It’s with us from the day we’re born. For many of us it’s a source of pride, our crowning glory. My grandmother used to call it our “beauty” as she warned me never to cut it. It’s our hair, black hair. And as you know our hair is a very weighty topic. While some regard our hair as fleeting fashion choices, others have made it a lifestyle choice. And whether we want it to be or not, the way we wear our hair even makes political statements. And Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps explore all of these topics, along with the history of black hair, going back to the 1400’s in West Africa, in their Hair Story: Untangling The Roots Of Black Hair In America. Released 13 years ago and re-released with a foreword by Melissa Harris Perry, Hair Story will have you nodding in agreement, shaking your head in annoyance or outrage and raising your eyebrows at the new information you learn. We had a chance to speak with the authors of the book about the re-release. Byrd and Tharps talked about everything from hair superstitions to Gabby Douglas to the way we use our hair maintenance to express love and friendship. See what they had to say.
MN: What do you say to people who say, “It’s just hair”?
Ayana: It’s not just hair. If it were just hair, Gabby Douglas would have been able to win the Olympic Gold without people on Twitter exploding. And then the Twitter attacks, to Hollywood, to news papers to all over the place talking about what her hair looked like while she was making Olympic history. Or other children who are talked about online about their hair. Or people who are not hired for jobs or people who are told they have to change their hair if they already have a job if their hair’s natural. Or women who feel they’re not dateable if their hair’s a certain way because men won’t like the texture or length. Or men who won’t date someone whose hair is a certain length or texture.
There’s still all these other, very real–sometimes impacting not just your self esteem but sometimes your financial life– obstacles that come up with hair. And I think until those are removed, we’re going to keep talking about hair. On the flip side, on the positive side, I think there are a lot of really good conversations that come out about hair. When you read Hair Story, it’s not a book of doom and gloom. We also really highlight the positive cultural conversations that happen, cultural productions whether it’s art or photo exhibits, just different things that people create about black hair and the community that’s forged around black hair and I actually don’t see any reason for those conversations to ever stop because it brings a lot of joy to people having them and also it brings a lot of common ground.
Lori: Until American culture can catch up with hair equality, then we are going to still talk about it. Because there is still discrimination felt by black women and black men, in the workplace, in social circles based on their hair. We’re still seeing women being fired from their jobs because of their hair. That’s an economic issue that has to be discussed. Now all of this Twitter chatter etc that happens ‘what does her hair look like?’ That might be a little excessive. But that’s what social media has brought us to. Every topic gets over discussed.
MN: Why do you think the black community is so concerned about the upkeep of other people’s hair? Is it an issue with the politics of respectability?
Lori: As a community we are still judged. One black person does something and the whole community is condemned. We joke about it when a horrible crime happens, ‘oh, please don’t let it have been a black person.’ And that’s, of course, unfortunate and ridiculous but it’s a fact and it is the truth. If we perceive, and I say that as a collective we, one of our own, who is in the spotlight, is doing something we see as negative then we fall all over ourselves trying to make sure that that negative thing is fixed right away so that the white man doesn’t figure out that we have flaws. Because we’re still playing some sort of catch up. Make sure that there’s nothing that we can be criticized about. I mean look at Rachel Jeantel.
We have these public figures and we have to make sure that when they’re on the national stage that they show off the best of us. So when it comes to hair, because there’s still this group mentality that appropriate, proper and acceptable hair looks a certain way. And that hair is smooth edges, nothing too aggressive, nothing too natural, nothing too Afro-like. And unfortunately that is the kind of the collective, acceptable hairstyle. Now on the other hand we are seeing the natural hair movement broadening people’s ideas of acceptability but that’s still a fringe movement when you look at the numbers of black women who are still straightening and or relaxing their hair or wearing weaves that are straight. So this idea that the natural hair movement has completely revolutionized what people think is acceptable hair is not true. We’re definitely expanding. So this attacking of young children or Pam Oliver’s wig, yes, I feel like black people still feel like we can attack one another with this idea that if we don’t call each other on it, then whitey will. And that’s really regressive thinking. I’m sure a lot of people aren’t making those thoughts consciously but I do believe that we still have that mentality left over from the past of policing each other’s behavior and physical appearance.
Ayana: Even though we see a lot of attacks on hair online, social media has also become this place where people really will build these supportive communities for people who are attacked. I think the one of the most obvious examples is the Locs of Love project that Yaba Blay did after the little girl was told that she had to cut off her locs or get expelled from school. But through social media, within 24 hours, Yaba was able to gather over a 100 women who sent in really encouraging letters and photos of themselves. I think in the past, pre social media, someone would have heard about the story, turned to their friend and said, ‘That’s a damn shame.” And that would have been the extent of it. But within two days, this little girl could see this outpouring of love and support for her. So I also think that’s a really positive side effect of what happens with black hair and social media, that we’ve never seen before. And I hope that continues to be the trend for what happens on Twitter when it comes to hair as opposed to cutting people down.
Samuel Byrd
MN: In what ways do we use hair or the maintenance of hair to express love or friendship?
Lori: One of the things we really wanted to do with this book was connect the past to the present. And for the black community, specifically, we wanted them to understand that the relationship that they have with their hair is forged on a long historical legacy. And that there wasn’t always this kind of hatred of the hair or feeling that the hair was inferior. There was a time when Africans loved their hair and felt it was their most precious way to demonstrate who they were, their identity. And so one of the things we really looked into was West African traditions of hair and hair maintenance and hair styles in the 1400s before there was European colonization.
And one of the things we discovered was that doing black hair has always required a lot of time. There’s just no way to get around it. You had only special people would be allowed to do your hair, to style your hair. And you would only let someone you really trusted and loved care for your hair. And because it takes a lot of time to do the hair, it is the time when friendships would be formed. Whether you go to the salon or you ask your best friend to do your hair, it usually takes time and that’s when you talk and you share. And that salon culture that has evolved around black hair, it’s so much more than quick run in and run out. That’s where you have friendships, you get your advice, you share and hear about what’s happening in the community, it’s like community time around the hair. I think that’s one of the most special things about hair culture is that the grooming of hair has created it’s own culture. That same grooming time as social time comes from Africa in the 1400s.
Today, you may only allow your best friend touch your hair or a girl, a boy she likes, she might offer to braid his hair. It’s a response to the fact that our hair does require special care and that’s the time to be with people you love and trust the most.
Ayana: My mom, in the last couple of years, has become friends– her group of girlfriends are women who all have the same appointment at 9 am. My mother is one of those people who, every other Saturday, it doesn’t matter what the weather’s like, she is at the hair salon. There’s two other women who also always had that appointment. And my mother and the other two women and the woman who does their hair were the only women in the salon because most people aren’t trying to go out at 9 am on a Saturday. And they forged this friendship. And their friendship usually takes place twice a month at the salon, they sit and talk. But they make a point to go out twice a year for dinner and they’ve met all of us and they were at my grandmother’s funeral and they exchange Christmas gifts. And this year I was in town so I went with my mom to the gift exchange and I was sitting there like this is so amazing. And then I was like, no this is what we wrote about, these bonds that were all forged over hair. And with women who may not have very much in common. They all work in very different industries, they’re at different stages in life. Age wise, my mother is a grandmother. One of them doesn’t have kids. They’re all in these different places but they were able to bond over getting their hair done.
MN: The book talks about hair superstitions, are there any hair superstitions your family had that you maybe still believe?
Ayana: No one in my family will cut a baby’s hair before their one. Which I thought was my family just being weird or lazy. But then as we were researching the book, I found out that’s actually a pretty commonly held superstition. So I think when I have children, I’ll probably do the same thing. Even though I’m not sure what people think is going to happen. But it’s weird to me to see babies with haircuts.
Lori: I’m the same. Nobody ever said we believe this. It was a fact. I didn’t think anybody cut their baby’s hair before age one. And I remember making a big deal about taking my son to get his hair cut. And by the time he was one, he looked like Elvis, he had so much hair. And I just remember it being a really big deal like saving his curls to put in the baby book, like it was a really big deal. And my husband, before he turned one, my husband is from Spain, and had no concept of these myths, rituals, superstitions. And I really had a hard time explaining to him why we couldn’t do it. And it wasn’t until I was doing research for the book I was like, this is black tradition, ok?!’
And it’s actually really kind of cool. That’s kind of the reason we wanted to start the book way back when. We wanted to really kind of connect our current feelings about our hair to the past. So we know we’re not crazy about thinking certain things or following certain traditions. They’re actually a part of our tradition.
MN: What do you all make of the Natural Hair Movement?
Ayana: Lori and I have both been natural for a really long time. Since I was 18, so that was 22 years ago. I was in New York and I was in college and the only other person I saw with natural hair was my roommate. She was actually a big motivator for why I decided to go natural. I looked at her every single day and I thought she looked great and I liked her hair and I saw that it took her way less time to get out of the dorm than it took for me. So I thought ok I’m going to do this. And that was it. I have a very different texture than her so the products that she used didn’t necessarily work for my hair. And then if I decided to grow it a little longer, I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. There was no information and I spent a lot of money at the drug store buying things hoping it worked and I also did not see any visual representation of what I looked like unless I was looking at my roommate or Roshumba when she was a model and had natural hair. It’s crazy that I can remember the two places where I saw someone who looked like me. And I think what’s amazing about the natural hair movement is that it really wipes out the two things that I struggled with, which is where to find information about what to do with your hair and at the same time where to see what you look like reflected back at you on someone else. Just to say ‘oh that’s great, oh that’s beautiful, ‘oh I’m not alone.’
MN: What do you think about the term “Natural Hair Nazis”?
Ayana: First of all that’s an ignorant phrase. People have been going around talking crazily about natural hair for so many years and now that there’s actually this really unified, popular, well populated grouping of people who are online who can respond to some of those attacks and show that they’re not just one cranky person but they are actually a lot of people who hold that opinion. I think that’s just making the people who’ve gotten away with talking about natural hair with no pushback sort of angry. And you know people like alliteration so “natural nazi” sounds cute and it sounds mean and it sounds like the person at fault is the one standing up for themselves or natural hair textures. I just think it’s mean spirited.
Lori: It seems completely paradoxical that a movement…If we’re calling it a movement, it’s because there’s actually a community around it. It’s not just about people trying out new hairstyles. It’s about claiming our beauty as God created us. We’re saying that we’re going to embrace our beauty and not going to conform what was previously declared as the only way to be a black girl and be pretty. That being said, for a lot of women, it is just a style trend. And that’s when it gets confusing. This policing of can you be part of the group if you are natural but you wear a weave or if you are natural but you wear a press and curl. How do we even define natural?
Ayana and I wrote this book so that people could make this book so people could make style choices devoid of self confidence issues and historical precedence. So that people could say, I want to wear my hair like this because I want to, not because white people won’t find me attractive or acceptable or that black men won’t find me attractive or acceptable. The idea of people within the movement policing, saying ‘well that’s acceptable and that’s not.’ It just goes against this idea of we are trying to work towards freedom of wearing our hair however we want to. I am free from expectations of what’s acceptable and I’m wearing my hair this way because I choose to.
I think anybody who uses the word nazi is just wrong. I think they should be called missionaries because they have the zeal of a missionary and they want to spread the gospel truth and if you’re a heretic because you’ve permed your hair they’re going to come down on you with the holy fever. And I understand it because I know when you feel like you know the truth– and the truth is an afro or natural hair–you feel like that’s the only way to go. And I think like every movement in a few years people will relax, no pun intended, their requirements of what it means to be part of this movement. Because who holds the true definition of natural? When you can be natural and wear a weave, you can be natural and color your hair which is chemicals. You can be natural and have your hair straightened with a flat iron. And you don’t look natural, but you are. And that’s the problem, natural black hair is hard to define in the first place. Which is why I think this policing by these natural hair zealots is misguided.
MN: Any last thoughts you’d like to share?
Ayana: Lori and I are excited about a lot of things with the book coming back out. But I think one of the things we’re most excited about is Melissa Harris Perry’s contribution to it. The fact that someone who’s seen on national television and has got the platform that she has would have taken the time to do the foreword for our book and to really encapsulate so many of the personal and larger political issues in the pages… It was so exciting for us to see what she produced for the foreword. I just love what she’s saying and that it’s the first thing that you read.
To learn more about this book and Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps, visit HairStoryOnline.com. You can purchase the anthology on Barnes and Noble.com.
