'cut your dreadlocks or you're fired'

photo: via NewsOne

via News One: Here we go again, this time in St. Peters, MO, where Tower Loan, two months after hiring Ashley Davis (pictured), implemented a new corporate policy, with new mandates having to do with grooming.  She is to cut her dreadlocks, which she has worn for ten years, by Friday, or lose her job.
Let's go, Post-Racial-America!
Read more here.

keri & yara shahidi on beauty

extra! extra! black girls still confusing fashion world!

Well, well, well.  If it ain't just the fashion industry at it again, wrestling, in 2013, with what to do with women of color.  Here's today's lineup:

• Jourdan Dunn says she was booted from the Dior show because of her breasts.

“I’m normally told I’m cancelled because I’m ‘coloured’ so being cancelled because off my boobs is a minor : ) “ (the Grio)

 Maybe it's just me.  Maybe this is just a form of progress I'm slow to feel.

 Then there's Malaika Firth! Malaika Firth!:  It's big news that Prada is using a black model in a print campaign for the first time in 19 years. (theGrio).  Aaaaaaand here she is:

Now, everything is gorgeous, okay? The image, the model, the clothes, everything.  And yes, I know that we (black people) come in myriad skin tones, so I'm in no way questioning her blackness or anything like that when I say that I had to double back to the headline to make sure I had clicked on the right article once I saw the photo.  Prada, please.  Talk to me when we're at least half way to Alek Wek, mm-kay?

But the silver lining?  Over at Versace, Naomi Campbell didn't just own that runway with her famous walk last night, she straight up defied her age, according to The Daily Mail:

Wow, um, my brain is tired from all this, so let's recap:

• Black girl, it's not the color of your skin this time, it's your boobage that isn't right.
• Black girl, yea, you, the one who is lighter in skin tone than a lot of white girls, yea you, you're the one.  And more importantly, that makes us progressive.
• Black girl, you still here? Still looking this good?  Something isn't right here.  Oh, and that's a compliment. You're welcome.

I need a nap.

you can touch my hair

Well... not MY hair.  Not unless I know you and we're that close.  Or I barely know you and the vibe somehow makes me feel amenable to the idea.  Depends.  On so much.  See, I'm torn on this.  While I don't want to feel like a petting zoo animal, a healthy and ongoing conversation about hair can serve as a bridge towards cross cultural understanding, right?  And isn't understanding what we want in the end?

There are no easy answers in this realm, which is why I'm intrigued by You Can Touch My Hair, an interactive public art exhibit being held by the folks at Un'ruly, in New York City, during which "...strangers from all walks of life will have the welcomed opportunity to touch various textures of black hair." (Un'ruly)

Where+When: Union Square, June 6th 2-4pm and June 8th 2-4pm

With all the buzz and the "hell no" commentary I've noticed on facebook about the exhibit, I'm gonna need to at least take a peak at what happens.  You?

zoe saldana as nina simone...mm-mm

I finally saw the pictures of Zoe Saldana made up to play the role of Nina Simone.  I'd stayed away from the story and accompanying images, thinking everyone probably needed to relax a bit, and open their minds; thinking that this, like most other headlines, would calmly fade away once folks found the next thing to get upset about.  But Saldana's recent reaction to the backlash that came after she was announced as Mary J. Blige's replacement in the film, brought the story back through my Reader along with this particularly jarring image:

             photo:Coqueran/FameFlynet Pictures; Michael Putland/Getty Images

 My eyes can't believe that this is the best way to bring a likeness of Nina Simone to the screen.  It's unsettling, because  if you know Nina Simone's story and understand her impact, you know that her appearance, her dark skin, her natural hair, her broad features,  all of how she looked can not be separated from how her story is told.  We can love and respect Zoe Saldana all we want but we can't hide (especially not with these pictures floating around) that her being cast in this role is like a mirror being held up to a society (or a Hollywood) that still isn't ready to really see Nina Simone.

I feel bad (but only a little) for Ms. Saldana as she is the colorism poster girl in the middle of all this brouhaha, and she's being called upon to speak about it.  To be fair, we haven't even seen the film yet and she's pretty much under attack.  But she handles herself, as always, with poise and grace:

(via Clutch)



Far be it for me to try and tell her who she is, or what Nina Simone means to her, but as far as I'm concerned, Uptown Magazine is spot on:

"Casting someone to play Nina Simone who does not look like Nina Simone greatly dilutes her story and undermines her strength.  Had Zoe been born back then, she and Nina would have had very different life experiences because of the way they look.  Nina couldn’t pass.  She didn’t have the societal advantage of light skin or fine hair to ease the road a little bit.  And it was the pride she took in that that made her such a subversive figure.  She didn’t try to make herself palatable to mainstream society.  She didn’t bleach her skin or get a nose job.  She was unapologetically her natural black self, in visage and in politics, and that is where her power lied." (Uptown)

What do you think?  Will you be seeing this film?

stopplayinwitme! they will rob you of your locs in johannesburg.

photo: ellis peters

Okay. New Series: Stopplayinwitme! It's the way I seem to react to things I find shocking in any way. It just flies out of my mouth, as it did when I read this story over at Clutch. Walk with me: The headline "Hair Theft: Cut-and-Run Robberies Target People with Locs in South Africa"  (Hunh?) ... It went on to talk about how people with long locs are being attacked and robbed of their hair on the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, shorn with broken glass and what not; how the demand on the black market has locs selling for $200 to $2,000 rand. ... (What?) By the time I got to:

“I’m even afraid of walking through town with my locs loose especially at night. I make sure I cover my head. It is scary because you never know what they will use to cut your hair — these people are ruthless.” (Clutch)

I was like  Stopplayinwitme! 
Read the whole story here.
Just saying, on any given day, even today in 2013 U.S.A., at any given time, there's a dreadlock-wearing woman wondering if it was the hair, since everything else seemed to have gone so well at the interview (not that she would change anything about the hair; she just wonders).
Thoughts? 

the coiffure project

Ladies and gentlemen, The Coiffure Project by Mr. Glenford Nunez.  

You ready?

 

more here...

melissa harris-perry on black hair

You know, as disheartening as it can be to think of how far we have yet to go in terms of true acceptance and understanding that beauty is a diverse thing, it's good to see the conversation kept alive and presented in a way that is not only enlightening, but downright hilarious in moments.  Check out Melissa Harris-Perry's Teachable Moment on the politics of black hair.
via The Root:

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thecoilreview.com

really, psychology today?

An article entitled "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?" by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa was recently published on Psychology Today's website.  Chock full of pure garbage and utter nonsense, the article stayed on the website just long enough to garner the fiery backlash it was asking for.  Though it has been taken down, its contents are still available on other sites.  Kanazawa uses unsound logic and a poor excuse for a study to explain his findings that Black women are objectively less attractive than women of other races.  Over at the grio, Lori Adelman reacts, writing:

"The resulting piece of journalism -- and I use that word very loosely in this case -- is just as offensive as one might suspect. And the author's arguments turn out to have quite a few holes, not the least of which is that his "scientific analysis" of black women's inferior beauty is based on the opinions of unidentified "interviewers" and their entirely subjective standards of beauty." (the grio)

Now, is there anyone out there who truly believes we live in a post-racial world?  Really?
Personally, I couldn't care less what Kanazawa has to say about Black beauty, but for those who can't easily brush off the foolishness, don't forget that this is nothing new:  For centuries, so-called scientists have been trying to undermine Black identity in America using so-called scientific reasoning.  And our beauties are just part and parcel of our identities.

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is "nappy" an offensive word?

In the wake of Rihanna's recent twitter smack down of a fan who critiqued her hair for looking "so nappy", Jessica C. Andrews, in an article over at Clutch, asks if "nappy" is a word we can reclaim.  She likens the process of redefining hate-marred words that have been used to demean Blacks to walking on a tight rope, where at any given antagonizing moment, pain from years of degradation can be brought to the surface.  Andrews writes:

"It’s clear that in society’s imagination to be nappy is to be unattractive, undesirable and unkempt. It’s a look that is oft rejected by corporate and even popular culture. Rock it and prepare to defend yourself—or be ready to correct it with a flat iron or a relaxer. Yet again, we find our hair tangled in the web of institutionalized racism and sexism in America ...We are one of the few groups of people forced to defend the texture that grows out of our scalps." (Clutch)

I'm a bit torn on this:  See, like Andrews, I love my naturally kinky hair.  I don't feel at all insulted when I hear the term 'nappy hair'.  The word 'nappy' means 'kinky', nothing more.  So, in answer to Andrews' questions about reclaiming 'nappy', I'd say that the only thing that needs reclaiming is perspective and truth:  Beautiful nappy hair exists just like beautiful silky hair does.  I said this out loud in conversation with friends recently and inadvertently sparked a bit of a debate:  One person, citing the Don Imus "nappy headed hoes" fiasco, said that the term 'nappy', when used by a White person to describe a Black person's hair, is akin to the n-word.

I think I understand a little:  It's not like most of the White people in my life have a tendency to have deep hair conversations with me.  The topic tends to stay at bay most of the time, so yes, it might feel a little awkward if a White friend (who doesn't usually) suddenly started touching my hair, and using the word 'nappy' to describe it.  It might feel a bit experimental, a bit naive on their part, because clearly, 'nappy' is a word that has been historically loaded and meant to be derogatory towards Black hair for a long time.  But I don't think it would feel the same as being called a n---*r, at all.  And it would certainly be an easier segway than the n-word into possibly having an educational conversation about Black hair.
What do you think?  Does the term 'nappy' make you twitch?  Give you pause?  Make you want to cuss somebody out?  Do you use it?

hairstory: pitstops on the road to the glorious coil

Even though it’s completely opposite to my natural texture, straight hair is where my story begins. In childhood memories around hair, first came the hot comb, and then later, the no-lye relaxer. There were times when I wore my hair in African braids, beautiful intricate styles that lasted for months at a time. Even so, soon after the braids would come out, in would go the relaxer. The idea that hair needed to be straightened was such a given, it was like a fundamental part of the way I was wired. I was born into that world, knew nothing else, and didn’t find my way to questioning any of it until decades later.

When I first started experimenting with changing my hairstyle, my ideas were variations on it in its relaxed state. Like the period in high school when I decided I didn’t want my hair tightly curled with a hot iron and stacked into an impossible looking asymmetrical sculpture (It was the eighties). I stopped curling my hair. I would part it on the side, and let it fall, which I will admit, in retrospect, left it looking more like an interruption on the way to a hairstyle than an actual hairstyle.

Another phase in my hairstory was the summer of the weave, in the middle of college. The only evidence I have of that now is a set of photo negatives, and the vague memory of how quickly the excitement of having that new hairstyle faded. Once I got the weave, and lived with it for a bit, I didn’t get it anymore. The maintenance was too involved for my taste and I had answered my wonder about what it would feel like. It felt exactly like what it was: someone else’s hair sewn in strips to mine. Not for me. Now when I see those negatives, I can’t help but laugh and think, Damn it looks like I was trying to give Chaka Khan a run for her money on the hair tip.

In my 20s I got curious and courageous enough to cut all my hair off. By that point I had done all I was going to with a relaxer, and I started to notice Black girls with amazing natural hairstyles. I wanted to experience the ease of a wash and go style. At the same time, I was becoming more aware of societal beauty norms, how little they coincided with how I felt and thought, and how automatically, often frantically, people subscribed to them. It all seemed a tad on the bizarre side to me because my hair changes felt in a sense like I was trying on selves for fit. And when the fit wasn’t right, I didn’t linger.

Nowadays, I wear my hair in long dreadlocks and I absolutely love it. I love my hair in its natural, coarse, texture. I love the myriad styling options available to me. I love the strength of it, the coil of it, and yes, the feel of it. I know I’m not supposed to, if I want to fit in with my land-of-the-free society. Every day, several times a day, I encounter billboards and all kinds of ads that basically say, as if it’s a given fact, that what my hair does naturally is not what hair is supposed to do, not what I should want it to do. I get the message. I just disagree. Highly.

It wasn’t some mystical, magical, beyond-us force that came down and decided that a European beauty ideal would be the law. Those kinds of ideas came out of human minds, like mine. Like yours. Like the ones it will take to eventually get mainstream media to reflect our society’s beauty in its gloriously diverse actuality. Once I got conscious of this, it became impossible for me to blindly ingest beauty ideals served up by mainstream media, or anyone else.

natural AND professional, oh my!

photo: getty images

That the appropriateness of natural (and yes, in many cases nappy) black hair in professional environments is still  questioned and debated,  says it all:  We may have come a long way baby, but we are nowhere near there yet.  In a lot of ways we have simply moved sideways and not forward.  Over at Black Enterprise, a recent article tackles the subject, stating:

"The reality is that your chances for getting a job and getting promoted are lessened when you don’t conform/assimilate to an ideal, predefined standard of appearance in certain industries. Is it right? No. Is there something you can do about that? Yes. If you’ve demonstrated that you have an incomparable work ethic, you can tame your company’s most challenging projects, and you’ve dotted every I or crossed every T on your resume but you still aren’t getting hired or promoted, then you have three choices: 1) Change industries 2) start your own company or 3) conform and straighten your hair and/or cut your locs."

It's sobering to remember how real the third choice is.  I have walked out of interviews that seemed to have gone beautifully, not heard back and wondered if my locs had anything to do with it.  It's an unspoken thing.  A thing you notice at random times, like when your white co-worker catches herself saying something about how dry her hair got, after she colored it for the second time over the weekend; when she touches her hair, her eyes fall on your long dreadlocks and her voice trails off just as she finishes saying  "It had the most horrible texture."   

It was only four years ago that former Glamour magazine associate editor, Ashley Baker stood before a room full of lawyers and presented a slide show on dos and don'ts of corporate fashion, during which she reportedly made remarks about dreadlocks being "truly dreadful ... No offense, but those 'political' hairstyles really have to go." (Howard University News Service)  The ensuing media storm included myriad debates on racism, and Baker's resignation (which says nothing about whether or not she has come to see that the way my hair coils out of my scalp is just as natural as the way her hair grows).  And then, just like that, everyone moved on.

We've come a long way, but we are still right here.  The law may say companies can't discriminate in their hiring practices, but let's not get it twisted:  The only place racism has gone is officially out of style.  If the person interviewing you or the one in charge of your promotion has some deep seeded view that hair is 'appropriate' or 'kept' or 'beautiful' or 'professional looking' only when it it straight and flowy, then you (and your locs, 'fros, twists, etc...) are out of the running, unless you conform and change your hair.  

Here's hoping you never have to.