The Wooly Mammoth of Essays

7/30/2019 The Wooly Mammoth of Essays

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If Hair Makes Me Black, I Must Be Purple

In my twenty-one-and-a-half years of living, I cannot recall a single day

where I saw more black1 women wearing natural hairstyles than I saw wearing

permed or processed hair, or hair either covered or extended with wigs and weaves.

This is uniquely shocking to me when the facts are taken into account that I was

raised in a house with three black sisters in a predominantly black neighborhood of

a predominantly black city, attending predominantly black schools before college.

Only in the last two months or so of those years have I actually been looking for it to

happen. Conversely, in the last two months I do recall days where I would

sometimes see only one or two African American women wearing their natural hair

unaltered by chemical straighteners. As a student of the African Diaspora, this

observation raised questions and concerns in my curious mind. The summative

RootsI am sorry you are

proud of the man

who raped your

great-great-great

grandmother and left your

hair good.

Please, this is notenvy it is sorrow

for the long road

we must travel

to be sisters.

My lineage

can be traced

through the roots

of my hair to

Nairobi.

Do not

try to make me

ashamed Of this

fact, sorry my hairgrows in tight

cottonfields on my

head and will not

fly in the wind

like the woman I am not.

-Charlotte Watson Sherman

Yes, my hair is

Straight

But that dont mean that I aint

Black

Nor proud

All it means is that my hair is

Straight

Because my hair is

Straight

Dont mean that Im

Ashamed

And it dont mean that I want to beWhite

Furthermore it dont mean that I aint

Together

Yes, my hair is

Straight

And that dont mean a

Damned thing!

I am

Black

And Proud

Knowing why

-Linda Hardnett


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question is simple: Why do African American women wear their hair in the ways

that they do? The answer, as my research will show, is so much more complex.

The two poems above coupled together shine light on one of the heaviest

dynamics found in the research. That being the dynamic between hair being worn

for reasons of pride and meaning, with intention on conveying a sense of character,

and hair being worn simply for fashion as a matter only of personal preference.

Read separately, the two poems speak to a wide range of dynamics and concerns

also to be addressed in this essay. Some of those include issues of identity and self-

representation both individual and collective, the dynamic created by our

conscious and unconscious influences, the issues of historical context, etc. The

problem is that hair and the way it is styled always says at leastsomething about an

individual, even for those individuals that view their hair as just hair. There is no

way to style your hair so that it conveys absolutely no message about yourself to

others; even shaving it off says something. These general statements ring especially

true in African American culture, wherein hair is often crucial to identity.

Specifically for black women, decisions about how to style the hair create and speak

to profound issues concerning gender, racial, and social identity. As Ima Ebong

writes on the inside cover of her book titled Black Hair: Art, Style and Culture, From

head to toe, no other physical attribute for a black woman is as culturally, socially,

or politically charged as her hair.2

The reasons that hair plays such an important role in the shared culture of

African Americans might stem from the unique history of Africans in America and

the constructs of race, oppression, physical and mental bondage, abuse, and


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complexes of inferiority that were collectively enforced upon them as a people.

Upon first arrival in the Americas, black people were suddenly thrust into a beauty

standard that used their physical features as measurements of ugliness. Not only in

standards for beauty, but also in the social, economic, religious, political, and even

scientific spheres, African Americans were viewed as existing at the bottom of the

constructed hierarchies. In America, this unfortunate history is unique to black

people. What is also unique to black people, specifically to black women, is the ritual

habit of chemically and/or thermally manipulating the hair away from its natural

state in the name of beauty. This practice has become somewhat of a cultural rite of

passage for many African American women, one that is passed on from mother to

daughter. After detailing the history of this ritual, one of the ultimate goals of this

essay is to establish and understand to what extent, if any, the cultural practice of

hair manipulating and straightening is related to this ugly history of enforced self-

hatred. In 2013, when the black woman alters her hair chemically so that it is

permanently changed from its natural state, is it an expression of bondage or an

expression of freedom?

The collected research will show that there exists a myriad of questions,

concerns, and influences that must be addressed before this question can even be

considered. This paper was initially intended to detail the specific history of

chemical manipulation in black American culture. However, the topic and the

question at hand can be much better understood and answered by studying the

history of how hair is viewed by African Americans and how/why those views have

changed over time. There will, though, be greater detail given to the cultural


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practices of thermal and chemical manipulation. Essentially, this is a study of black

consciousness done through the medium of hair and style. As is true of all

consciousness, particularly collective consciousness, there are so many complex

factors at play at each turn that simple answers are almost impossible. We can be

certain that the cultural phenomenon in question is not as simple as black women

wanting to look white. Also, so as to be fair and impartial, this essay will give brief

focus to some of the beauty practices of women from different American cultures,

studied almost as a control to a scientific experiment. Now, without further delay,

let us jump into the history that got our hair culture to where it is today, wherever

that may be.

Unfortunately, the history has a brutally painful beginning in the trans-

Atlantic slave trade, where it can be argued that African American culture has its

origins. However, we can go back a bit further to examine some of the meanings hair

and its styling had to certain tribes in West Africa, the ancestors of African

Americans. In many of these cultures, hair was used to communicate messages of

social status, marital status, age, religion, ethnicity and geographical origins.3 Hair

styles were not worn trivially for fashion; in most instances the way that your hair

was worn spoke directly to who you were as an individual. In some tribes hairstyles

could even convey rather specific messages as well. For example, some Nigerian

housewives living in polygamous families would style their hair specifically to taunt

their husbands other wives with a style called kohin-sorogun, which meant turn

your back on the jealous rival wife, since the style was meant to be seen from

behind.4 It is also noteworthy that hair texture differed between the different


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regions and ethnicities of western Africa almost as much as styling did. African hair

(and Africa in general) is not as monolithic as it is often times viewed today. One

thing the tribes of West Africa seemed to have in common was an aversion to

unkempt hair which was often viewed as improper. Once forced onto the Middle

Passage though, the diversities of culture did become monolithic; you were no

longer Mende or Mandingo or Wolof or Igbo or Akan, you were black, and your

hair was as meaningless in the new world as the status or message it once

represented.

As Ayuba Suleiman Diallo tells in his narrative, Africans captured for the

slave trade were often shaved completely bald by their captors, which Diallo called

the highest indignity.5 In his famous narrative, Olaudah Equiano writes about how

the loose hair ofthe white men on the slave ship served to further convince him

that he had somehow gotten into a world of bad spirits. He recalled asking one of his

fellow Africans ifthey were going to be eaten by the white men with horrible looks,

red faces, and loose hair.6 Equiano must have changed his views on hair though

since he is seen wearing a European style wig on the cover of this narrative. This is

likely because in the new world to which he conformed, loose hair was never seen

as horrible, tight hair was.

While enslaved, hair styling was one of the very few areas where African

Americans were allowed to maintain some autonomy. Slave owners in America did

not seem to make mandates about how the enslaved were to wear their hair.7

However, of course due to lack of tools and free personal time, the elaborate styles

and techniques of West Africa were scarce in America. In their book on African


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American expressive culture titled Stylin,Shane and Graham White use

advertisements for runaway slaves that sometimes described hairstyles as sources

for evidence that black people during slavery did still express themselves through

hair. Some of the advertisements described hairstyles that were suggestive of a

sense of value in the texture of the hair, like Ned from South Carolina who had a

large bushy head of hair which he wears remarkably high or Bazil from Maryland

who was written as having wooly hair, in which he takes great pride.8 On the other

hand, some advertisements note blacks who styled their hair in imitation of their

white owners, but White and White argue that this was done more as expressions of

creativity, blending together African influences with current American/European

trends. It was common practice for enslaved women to wrap their hair in cloths,

rags, and bandanas while working in the sun. This was done partly for protection,

and as Byrd and Tharps argue, rags were worn in part out of shame for the unsightly

hair.9 However, it only seems fair to note that women of all races who are subject to

hard domestic labor do tend to tie up and wrap the hair.

In this time period African hair was often called wool by whites in America

and viewed with disdain. The standard for beauty for both men and women

required long straight hair with fine features, anything else was considered ugly.

These views were forcefully put into the minds of the enslaved and eventually came

to be accepted. In a WPA interview, one former slave recalled, Mistress uster ask

me what that was I had on my head and I would tell her, hair, and she said, No, that

aint hair, thats wool. Dont say hair, say wool.10Amos Lincolns interview showed

that not everyone had accepted this standard, he recalled, Sunday come they roll


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out they hair fine. No grease on it. They want it nice and natural curly.11 The grease

that Lincoln referenced in this quote could have referred to axle grease for wagon

wheels, butter, bacon fat, goose grease or lye mixed with potatoes, all of which were

used by the enslaved in the 19th century to straighten the hair. A butter knife heated

in a can over fire aided in this process serving as a makeshift curling iron.12 Early in

this century, as the influx of Africans slowed to a halt, and as mixed mulatto

populations began to increase, the beauty standard that appreciated long straight

hair and light skin became more and more accepted. It was in this time period and

from these circumstances that the terms good hair and bad hair were formed.

Some more privileged African Americans from this time period took to the popular

European 19th century trend of wearing elaborate wigs. It is important to note that

this beauty standard was not just about being pretty. Conforming to this standard

and making any attempt to look less African allowed for some social mobility and

could gain individuals access to better working conditions, better food, hand-me-

down clothes, and possibly an education.

As early as the 1830s, white owned cosmetic companies began to capitalize

on this impossible beauty standard for blacks by marketing their hair straightening

products in the African American periodicals of the North.12 These companies ran

advertisements that made it clear that the objective of beautification for African

Americans was to look less like African Americans. Dangerous lye straighteners and

arsenic wafers for skin lightening were marketed to blacks with phrasings that

hinted at social mobility and acceptance within the dominant culture. The

advertisements would often show wild and unkempt haired black faces as before


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images and neatly combed straight haired white faces for after images. Hair

straightening products were marketed specifically to African Americans in this way

throughout the 19th century. A journal entry by a well-educated Black female poet

from this time period shows how these messages of inferiority were internalized.

Even as many prominent abolitionist intellectuals wrote highly of both her physical

appearance and intelligence, Charlotte Grimke wrote of herself that:

[After] under-going a thorough self-examination, the result is a mingled

feeling of sorrow, shame and self-contemptNot only am I without the gifts

of Nature, wit, beauty and talentbut I am not even intelligent. [Whereas]

Hattie Purvis is quite attractive, just such long, light hair, and beautiful blueeyes. She is a little poetess, a sweet and gentle creature. I have fallen quite inlove with her.13

It is unfortunate that even a woman of her appreciated beauty and obvious

intelligence would come to view her self so lowly; but, it is somewhat

understandable given the beauty standard she and her peers accepted. Other

prominent Blacks from the 1850s used their voices to speak out against this

standard and the beauty practices it produced. In March of 1853, William J. Wilson

wrote in the Frederick Douglass Paperan editorial titled White is Beautifulthat,

We despise ourselves, we almost hate ourselves and all thatfavors us. Wescoff at black skins and woolly heads, since every model placed before us for

admiration has a pallid face and flaxen head We must begin to acknowledge

and love our own peculiarities.

In 1859 Martin Freeman spoke out in theAnglo-African Magazine that,

The child is taught directly or indirectly that he or she is pretty, just in

proportion as the features approximate the Anglo Saxon standard. Kinky hair

must be subjected to a straightening process oiled, and pulled, twisted up,

tied down, sleeked over and pressed under, or cut off so short that it cant

curl, sometimes the natural hair is shaved off and its place supplied by a

straight wig.14


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The view of Wilson and Martin conflict against the views of the mass culture and

against Grimkes in ways that are synonymous to the way many scholars today view

African American cultural hair practices. This was over 160 years ago! These quotes

show that the dynamics of consciousness behind the history being studied here are

far from new. In the 160 years since, little has been resolved. Hair straightening kits

were continuously marketed in demeaning ways and sold throughout the 1800s,

and with the French invention of the hot comb in 1860, the cultural phenomenon of

chemical and thermal hair manipulation was beginning to take shape.

With emancipation in 1865, many African Americans were blessed with free

time to manage their own appearances and self-representations. Although,

especially in the south, this self-expression was still greatly limited by finances and

with many people working as sharecroppers, freedom was not extremely different

from slavery. After the emancipation, many populations of Blacks who had enjoyed

freedom for a few generations sought to distinguish themselves from the newly

freed masses. Emancipation came, in a way, as a blow to their social status as elite.

One of the most frequent ways African Americans who thought of themselves as

elite sought to distinguish themselves was by their physical features, specifically

how light the skin was or how straight the hair was. Kinky hair to them was a sign of

lowliness. This is why some churches would hang a fine-toothed comb on the front

entrance, those who could not pass the comb through their hair smoothly without

snagging it would be kindly asked to worship elsewhere.15 Lawrence Graham wrote

in Our Kind of People: Inside Americas Black Upper Class, from experience telling


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how these views on hair continued to permeate the African American upper class

well into the 21stcentury.

In the very late 19th century, African American women began to sell

homemade hair tonics and gels to their friends and neighbors, and some would

charge small fees to style and dress their hair for them.16This process continued on

through the turn of the century and is still practiced at least to some extent today.

Some of the more successful home enterprises expanded into successful businesses

and profited off of the rise of consumerism of this period in American history,

eventually expanding their businesses of cosmetic manufacturing and beauty

services into multi-million dollar industries. This led to what business historian

Juliet E. K. Walker called the Golden Age of black business in America, referring to

the period between 1900 and 1930 when the beauty products industry excelled.17

At the dawn of the 20th century, a slight shift in consciousness can be noted

as African Americans began to enter the black hair care industry, creating,

marketing and selling beauty products themselves specifically for African American

hair. They marketed and sold some of the same products hair straightening

creams and skin lightening gels that can be historically tied to enforced self-hatred

and complexes of inferiority. However, for the most part, these African American

owned companies advertised in ways that can be distinguished from the ways that

White owned companies did in the previous century. The companies took advantage

of the fact that most Black people in this time period were seeking social and

financial uplift and to make a decent living for their families, believing that cosmetic

changes could make differences in their qualities of life. Thus, the general motif in


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the advertisements was to improve upon your appearance. They wrote from

within the black community for uplift within the black community with no specific

appeal to look less like a black community (and more like whites). These new

companies, many being owned by women, marketed their products to African

American women with a sense of kinship, acceptance, and understanding. They

advertised by stressing concerns for health, stylistic versatility, hair length, and

economic well-being, thus recontextualizing the meaning of hair in the black

community.18 What is most important is that their products were not marketed with

any suggestions of inferiority. This may be why the cosmetics business proved to be

one of the few areas of commercial activity where black consumers showed a

preference for products manufactured and sold by African Americans.

Noliwe Rooks, in her book on African American beauty culture titled Hair

Raising, gives close detail to a number of advertisements from companies owned by

African American women in the early 1900s. None of the ads she reviews make any

reference to Black women having features that lack in any way, they instead appeal

simply to the basic want to look better. Madame T.D. Perkins, who advertised for her

products and services as a Scientific Scalp Specialist, used before and after

images of her own hair in her ads promising women that her products would make

any kind of hair grow. Madam M. B. Jackson marketed her products by stating, If

you have good hair, care for it. If you have a diseased scalp, treat it. If you have little

or no hair its your own fault and agood reason for quick action, also noting that,

Madame M. B. Jacksons hair grower can be used with or without straightening the

hair.19 There were, however, adverts from African American owned companies that


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did market their products by suggesting inferiority, singing the praises of

straightened hair, lighter skin tones, and thinner facial features, but these

companies were in the clear minority. The advertisements that had the greatest

effect on hair culture were the ads that called for agents, urging Black women to

earn livings for themselves by selling products door to door and acting as

ambassadors for the new African American standard of beauty. These agents were

often members of the communities in which they carried and sold beauty products,

and together with other advertisements likely had a great influence on the rise of

beautification in the Black community.

With this rise came a new standard of beauty, one including as opposed to

relying on hair straightening as mode of improving appearance. Thus, hair

straightening became an African American cultural practice that women took part in

based on African American standards. The process, though rooted in desire to look

less African, now gained new meaning that had nothing to do with this desire. The

new desire was to look new, because straightened hair was in. It was in vogue

it was fashion, fashion that was marketed by African Americans to African

Americans in ways that did seek to uplift. The trend spread like wildfire and it is

from here, I believe, that the current practices derive. Black women then, as now,

did not seek to apply chemicals and hot combs to their hair in order to look like

white women, but more to look like their mothers and sisters and friends. It was

completely possible then, as it is now, for someone to desire straightened hair

without ever even seeing a white person. As Lawrence Levine argues in his famous

book on black consciousness, in general it was not the case during this time period


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that black women wanted to look white as much as it was that black women simply

wanted to enjoy the same freedom to construct their appearances as white women

did.20

This new fashion grew to become ritual as mothers began to pass it on to

their daughters. Because hair straightening was often put off until young girls

reached a certain age closer to maturity, hair straightening grew to be viewed by

many as sort rite of passage, or initiation into Black womanhood. Hair straightening

became an intimate ritual of Black womens culture. bell hooks describes it best in

her story, Straightening Our Hair:

On Saturday mornings we would gather in the kitchen to get our hair fixed

that is, straightenedMamma fixed our hair. Six Daughters there was no

way we could have afforded hairdressers. In those days, this process of

straightening black womens hair with a hot comb was not connected in mymind with the effort to look white, to live out standards of beauty set by

white supremacy. It was connected solely with rites of initiation into

womanhood. To arrive at that point where ones hair could be straightened

was to move from being perceived as a child (whose hair could be neatly

combed and braided) to being almost a woman. It was this moment of

transition my sisters and I longed for. 21

This fashion, like any, also tended to display class distinctions in the extent

to which the fashion could be met and kept up by individuals. The beautification

techniques of straightening were most consistently kept by African American

women of the middle class. Straightened hair only remained straight until it had

contact with moisture through rain, shampooing, swimming, sweating, etc. Black

women wore plastic rain scarves, seldom swam, and washed their hair about every

two weeks just before straightening it again. 22 This high maintenance style would be

hard to upkeep for women with lesser means. However, women of the lower classes,


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much like those today, tended to do whatever it took to meet the standard for

beauty. Hortense Powdermaker notes in his cultural study of the Deep South titled

After Freedom that poorer women also go to a hair-dresser regularly, to have their

hair greased and pressed. If money was short, a chicken might be offered as

payment.23 For African American women, this was the modern look. Though some

women, mostly in the south, continued to wrap, braid, and cornrow their hair, these

styles were eventually viewed as old-fashioned. In a WPA interview, Mary Williams,

who was formerly enslaved in Arkansas stated, I dont think nothing of this here

younger generation, they say to me, Why dont you have your hair straightened?

but I say Ive got along this far without painted jaws and straight hair!24 This style

was not only specific to women; African American men also participated in the trend

to straighten the hair. In 1911,Age Magazine drew attention to the fad by asking,

Have you had your hair straightened yet?... Up and around 135th Street and Lenox

Avenue, colored men can be seen in large numbers who are wont to take off their

hats repeatedlyand stroke their glossy hair with their hand in an affectionate

manner.25

As the style and the necessary processes to achieve the style became more

popular, the industries and enterprises that provided the style grew and prospered.

Hair salons popped up all over the country, and women continued to run local

business from their homes/kitchens. The racism of the time period located the black

beauty industry at a crossroads where black pride and Jim Crow realities met. White

owned beauty industries lacked the expertise to meet this new African American

beauty standard so black enterprises were sheltered from that competition.26 White


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beauty salons also refused to serve African American customers. This actually

helped the African American beauty industry to prosper. One example of how

quickly and successfully this industry prospered and expanded is seen in that some

towns in Georgia were so concerned with its growth depleting the supply of

domestic labor that they imposed punitive taxes on hairdressing businesses for the

purpose of ruining their success.27 Another example is found in the 1920 Blue Book

directory of Black businesses in Chicago, which listed no less than 211 barbershops

and 108 beauty salons, not including the scores of establishments run by women out

of their kitchens for their friends and neighbors.28

Beauty culture had, for the first time in African American history, set up a

successful network where thousands of black entrepreneurs could prosper

independently and do well. Middleclass black beauticians who had education but

faced racial discrimination in other female careers (like nursing or education) now

had a field where they could be recognized as professionals. Working class black

women now had career options where they could work independently and escape

domestic labor.29 Becoming a licensed beautician required training and some

education. Annie Malones Poro System for styling the hair and Madame Walkers

hair-care techniques were taught in beauty schools to thousands of young black

women. Because of this, and because of their essential role in the community, many

beauticians came to view themselves as doctors. By proudly displaying their hard-

earned cosmetology licenses on the walls of their shops, black beauticians

discouraged customers from quibbling over prices and critiquing their work and by

modeling themselves after physicians and urging others to do the same, licensed


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black beauticians sought to distinguish themselves from unlicensed kitchen

beauticians. 30

Beauty salons also prospered in part because of the sense of community that

they brought to hair care. Of course, the primary reason for attending the salon was

for hair care, but in these sessions African American women found a space to talk

about life, love, stress, work, business, or virtually anything. Noliwe Rooks recalled

of her first experience in a hair salon:

I loved being in the waiting area and listening to all the bits of

advice and gossip that were flying about. Sitting in a room full of African

American women and hearing them talk about sex, white people, men, andmoney, I got clues on how to be and how not to act. I loved the smell of the

place; the mixture of burning hair, sweet-smelling shampoos, chemicals, food

and sweat. I was absolutely fascinated by the way my hair looked when she

finished: flat, shiny and smooth.31

From this it can be seen how hair and beauty culture brought a new sense of

community to black womanhood, reminiscent of how beautification was often a

communal effort during the later stages of slavery when African Americans were

allowed Sundays off for worship.

Where in the 1800s, the Black middle-class intellectuals had championed the

styling of natural hair as the preferred style, by the mid-1920s, straight hair had

obviously become the style to signal middle-class membership.32 This continued on

through the decades of the twentieth century and into the present day. In the years

surrounding the first World War, black nationalism and intellectualism were on the

rise and there existed many competing ideologies of identity coming from leaders

like W. E. B. Du Bois, J. A. Rogers, and Marcus Garvey. Garvey, a staunch advocate for

African heritage pride, refused to run ads for hair straightening in his newspaper


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The Negro World. He openly criticized those African American papers that included

such ads, claiming that such products were designed to make a new negro race and

make a monkey out of the Negro,33 also once proclaiming in a speech, Dont

remove the kinks from your hair! Remove them from your brain!34

These views were not very influential though, as hair straightening processes

continued to remain the norm and actually grew in popularity with the New Negro

movement and the Harlem Renaissance of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Though

for the most part it has been argued here that these straightening processes were in

accord to a uniquely African American aesthetic, it must be remembered that this

aesthetic does have traceable ties to the history of perceived inferiority by many

African Americans. It should also be noted that there were, of course, many African

Americans who straightened their hair did do so with weakened images of self,

acquired from the white American beauty standard that still held African Americans

as less attractive if not ugly. In the 1940s, the conk hairstyle grew in popularity

specifically among African American men, and as noted in Malcolm Xs

autobiography, many times the pain of this chemical transformation was undergone

in envy of the white mans hair. Malcolm noted vividly:

The congolene just felt warm when Shorty started combing it in. But then

my head caught fire. I gritted my teeth and tried to pull the sides of the

kitchen table together. The comb felt as if it was raking my skin off. My eyes

watered, my nose was running. I couldn't stand it any longer; I bolted to the

washbasin. I was cursing Shorty with every name I could think of when hegot the spray going and started soap-lathering my head.The mirror reflectedShorty behind me. We both were grinning and sweating. And on top of my

head was this thick, smooth sheen of shining red hair -- real red -- as straight

as any white man's. How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there

simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking "white," reflected in the

mirror in Shorty's room. I vowed that I'd never again be without a conk, and I

never was for many years. This was my first really big step toward self-


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degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to

have it look like a white man's hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men

and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black

people are "inferior" -- and white people "superior" -- that they will even

violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look "pretty" by white

standards.35

The process Malcolm references, and others that were similarly painful and

dangerous, retained ritual like status in African American communities in the

following decades of the twentieth century. Straightened hair, whether chemical or

thermal, continued to be the accepted norm for the black middle and working

classes even in the 1960s when Malcolm was speaking out against it. He was no

different from any of the other leaders previously mentioned who argued against

the practice almost in vain.

The chemical straightening processes were different though in that they

were much more permanent than the thermal straightening typically done using

grease and a hot comb. As previously mentioned, thermal straightening would only

last until the hair made contact with any kind of moisture, even perspiration. So, in

1947, the white-owned company Lutrasilk introduced its Lutrasilk Permanentthat

promised to keep the hair straighter for longer. The following year, Walker

Manufacturing debuted its Satin Tress line so not to be outdone. Both processes still

required the use of a hot comb and were not extremely successful, but did serve to

pave the way for new inventions of the mid-1950s like Johnson Products Ultra

Wave Relaxerthat could straighten the hair without heat.36 George E. Johnson, an

African American beauty industry mogul, and his company Johnson Products grew

into success in the same rapid style as did Madame C. J. Walker a half century

earlier. Johnson perfected the formula used in lye conks by replacing the crude


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potato starch with petroleum and marketing the product as Ultra Wave Relaxerin

1954 to immediate success, and Ultra Sheen Relaxerfor women a few years later for

repeated success.37These more permanent products, labeled perms drastically

changed African American hair culture. African American women who took on the

process of perming their hair were now less tied to their natural hair textures; they

could keep their hair loose and kink free for longer periods of time than ever before.

Another revolutionary aspect was that many of these products could be purchased

as retail and applied at home.

The above image of Coretta Scott King and Angela Davis, taken by Peter L.

Gould and titled Hairstyle versus hair statement, says a thousand words about the

time period in which the afro gained popularity. The Afro hairstyle took the black

hair culture by storm in a revolution of consciousness that sought to praise instead

of hide the peculiarities of African hair. In the mid-1960s and through the 1970s the

Afro was worn as a statement. The statement that the Afro made or sought to make

was in contradiction to the styles that required hair straightening. Angela Davis in

the image above is making a statement with her hair, a statement of pride and

heritage, in line with the Black Power movement. Coretta Scott King is simply

wearing a fashionable style. With her straightened, likely chemically relaxed hair,


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Mrs. King was not seeking to make a political statement with her hair so much as

she was choosing a fashion in the same way she might have chosen that morning to

put on that specific blouse. This also speaks to the eventual death of the Afro.

Because the Afro eventually grew in popularity as a style and not so much a

statement, it did what most styles do and eventually died out. Hair straightening has

not yet died out mostly because it is not so much a style as it is a door opener for

many styles. One of the styles it opened the door for was the curly-permed Jheri Curl

of the 1980s.

For all purposes, the Jheri Curl was just a style. However, this style can serve

to prove that a technique designed to take the hair even further away from its

natural African state can be a uniquely African American style nonetheless. The

creator of this style, African American hair specialist Willie Lee Morrow wrote in his

book, 400 years Without a Comb, that the popularity of the style was due to black

brothers and sisters seeing the style as easily accomplished and simply maintained

while remaining uniquely and significantly Black. The style, though reliant on

chemical straightening, and thus traceable to histories of self-hatred, appeals to a

uniquely African American aesthetic.

It has hopefully been shown that chemical and thermal straightening

processes, over the decades since the turn of the twentieth century, can and have

escaped direct ties to complexes of inferiority and desires to look white. A permed

hair-do is not necessarily a symbol of a diseased black consciousness, especially not

on an individual basis. Collectively, the styles worn by African American women that

require hair straightening, whether chemical or thermal, can be shown to appeal to


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a uniquely African American standard of beauty. The sign of diseased consciousness,

in my opinion comes from those women who refuse to be seen wearing their

natural, unstraightened hair. Though even this can be linked more to a sense of

fashion and not being caught outside of it, the fear in showing the natural hair

cannot be dismembered from a sense of physical inferiority. Many women would

not admit to it, but this results from a sense of shame in the natural appearance as if

it is not good enough. Where the scholars who spoke out against hair straightening

practices tended to err was in their failing to realize that hair straightening was just

as much of an African American ritual as is the celebration of Kwanzaa. It even takes

root in a time period of black pride with economic unity and success. What they

should have criticized is the exclusivity of these straightened styles.

Still, the best way to study and understand this area of black consciousness is

from word-of-mouth testimonials and confessions of actual African Americans who

take part in this ritual. These first person accounts are crucial, and must be studied

along side the history in order to find answers. Thanks to the technology of the

current age, this black consciousness can be easily studied on online hair forums

and discussion blogs. Lanita Jacobs-Huey did an extensive month long study on one

discussion forum that had a unique beginning. The forum began when one Oprah

Winfrey Show viewer mailed in an unpublished letter to Essence magazine asking if

the straightened hair Oprah wore was hers or false. The question sparked

immediate and ongoing debates on the issues surrounding Black hair culture in

America. 38


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What was found was that not only did women have many differing,

sometimes contrary views on hair and hair techniques, but also that they sometimes

stood adamantly behind these views and took them to play serious roles in their

individual and cultural identity. Women often made references to their own hair

using them as bids for their own cultural authority. One of the most common

questions to be answered before a new coming bloggers post was to be respected

was, How do you wear your hair? in this, the internet users could get a gauge of

the persons identity within the African American culture.39

This led me to create my own survey to include into my research to help

answer the question of why women wear their hair in the ways that they do in the

current year 2013. There are two questions that I missed in my survey that I greatly

regret. I wished I had asked for the persons age; this would have helped me to

gauge some of the historical influences that shaped their decisions. I also wish I had

asked one crucial question, would you give your daughter a perm? or the

somewhat less binding, would you straighten your daughters hair? Of the 25

women I surveyed, an extremely small sample size, the average age for when they

had received their first perm was 9 years of age and most had been given by their

mothers. Only 3 women responded that they had never received perms.

Surprisingly, most of the women I surveyed enjoyed wearing their hair natural from

time to time. Some referenced celebrities as their inspirations for going natural,

some referenced family members and friends, many referenced a love for their God-

given features. The general consensus was that the terms nappy hair and good

hair were false social constructs. Those who answered said mostly that good hair


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was healthy hair; some even said that nappy hair is good hair, nappy = happy.

They all seemed to agree that hair was important. Many of the participants claimed

that hair was an imperative part of their identity that they enjoyed and loved.

What these surveys and internet blogs seem to show is another slight shift in

consciousness amongst black women. This shift is not necessarily away from hair

straightening but away from the exclusivity that the process has enjoyed for almost

a century in African American beauty culture. Whether worn for fashion or for

political statement, natural kinky hair is just as beautiful as (if not more than)

straightened flowy hair and should be included in the Af-Am beauty culture. There is

no reason to hide the natural hair. There is no reason to shun the straightened hair.

The exclusivity that straightened, chemically and thermally manipulated hair has

held does in a way show signs of diseased black consciousness. Shifting back

towards natural styling, not just one style (like the Afro) but a versatile range of

styles, is a sign of a healthier black consciousness in regard to hair. In 2013 there is

no reason why a new African American standard of beauty should not emerge, one

that includes all styles straightened and unstraightened as signs of unique Black

beauty. (6,721 words)


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Notes and References

1. Throughout this essay, the terms black, Black, African-American,Negro, and Af-Am will be used interchangeably to refer to any and alldescendants of Africa living in America and the collective culture(s) to which

they (or we) share ownership.

2. Ebong, Ima Black Hair: Art, Style and Culture3. Ayana Byrd, Lori Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in

America, St Martins Griffin, New Yorkp 2

4. Lois M. Gurel, Marianne S. Beeson, Dimensions of Dress and Adornment: ABook of Readings, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Cornell University

1979, p37

5. Thomas Bluett, Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon (London,1734)

6. Equiano, Olaudah, b. 1745, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of OlaudahEquiano, orGustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. Eighth EditionEnlarged, Norwich Printed for, and Sold by the Author, 1794

7. Shane White, Graham White, Stylin: African American Expressive Culture fromIts Beginnings to the Zoot Suitp41

8. White and White, Stylinp479. Byrd Tharps p1310.George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography(19

vols.; Westport, 1972) vol. 18, 80, 83

11.Amos Lincoln, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography12.Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story p1713.Charlotte F. Grimke, The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke, ed. Brenda

Stevenson (New York: Oxford University Press) 1988 p33-36

14.Both quotes are cited in Rooks, Hair Raising, p35-3715.Kathy Russel-Cole, Midge Wilson, Ronald E. Hall, The Color Complex: The

Politics of Skin Color in a New Millennium, Random House Digital, Inc., revised

ed., 2013, p60

16.Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Styling Jim Crow: African American Beauty TrainingDuring Segregation, p14

17.Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism,Race, Entrepreneurship (New York: Twayne, 1998), p182

18.Rooks, Hair Raising, p4219.Rooks, Hair Raising, p47

20.Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: African AmericanFolk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1977) p284-293

21.bell hooks, Straightening Our Hair, in Tenderheaded: A Comb-BendingCollection of Hair Stories, edited by Juliet Harris and Pamela Johnson

22.Maxine Leeds Craig,Aint I a Beauty Queen? : Black Women, Beauty and thePolitics of Race, Oxford University Press, 2002, p27


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23.Hortense Powdermaker,After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South,Lightning Source, Inc., 2008, p180

24.Mary Williams, b. 1855, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography25.White and White, Stylin, p164-16526.Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Styling Jim Crow, p1427.White and White, Stylin, 169-17028.Kathy Peiss, MakingFaces: The Cosmetic Industry and the Social Construction

of Gender, 1890-1930, p143

29.Susannah Walker, Independent Livings or No Bed of Roses p6230.Lanita Jacobs-Huey, From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming

in African American Womens Hair Care, p47

31.Rooks, Hair Raising, p532.Rooks, Hair Raising, p7533.Marcus Garvey, The Colored Negro Press, in Philosophy and Opinions of

Marcus Garvey, vol. 2, ed. Amy Jacque-Garvey (New York: Atheneum Press,

1971), p79

34.Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, p3835.Malcolm X, Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, reprinted byBallantine Books, 1999, p60-62

36.Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, p4637.Byrd and Tharps, Hair Story, p8638.Lanita Jacobs-Huey, From the Kitchen to the Parlor, p9339.Lanita Jacobs-Huey, From the Kitchen to the Parlor, p98

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