Mary C. Curtis

Contributor

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

Posted:

10/6/09

Filed Under:Race, Woman Up, Culture

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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.

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Mary C. Curtis

Mary C. Curtis, an NPR contributor based in Charlotte, N.C., was previously a writer and editor for The New York Times and the Charlotte Observer... more

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daballofire

3:55PM Oct 6th 2009

And in the late 70's my insane, lefty, whack job, Jewish wife tried to make me get a perm so I could have an afro like her fantasy black man did in her dreams.

It was easier to replace her with one who could at least cook a hamburger to 160 degrees :-)

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Alwayspissedoff@something

4:48PM Oct 6th 2009

That's funny stuff right there....

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daballofire

5:38PM Oct 6th 2009

Naw, for not much of a living, I write apologies for Letterman - and am always pissed off at something. You're just a kindred spirit perhaps.

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LoreeB

5:41PM Oct 15th 2009

At the age of fifty, I have finally reached a truce with my poker straight brown hair. I had perms that fried my hair, and at one point gave me a persistant bald spot. When I was in grade school, I had a black girlfriend, and I envied her two things, her beautiful hair that stayed in curls when I brushed it around my finger, and her twin baby sisters. Why is is that we women, whatever hair we are not born with is the one we want the most? I still secretly wish my hair was curly, but my hair has informed me that if I try it again, it will pack up and leave forever. We really are funny, aren't we?

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Yve

4:38PM Nov 28th 2009

As an African American woman with kinky hair I'd like to comment that Chris Rock brought up an interestig conversation peice. A subject that shines the light on the struggle of self-esteem in a great number African American women, myself included and I am glad that the topic has been brought up but I don't think it is enough to change our minds about chemicals and wigs and weaves. It is however a great opener for discussion.

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