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Chris Rock, Dubi-Dubi and the Politics of Good Hair

2 years ago

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There's an old joke that goes like this: When Puerto Rico-bound airline pilots want to know how close they are getting to the island, they ask flight attendants to walk through the aisle and check the women's hair. When the frizz factor reaches island levels, it's time to lower the landing gear. Escaping tropical humidity was not why I decided to move to the states as a college-age teenager, but it would have been as good a reason as any; imagine a bad-hair day every day.

Those nightmarish memories all came rushing back as I watched an early screening of "Good Hair," Chris Rock's documentary about African-American women and their hair. (It opens nationwide on Friday.) Without giving too much away, the film hopscotches from interviews with celebrities who can afford $5,000 hair extensions, to a trip to India to find out where all those extensions come from, to a styling competition, to more interviews with average women in hair salons who refer to hair relaxer as "creamy crack" – once you've straightened your hair, you never go back.

Because it's Chris Rock, the film has many hilarious moments -- and some cringe-inducing ones too -- that only a comedian as gifted as he could get away with. And because Rock said his interest in the subject was prompted by an innocent question from one of his daughters – "Daddy, how come I don't have good hair?" – the mostly female audience cut him some slack.

But, oh, wow, the nerve of a man to take on such a deep, sensitive female subject. His basic premise is that what's regarded as good hair is white people's hair and we silly nonwhite girls should stop it and care more about what's in our heads, not outside of them. (To his credit, Rock included straightened male hair like Al Sharpton's.)

I can't speak for black women, but I don't need to: After a screening there was a panel and the black panelists had plenty to say. "A mockumentary," Angela Bronner Helm, a senior editor with the AOL site "Black Voices," called it. She said she felt the laughter was aimed at her.

Isn't the concept of good hair evolving to mean simply "healthy hair"? New York Times writer Catherine Saint Louis asked. She pointed to the Obama girls and how they wear their hair any way they like – straight, in twists -- according to their mood, like any young girl.

Some panelists wondered why women dying their hair blond was not politically charged. Well, for fair-skinned Latinas it is. Angelique Serrano, beauty and fashion director for Latina magazine, said that when she got blond highlights on her straight hair, she was questioned by several people who thought it was a way to be "less Latina ."

But don't plenty of Caucasian girls also long for blond hair, for "good" hair?

"First we have to free ourselves" of the political baggage, advised Mikki Taylor, cover director at Essence magazine. "Don't own that."

Look, I'm sure you can find all sorts of pathology behind women's hair styles -- Sarah Palin's all-American beehive, for instance -- but sometimes hair is just hair. As far as I'm concerned it is another accessory, although a critical one since it frames your face. You wear it as a form of self-expression or the way you feel you look your best, which unfortunately is susceptible to fads, as all our yearbook photos (and Betty's Fellini-esque Italian updo in "Mad Men" last Sunday) prove.

In my case, I was born with wavy hair so prone to frizz that I look forward to 20-degree weather just because it provides some relief. In the summer, though, there are many times I wish I could just iron it right there on the ironing board along with the blouse. These days I just blow-dry it and hope for the best.

But in my teenage years, I did what I still see many women in my heavily Dominican Manhattan 'hood of Washington Heights do -- wrap their hair around a roller in a "dubi-dubi." Not sure where the name came from -- perhaps a play on Dippity-Do curl-holding styling gel, whose ads were incredibly popular in the '60s? -- but the dubi-dubi entails rolling some hair on a roller at the top of your head, brushing the rest of your hair tight around the roller and pinning it as you wrap it. You either go to sleep or walk around during the day looking like a sanitarium escapee. (The real pros can do a dubi-dubi without a roller and look slightly less crazed.) Either way, however, the hair must remain tightly pinned for a good five or six hours to get the straight-hair effect.

Straight, that is, until it rains, or you approach the Caribbean .

Are the efforts worth it? Yes, if they make you feel good. Why should any of it be a political statement? Or anyone else's business?

As a friend of mine told me when I complimented her on her new hair style and dared ask, "Is it yours?"

"You're damn right it is," she said. "I paid good money for it."

Filed Under: Woman Up

Tagged: chris rock, ChrisRock, good hair, GoodHair

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