Detroit, MI, from where I hail (most of the time, anyways), is known to be the ‘hair capital of the world’. I’m not sure where or with whom this title originated but whoever and whatever began this, wasn’t lying. To an extent. When I was home for a short stint this month, I saw that certainly Detroiters, good or bad, have taken ownership of that crown. All manners of colors, styles, bobs, braids, weaves, fusions, contraptions and possibly even contraceptives. After all, we DID invent the automobile and look how that turned out.
Well, in the midst of this, I had to get my newly cropped natural hair colored and cut (some more-no, you’ll never see pics. Me and photos don’t get along). My mother SWEARS by Sophie. Says she’s the best things since sliced bread since she brought her ultra limp hair ‘back to life’. I don’t have that same problem. My hair swings from brillo pad to sheep wool on a good day, rendering my styles VERY much so alive but I do get it pressed for comfort and ease. However, I swim twice a week so whatever my hair may have been at the start of the week it’s quickly gone in the way of the ‘fro but…who cares? It’s hair, right? Didn’t that nappy-headed broad India.Arie tell us so?
Not so, said the judge of ‘bad hair be damned’. Apparently, my only having gone to the shop (count ‘em!) seven times (including this last visit) in the last eight years was paramount to saying ‘Rosa Parks aint do shit but sit her big ass down’. Friends, let me tell you, I nearly caused a riot in that shop. About three to four other clients were there, patiently waiting their turn to get their heads scalped/shaved/chemically altered/burned accordingly. Looking up from their Essence/Jet/Ebony mags (they really are all the same, right?), they all proceeded to tell me what a fool I must be for having such an elementary ideal of what may be the single most characteristic of my personality. Or at least, that’s what I think that ’s what they thought they were saying.
What I find so amusing is that the majority of these women, myself and the stylist included, were all careered women with families and associations that more or less spoke more to their character than their respective hairstyles. However, these women, who collectively can be described as ‘urbane’, found very little issue in identifying with something so…mundane and irrelevant in the larger scale of things. I told them I swim frequently with my clients as there is some mutual benefit to the activity and was told ‘what about your hair?’, as if THAT outweighs the therapeutic value in getting in the pool. I told them I’d been saving to find a new and better place to live and was asked was I to be factoring in ‘much needed’ hair treatments in my budgeting. Said my favorite places to shop were Family Dollar and Marshall’s and was told almost IMMEDIATELY that I needed to look elsewhere if I ‘wanted’ to have better hair and products.
This..fixation has turned into a pretty profitable venture. Not only are Black women outspending ‘other’ women 3 to 1 on hair care products (or 11.2 billion more dollars), although we don’t have a study (yet) to prove it, we’re probably outspending our time on this obsession 5 to 1. No, I’m not going to get into some rant about how we should ALL go natural, ‘back to our roots’ or even ‘back to Africa’ but I DO think it’s time we start taking note of how we’ve gotten ‘caught up’ along the way. Our technology for this has become more and more advanced; our attitudes regarding the subject, however, have not. We’ve allowed this to CONTROL us and not the other way around. Is it the ‘ideal’ we’re searching for? The acceptance? The identity? Or is the creativity? Or just the uninhibited, unsurpassed and unhampered exploration we’re rarely afforded in other avenues in our lives? Is it the difference in the texture? I don’t know that this is only it, but it’s a decent enough excuse. Even still–my hair will NEVER equal my life’s journey, love nor labor.
Whatever this obsession may be, I’m looking forward to an extension (pardon the pun) when we’d extend this same sort of passion and concern towards other, more relevant attributes of our world, but that’s another day coming soon, I guess…