This past weekend I saw "Good Hair", a new documentary narrated and produced in part by Chris Rock in which he interviews a lot of black celebrities, especially black women, including Maya Angelou, Al Sharpton, Eve, Salt N Pepa, Ice T, Melyssa Ford, Raven-Symone, and others... about their hair. Rock goes into the black hair industry to explain the ubiquity of hair care products for black women aimed at straightening out their hair and make it look more white or Asian, rather than the naturally curly. He starts in Atlanta with a black hair trade show and hairdresser talent competition, and explains to the ignorant the relaxer and the weave, and traces the hair that is used to make weaves all the way to India, where women give it away for free in religious ceremonies. He traces the chemicals from relaxer back to the plant where they are made. He looks at products, cuts, colors, weaves, perms, extensions. He looks at women who are teachers and grad students spending $1000 on one hairstyle.
I dragged along my friend to see this (who does not usually see 'arthouse' films), he thought a movie about hair would be boring. I had already decided to see it based on a glowing review Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post gave to WTOP. It was laugh out loud funny and both my friend, who is a male of South Asian descent and myself who is a male of East Asian descent both learned a lot and enjoyed it.
At the same time, I walked out of the theater feeling a bit disturbed because Chris Rock seems to be criticizing the societal pressures that black women face to conform to the cultural standard of beauty without actually offering a way out. In a larger sense I think it applies to all women regardless of race, even though it is more acute for black women in this case. For example, Chris Rock casts the weave industry as evil and catches at least one Asian hair merchant making an openly racist comment. He interviews black men who resent paying hundreds of dollars or $1,000 for their girlfriends' hairs. He shows how having a weave prevents black women from being fully intimate, or getting their hair wet. He shows how acidic the chemicals are and how they burn away aluminum coke cans. But what does Chris Rock propose? It's not clear. He says that he'll tell his daughters that 'what's in their head is more important than what's on their head'. That's so true, and a good sentiment. But how does that change the pressures his daughters will face when they get older?
There is one scene in the movie where a bunch of black high school girls are sitting around a table discussing job prospects. The girls pointed out that although they think the afro is beautiful, if they didn't 'relax' their hair, they were afraid that they wouldn't be taken seriously by executives (or by implication by society).
I got the sense that the relaxer and weave is what gave a lot of black women confidence- not just the wearers but the many barbers. There is a lot of ambiguity in this film. Sometimes it felt like Chris Rock was glorifying the very thing he was criticizing, in the style of Devil Wears Prada.
Yet at the end of the day it seems Chris Rock is criticizing black women who modify their hair to look straight yet he hardly even dents the larger issue of beauty standards shaped by society that constrict black women and contribute to their "need" to do this in the first place. This movie can be used as a reason to criticize black women who wear a weave but it doesn't really answer the question that if black women wore their hair more naturally, would they be accepted? It seems like 'Good Hair' offers sparse hope. And it really is no good without hope that things could change for the better.
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I've been reading a lot of reviews about this movie, and most of them seem to find it problematic for one reason or another - I find myself thinking that maybe (probably) this was a movie that should never have been made by a man. I understand Rock is motivated by his concerns about his daughter, but it sounds like he's still coming from a position where he's othering the topic - it's all mysterious and unusual to him.
Full Disclosure: I haven't seen the movie, but I saw clips of it and Chris Rock's interview on Oprah.
It seemed to me that he was trying to walk a fine line between problematizing the lengths Black women go to have "good hair," criticizing a culture with such strict beauty standards, and blaming individual women for having to conform to those standards in order to be taken seriously.
I feel similarly about plastic surgery. I hate that there are particular beauty standards that women feel they must conform to, going so far as to have surgery to look "better." Yet, I can't fault individual women for having plastic surgery. I'm not them, haven't lived their lives nor know how they feel inside. If having plastic surgery and conforming to an idealized beauty standard makes them feel better about themselves, happier in their own skin, who am I to judge them? I feel I can rail at a culture that has the standards, yet still respect carefully thought out decisions people make to conform to those standards to improve their own lives.
I really hope that Chris Rock's movie begins a new wave of "black is beautiful" so that black women who want to go natural or explore more healthy hairstyles (locks and twists come to mind) don't feel stigmatized or unable to present themselves professionally.
I haven't seen the film (though I want to) so I can't really comment on the problems pointed out in this post, but I was reading an article/interview about it the other day where Rock said he had basically a whole second film about black MEN's hair but had to leave it on the cutting room floor.
I wonder if the might have come across differently and perhaps been less problematic if it'd been a man commenting on ALL black people's hair rather than just black women's hair.
Thoughts?
I'd have liked to have heard his ideas on the other side of it anyway.
I agree that Chris Rock telling women what to do with their hair is very upsetting.
As soon as I graduated high school I went to cosmetology school to be a hair stylist and makeup artist so personal aestethics are definitely my "guilty pleasure".
I would have to say that personally and also speaking a lot for other women regardless of race, I do my hair for myself. I've always tried to explain to people that the reason I spend time on my hair and make up is because I feel like its part of my creative outlet, my art. It makes me feel great to create something that I see as beautiful and unique.
On the down side I can agree with the idea of hair extensions being a bit of a hamperance sexually. My boyfriend now definitely knows about all my "little secrets" to create a certain look. Lord knows if I'm short on time I have him brushing out my weave. Lol. But I can recall a time back when I had just started college and I had "shacked up" with this dreamboat. He was a PhD. student in my major of sociology and honestly I don't think he was a very judgemental person but I became SO nervous about my add-on hair that when he reached his hand around the back of my head when we were kissing I jumped up and exclaimed "I have to go to the bathroom!!" What I did next was infamous with my roommates at the time. I took out my weave and stored it under his bathroom sink. Lol. I put my hair in a ponytail so he wouldn't be the wiser and went back out and had a great time. My bit of advice of the "bathroom sink" technique has been used by a lot of my friends who don't yet feel comfortable telling their hookups about their hair obsession. We just get a huge kick out of it.
My best friend and I always say..."If you're looking for our skeletons, get out of that closet and look under that bathroom sink!"
And on a more serious note: I am from Indiana and Madame Walker was a black woman who pioneered both women's and black right in Indianapolis. She was a cosmetologist/hair stylist and is extremely respected in our state especially. I've read numerous places where hair is something that bring black women together. And in my opinion, a lot of women from all races.
Chris Rock is not telling women what to do with their hair. He is pointing out a cultural issue and as a comedian, doing his job- making us laugh at ourselves- while we think deeper on the subject.
He is not the only father I know that is concerned with the conditioning his daughters are experiencing in our culture around their hair.
He is the only one I know who has said something about it in such a public and humorous way.
I'll have to check it out then. Sounds intriguing.