so all that work (torture) wouldn’t be undone. We have our stories of lye-based perms to straighten our hair so we could go into the pool again.
But with the awakening of the Civil Rights movement in the ’60s came black pride, black empowerment and natural hairstyles. Yes, I also have a legacy of photos of hairstyles ranging from very straight to very Afro, and all kinds of styles in between.
I also remember the first time I heard the whole “unprofessional” argument — it was a story in the ’70s about a black flight attendant who was suing her employers because they wanted her to straighten her hair — they said the little cap she wore “looked funny” with her afro.
Only 2½ years ago, a Malden charter school faced discrimination charges for suspending two black students because the school “dress code” claimed that their braided hair extensions caused a disruption. The same dress code wasn’t equally applied to white students who dared color their hair. (If you are a student who can be driven to such distraction by a hairstyle that has been worn for centuries by people of color, seek help. Your issues run much deeper than follicular anomalies among your peers.)
Seriously, we have been fighting hair discrimination for more than 40 years. And it’s taken until this century for people to finally wake up and recognize it for the microaggression and hostile work and school environment that it is.
Understand this: What is in my head is infinitely more important than what grows out of it. If it’s different, so be it. And no, don’t ask to touch it. If you’re older than 5, you should already know to keep your hands to yourself. If one’s hair is clean, flea, tick, and lice-free, how it grows shouldn’t be anyone’s concern. Consider the optics. We’re not all meant to look the same. But looking like ourselves shouldn’t have to be written into law. It should be common sense.
It’s too bad when it isn’t.
