Chris Rock's 'Good Hair': Getting to the Root of the Problem

2 years ago

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Mary C. Curtis

National Correspondent

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I agree with Mia and Helena that hair is just hair, or should be anyway, and that how you style it is just fashion and personal preference. (Though Mia, getting away with a quick blow dry puts you way ahead of the game.) But no one mentions the moment in Chris Rock's documentary "Good Hair" that cuts through the laughs.

A very little girl sits in an oversized beautician's chair, her head covered in "relaxer" to tame her natural kinks, and it's horrifying. In the film, sodium hydroxide, the active ingredient in the chemical concoction that straightens hair -- comically called "creamy crack" -- is shown melting aluminum cans.

So before she's old enough for kindergarten, a little black girl is taught that risking chemical irritation and scalp burns is worth it to obtain the "good hair" of the title. That's more than a matter of style. It's indoctrination that says "learn to suffer, kid, if you want to pass muster."

"Good Hair" segues into the Bronner Brothers' annual hairstyle competition in Atlanta, a fantastical crowd-pleaser and, I'm sure the filmmakers hope, an audience-grabber.

I'd like to see a film explore why the mother of a little girl views this trip to the beauty parlor as a rite of passage and not torture, and how lovely "Cold Case" actress Tracie Thoms, as she explains in the film, is made to feel that wearing her hair as it comes out of her head is considered a revolutionary act.

When you hear the phrase "good hair," it never just means hair that's clean and neat, as much as we would wish it so.

But that's another film altogether.

Filed Under: Race Issues, Woman Up, Culture

Tagged: chris rock, ChrisRock

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