Comments on: Power and Oprah’s Hair

By: Drhiphp85

Drhiphp85 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:10:00 +0000

A very good point that I didn’t even think of. I think it comes from the idea that Americas is perceived (by citizens and the rest of the world) as being much more diverse than countries in Europe, Asia, or Africa. I mean when people say African they usually mean “black”…still a very good point about the diversification of the entire global in our globalized society.

By: jocelynstone

jocelynstone — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:22:00 +0000

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’ve had fun discussing this over the past couple of days.

By: Snuhfoo

Snuhfoo — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:12:00 +0000

On one hand, I completely agree with your point that you can’t judge the motives behind the choice of an individual. Black women who wear their hair straight are often considered to be going with the norm and black women who wear their hair “natural” are often seen as making political statements- regardless of how the individual feels. This is a huge part of the problem- they can not get away from others reading into their hair style no matter what they choose.

On the other hand, it is impossible to divorce an individual choice from the surrounding culture. For instance, you mention that you like your hair straight because you don’t like things messy/disorderly. But equating curly hair with messiness and straight hair with neatness comes from the larger culture. We could just as easily say that natural hair (whether it be straight or curly) is clean and permed/straightened/chemically treated hair is dirty. This isn’t to say if the culture was different that your preference would be different. You very well may still like your hair straight even if the larger culture called it messy. However, it is impossible to tell how much of your preference is your own or your reaction to the larger culture.

By: jocelynstone

jocelynstone — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:11:00 +0000

Personally, I don’t believe that not being a faithful follower of Oprah’s makes me “clearly blindly ignorant about how black hair politics work,” but I guess that’s your opinion. I am a black woman in my mid-40s who has wrestled with my own personal perspective on this issue for most of my life, and I stand by my statement. My point (and I’ve stated it in a couple of ways in later comments I left) is *not* whether Oprah was choosing to make a political/cultural statement and *not* that she made such a statement whether she wanted to or not, but that I believed assumptions were being made about her choices and motives. It incenses me when people claim to know my motives based on how I wear my hair, the clothes I wear or any other type of personal choice I make, and it annoys me when I see it being done to someone else. If not knowing what Oprah has said on the subject in the past makes my comment irrelevant to this situation, so be it. But I believe the essence of my argument is still valid.

But if you think that I don’t “get” what that cover represents to many people, politically and culturally, you are wrong.

By: jocelynstone

jocelynstone — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 20:51:00 +0000

Thanks for sharing your thoughts – this has been a fun discussion for me.

By: Annette Lockhart Jackson

Annette Lockhart Jackson — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 19:59:00 +0000

Actually, Black women who straighten our hair are more at risk of our hair becoming weak, damaged, and falling out.

By: Tusconian

Tusconian — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:19:00 +0000

Oprah has made a lot of public statements about her hair. I am not sure someone who doesn’t know that, and is clearly blindly ignorant about how black hair politics work, needs to be yipping on about “maybe you’re overthinking this.”

By: Tusconian

Tusconian — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:16:00 +0000

If by nappy you mean the loosely cured weaves Beyonce wears, sure. And to compare bed head to a natural texture is…..suspicious.

By: Tusconian

Tusconian — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:15:00 +0000

Do you notice that the 60s and 70s were the middle and tail end of the Civil Rights movement, and when a lot of people shifted from “quietly sitting in peaceful protest” to “radical?” That’s pretty major and has a lot, if not everything, to do with it. Since then, obviously, racim and Eurocentric beauty standards have still existed in a major way, but not in the same, mandatory way. Plus, in the 80s and 90s, more abstract, unnatural hairstyles were in style, so an Afro would be unusual, but for a completely different reason. “Natural” hair was still common, but in a much more styled, structured way. And relaxers came back into style for black women, while huge poofy perms were trendy for white women. Also, around that time, very short hair became (and still is) common, if not the norm, for black women over a certain age, whether relaxed or natural. So even if a black women had never relaxed her hair, it wasn’t as obvious as the huge afros of the 70s. People like to act like there are two options: “gigantic afro” and “slave to chemicals,” and THAT is just as much of an issue with this discussion as Eurocentric beauty standards, because it’s so aggressively ignorant about black hair as a thing, and how black American trends have intersected and deviated from white American trends.

By: McLicious (Sarah Hannah Gomez)

McLicious (Sarah Hannah Gomez) — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 17:52:00 +0000

My first instinct would be that she was either legitimately sensitive to the fact that many people of color don’t appreciate it when white people wear braids and dreads and divorce them from their cultural and sociopolitical backgrounds, or that she was just aware that “white girl braids” often don’t look good and invite ridicule.

I spent years doing pretty much what you describe your friend doing, but there are plenty of products, like Cocojams Jambalayah mentions, that are marketed towards women with naturally curly hair, regardless of race, as well as more and more specialty hair salons, that would probably help your friend make her hair more manageable without having to make it something it’s not.

By: Lunad

Lunad — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 12:43:00 +0000

my aunt, in the 1970’s had a “Jewfro”.

By: Cocojams Jambalayah

Cocojams Jambalayah — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 12:34:00 +0000

WG, “a natural” is another term for an “afro” and other hair styles (such as dreadlocks) for tightly curled* hair that is typical of people of Black African descent when that hair is not hot combed or chemically treated. Person who have natural hairstyles (i.e. afros etc) shampoo and condition their hair, and highlight it, and put beads in it if not bows. But I’m not sure about the curl part :o) Furthermore, some people may texturize their afros (add chemical treatment for a shorter time period) to loosen some of the curl. Also, many afros for females & males are cut & styled in beauty parlors or barber shops. That said, there is a trend nowadays for some big afros to be worn seemingly unstyled – or maybe I should say that the seemingly unstyled wide afro is a current style.

I attended an event this week and saw a Black woman in her forties who wore her natural hair (not a wig or hair pieces known as “extensions”) in an unstyled wide afro. Her hair was dyed brown with red tinges. Those colors were almost certainly the result of a beauty parlor or barber shop treatment. Furthermore, her hair may have also been chemically treated as it wasn’t tightly curled but somewhat straight. Instead of her afro being curled and long and close to her head like the picture of Oprah above, her hair was away from her head and went every which way. But she (like me and other Black people) may have some portions of her hair that are naturally straighter than other hair portions, and therefore her wide somewhat straight afro might have been all natural except for the hair colors. Also, there are some Black people who have naturally brown hair or other non-black hair color but in that woman’s case her afro hair colors probably weren’t “natural”.

*”tightly curled” is the term I prefer for various textures of hair that is considered typical of the hair texture for people of Black African descent although it isn’t hair textures of all Black people and isn’t hair textures which are exclusive to Black people. I say “textures” because there are a range of tightly curled hair textures. Other terms for “tightly curled” hair such as kinky, nappy, frizzy, coarse, wooly often have negative connotations and can therefore lead to negative consequences by those who use them.

By: Cocojams Jambalayah

Cocojams Jambalayah — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 12:05:00 +0000

Drhiphop85,I agree with most of your points, but the problem that I have with “European” and/or “Euro-descent” used as an exclusive referent for “White” or “White descent only” is that there are Europeans who aren’t White or White descent only.
http://afroeurope.blogspot.com/ is a blog that features posts on issues & concerns faced by Afro-Europeans. Of course, persons other than Afro-Europeans can & do comment on that blog. Admittedly, the word “European” in the referent Afro-European makes “European” the equivalent of “White”. But I think that eventually “European” may have the same broad meaning as “American”. Nowadays, most people erroneoulsy think that European means White, but those same people usually realize that “Americans” can be of any race or ethnicity (with “ethnicity” in this context meaning “Latino/a”.) In the same way, persons from European nations aren’t automatically White.

By: Drhiphop85

Drhiphop85 — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:12:00 +0000

Well that’s not entirely true now. With a resurgence in popularity of “nappy hair”, you actually see those textures far more on magazine covers if the person present is African American/Black/etc.

By: Drhiphop85

Drhiphop85 — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:10:00 +0000

Wow…have to say I fully agree with everything said here…
Although I think its interesting that when people are describing straight hair, the blanket term of White is used. I only say this because White (or European) hair textures come in a variety of wavy, curly, and straight textures. So its interesting that people never say “Stop getting that East Asian, particularly Japanese hair” LOL. Of course that’s due to the racial hierarchy in this country, which makes Asians invisible and places emphasis on people of Euro-descent. But its interesting because when people say “that straight hair is the marker of beauty” and so on, its kinda stating that even for some Whites they don’t fit it.

Just an interesting side-bar…again I agree with your entire post.