If you can’t braid it, best thing to do is fade it (c) Phife
There are things I believe and things I know. Like, I believe that gravity keeps people on the Earth and the Earth in orbit around the sun. I believe that water is made up of molecules with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. I believe that fat meat is greasy. On the other hand, I KNOW that if you want some real trouble - not no for-play stuff, I’m talmbout sho’ nuff trouble - mess with a Black woman’s hair, either figuratively or literally. Actually, don’t. Even if you are lookin for trouble. Cuz that’s almost guaranteed to be more trouble than you’re lookin for.
Anyway, I’m disregarding my own advice and publicly wondering, what’s the deal with all these weaves? I’m sayin - I know my own perspective is probably shaped by the fact that my mother has worn her hair natural for years and years, but that’s only part of it. See me, I don’t really care what it looks like, as long as it’s what’s growing out of the woman’s head. Anything from close-cropped to that “righteous moss” they be talkin about in Zora Neale Hurston, it’s all alright with me. Weaves and wigs, though? Not so much.
What brings this to mind is an article in the Philly Inquirer about the newest trend in bionic hair, the lace-front wig.
Lace-front wigs are the next “miracle product” designed to give black women what society tells them (and what many now believe) is perfect hair. Meaning, long and straight.
The fad started with transvestite RuPaul almost a decade ago. Within the last five years, many silky-maned black celebrities, from Halle Berry to Vivica Fox, began wearing the wigs.
The lace-front wigs grew in popularity mainly because they give the impression that the wearer’s hair is growing directly from the scalp. So once the wig is fastened securely around the hairline, a woman can part her hair or pull it up into a ponytail without fear of exposing indentations where the hair has been sewn or glued in (otherwise known as tracks).
“It just affords me more options,” said Andrea Wright, 42, as she sat in Lisa Johnson’s chair at the Wyndmoor salon Shapes -N- More.
Wright, an event planner who lives in Mount Airy, walked into the shop sporting a short, relaxed style. She walked out with straight dark brown hair that fell well below her shoulder. Her face was framed with soft curls.
“This is so nice. It’s not so severe a look for me. I can put it in a ponytail and still feel professional … feminine.”
When lace-front wigs first hit the scene, they cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 because they looked so real. But these days, the wigs, most made from human hair, can be found for $300 to $1,000. There are demonstrations on YouTube.com that show people how to apply the wigs themselves and Web sites that tell people where to find them.
I really didn’t need all that, i just wanted to get down to the price. $300 to a grand? A KILODOLLAR?! FOR A WEAVE?! Let me slow down.
Now, one thing I’m noticing in this article is the inherent critique of the style, noting that it stems from the desire to have some other type of hair. Specifically, hair that more closely aligns with Western standards of beauty. That is to say, white people’s hair. (But it really ain’t just white people’s hair - it’s every race’s but ours.) I think the critique is valid. For as much “flexibility” as the weave provides, and I do not question that it does provide some options in terms of how a woman wants wear her hair on a given day, I think it’s still more about the hair texture than anything else. As the one woman said, having the weave made her feel “feminine.”
At the same time, I don’t really have a problem with women using straightening products. We all know permanents are temporary; Mother Africa is gonna win in the end, so I don’t sweat that. Cuz that, to me, is about options. That’s taking what’s there and altering it. My beef with wigs and weaves is that they’re add-ons. It’s not just changing the style, though, it’s creating an illusion. One of my personal mottoes is “It is what it is.” But with wigs and weaves, it is what it ain’t.
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I used to feel reaaally strongly about this, years ago. Beyond weave, I used to swear I would rather date a White chick than go out with a Black woman with straightened hair. Straight hair used to be an affront to me, it said to me loud and clear that you didn’t appreciate your own hair, it was some form of self-hate to me.
I didn’t buy that, “oh, it’s easier to manage” line they was always handing out. For a good decade during the “soul power” movement, Black women (including my moms for a time) were wearing ‘fros on the daily. These days they won’t admit they’ve succumed to fashion. Even the jafakean locks bandied about these days aren’t really about the religion from which it sprang, more fashion and style (I’m waiting for the day turbans are all the rage).
Anyway, my attitude on this eventually, uh, relaxed around late ‘92 when I realized the beauty pressure Black women were under. Early ‘93 I met my future wife, who had long, straight (but her own) hair. It took me a few years, but I managed to convince her to go kinky (up top). My mom went back to natural low fro at least 10 years earlier.
I’m a happy camper, hairwise, but it really is too bad the subtle mindf*ck that’s goings on.
My in-laws were discussing this on Sunday. I was shocked at the price of the hair as they were. One is a beautician who is learning how to do it so she can make more bank.
Now that I see it in the picture, I realize I’m seeing these things all over the place.
Feel free to tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, but as someone of Eastern European descent with curly hair, I’ve spent most of my life wishing my hair was straight.
Not hating my hair enough to do anything about it, but hating it because I have always found it extremely unmanageable.
I would love to have straight hair so I could ride in a car with the windows down and not end up with a mare’s nest.
And, to be blunt, curly hair is sometimes (often?) seen as unprofessional. It’s not neat. It’s wild and untamed, which is not a look that professional workplaces prefer.
Of course I also don’t understand why anyone would want to spend hours and hours and thousands of dollars on their hair–flat irons, blow dryers, chemical straighteners, wigs… That’s money and time I could better spend elsewhere.
But I can completely understand the wish to have hair that wasn’t so unmanagable.
So what I’m trying to say is that, from my point of view, the desire for straight hair goes beyond racial boundaries. I just think it’s less noticeable if people don’t expect you to have curly hair.
Wonder what the markup is from beautician to client, or even from manufacturer to beautician?
I need the women wearing ‘natural’ hair styles to tell me how they run, swim, sweat keep it moving on a daily basis and still look cute? I’m being serious. I have been giving my weaved head a break for awhile and it’s a nightmare. Takes me all the way back to my 7th grade field trip to the water park when I spent the entire time just dangling my feet in the water, because I knew that if I jumped in like all my white school friends that there would be zero possibility that I would be cute and ready for the after water park school party. Even when I just wore my hair permed, no weave, I was that black girl screaming for cover as soon as it rained – very limiting. My weave however is always on point. I mean 5:30 PM kickboxing class and ready for cocktails by 8 PM without any issues. I spent three weeks in the back back jungle of central America and my weave was still holding me together…. I read an article about black women and obesity and it said that when trying to implement a work out regimen for black women, doctors needed to take into account that most black women make weekly or bi weekly trips to the beauty salon and that would put them out of commission in the gym for up to 2 days after while they tried to preserve their hairstyles. And you know what? This is true. You hair should not be an obstacle in your life. But for many black women it just is, and it use to be for me, until Remy 100% human cam into my world. ? - ok, being serious, I know there are all sorts of other sociological/historical/self hate/black love issues involving wearing a weave but I have analyzed and analyzed and well for me, it’s just the easiest most attractive option
“…still look cute?”
pshh! it’s not that hard, my wife does it on the daily, but then again her cuteness ain’t really hair-dependent. girlfriend, ain’t you got one single, solitary nappy-headed cute friend you can ask? There are whole websites devoted to natural Black hair, just Google it.
You nailed it brother. What is wrong with our women that they so hate what God gave them? Back in the ’70s when I, and every woman I dated, were wearing our fros, I would have never believed it would come to this. What really kills me is seeing black women with blond wigs and weaves.
To be fair, however, maybe you can address why so many brothers now sport dread weaves. When football starts next month (hooray!), you’ll really notice it.
Vanessa:
Nice testimonial
Dudes who posted:
Black men, whether consciously or not, fall “victim” to the same beauty influences- the only difference w/ men is that they either wear wave caps smooth tight curls down and assimilate short white men’s styles, a crose crop so that the hair is easier to maintain (i.e. like “straight” hair), or they shave it all off.
Don’t be so judgemental of the “sisters”.
Well, I guess I’ll be the first ‘natural’ sista to speak on this topic. I went from natural as a child, to pressed at 12, to relaxed at 16. I used to rock the dark n’ lovely, hawaiian silky, creme of nature relaxers and yes, my hair was the BOMB back in the day. Every form of asymmetrical, Salt n’ Pepa, Anita Baker Halle Berry cut there was—I rocked it. Then I just got tired. Ten years ago finals at FAMU were kicking my tail and I was stressed. I FORCED a friend ( who cut heads for extra cash) to cut it and I haven’t looked back.
I have what folks have called a “regally shaped head”, made for a short, barber shop cut fade. I walk right past all the ladies waiting to get “weaved up” at the local beauty/barber shop here in L.A.(Millenium), sit down for 20-25 minutes and stroll right past those same ladies (giving me the evil eye). Trust. I am married but get stepped to ALL the time—and it stems from the precision of that perfect haircut. I feel feminine 24/7. I caused a fender bender in Leimert Park a few years ago because the brother wanted to check out the “the bald-headed sista” coming out of the cleaners.
This is a timely topic, as I was just talking to a group of my students about my hair. I told them it was “just hair”. These young, clueless, impressionable 14,15, and 16 yr old girls believe their worth is in the length of their hair weave, or the roundness of their behind . One stated she could “never do that” because no man (boy!) would look twice at her. I showed them a retrospective of my hair days (fried dyed, and laid to the side) and they nearly fell over!! They couldn’t believe it.
B, you know you my man fiddy grand, by land, sea or urr, yesterdays and tomorrow but…whut. thee. eff. are you talmbout?!
a black man wearing short hair is an unconscious desire to mimick white style?? did i read that right? that’s the biggest load of crap i’ve seen all week, and i surf plenty. is this really bijan bayne? i’m half-thinkin someone’s hijacked your name.
where the hell is avery anyway.
p.s. osf, i can’t address that. i’ve never seen it (or mebbe i didn’t know i was lookin at it). then again, i’m from toronto with a thick, genuine jamaican-canadian population. i cannot imagine how anyone could possibly get away with weave locks up here (woo!). good lord.
p.p.s. joy, fwiw, the summer before i met my wife-to-be, i absolutely flipped over three sweeeeet sisters rockin the low cut who used to stroll past our hangout almost every day. i was too chicken to step to them, but if you have the right head for it, it’s a hot look for a Black woman (my favorite).
p.p.p.s. (somebody stop me) b, over the years i eased off my righteousness over the “natural” issue, but I think in my old age my contempt for relaxed/weavified hairdos is on the rise.
CF:
Short, waved, stocking-capped, parted, pomaded,brushed hairstyles among close-cropped Black men in the West emerged in response to the styles worn by the likes of Rudolph Valentino, George Raft, and Marlon Brando (one, very popular in the 1960’s, was even called the “Quo Vadis”). The afro or natural was a departure in that the male hair, rather than brushed close to the scalp with the aid of Murray’s, Dixie Peach, Duke, or the pre-1968 pomade of choice, was allowed to grow long. I believe the term was “bushy”, and thus the nickname the bush. Millions are those that pay for a shapeup once a week to maintain a smoother, less bushy coif.To paraphrase the Japanese, the hair that sticks up must be nailed down (in this case, brushed or gelled down).
Before Michael Jordan began shaving his off, these wavy, often parted hairstyles were common from the world of hip hop to the Nation of Islam to the prize ring (Tyson reflecting one Jack Dempsey, even to the “faded” or military sides).
Such hairstyles are in no form less modeled after Western standards than Black women sporting french rolls, pixies, page boys, bouffaints or flips. It is only less discussed.
My bad, it was hard to see through the red, all I really saw was how you were linking short, nearly-bald and all-bald male hairdos to White guy style. That’s nuts. There’s a clear difference between sporting an easy-to-maintain Black hairstyle and mimicking an easy-to-maintain White hairstyle.
I’ll give you the other stuff, doe. I thought those way back fashions were silly then, too (I did not indulge). But it seems Black men, for some reason(s), by and large, recovered from it much faster. Where I’m from it would be bizzare and an open request for public ridicule were a man to sport a similar style today.
Our women however, by and large, for some reason(s), get a whole lot of sympathetic slack.
CF:
Tightly curled hair, and what to do w/ it, has been making Black folk see red for centuries.