Good Hair and the Beauty Ideal in America

The Booming Business of Hair: Chris Rock's documentary explores good hair in American culture

By: Brook Buesking

Chris Rock's "Good Hair" is a film is focused on examining African American women's hair, the beauty and styling industry surrounding it, and the implications of standards of beauty for African American culture and American mainstream culture itself.

Now, although I found it interesting, I definitely was taken back by some of the racial/economic implications and contradictions in the dialogue. Also surprising was the beauty industry behind 'good hair' (mainly Asian run), the source of 60% of the business (weaves from India), and what all this means in defining beauty in America. Firstly, being white and growing up with a best friend who was black, we definitely did some hair talk. I think it first even struck me that there was a difference when the whole topic of getting her hair wet came up. Over time, she would tell me more and I would listen curiously, but being young, I didn't really take it as anything. I didn't analyze, I didn't apply any meaning to hair--to white hair, to black hair--I probably didn't think anything of it except: well, that's different than how I do it. One thing I do remember is that she did complement me on more than a few occasions on either my really thick hair or my blue eyes--things that as a ten year old, I never paid any attention to...I didn't have a sense of self as beautiful or not, as pretty or not, as different than her or not. I was ten! But looking back, I think she did: she already had a good sense of that ever shifting, always illusive beauty ideal and where she might fit in, where I might fit in---and where 'beauty' fit into her bigger picture. That sense didn't hit me until much much later; I was quite a tomboy--always playing outside with the boys, always getting dirty, always exploring through the woods or down by the lake getting grimy and muddy...never worrying about getting my hair wet or dirty. After all, I could just hop in the shower and wash off my adventure...or rather, misadventure. No problem for me, but it was, however, one for my friend. As a result of a lot of factors, we experienced childhood differently, and unbeknownst to me at the time, this was one of those factors.

As a person who was immersed in the feminist world for quite some time, I definitely developed more of an awareness of how difference can become deficit in this and in any culture. Your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, your socio-economic status, your education---all of these things can affect your success, your self-esteem, your quality of life and your rate of acceptance into mainstream society. Beyond this, we ALL know how one's beauty affects all these factors and then some. I know that hair is definitely a symbol of beauty, even one of status. Having 'good hair', well--we all give into that. How many days have we gotten up and complained about our bad hair days? Or praised our good ones? Two woman in the film (rapper Eve and video vixen Mellysa Ford) said that hair is just like an outfit you put on: it doesn't make or break you as a person, but that it definitely creates a persona.

A very expensive, time consuming, high maintenance part of your persona. Black, white, asian, or whatever the ethnicity: the hair industry has us all wrapped up in a million cremes, conditioners, relaxers, straighteners, curlers, dyes, gels, sprays, cuts, perms, wigs, extensions, and weaves. Actress Raven-Symone, who appears throughout the documentary, says that although it's very expensive, it is an investment she embraces as necessary. Investment indeed: Good Hair states that 60-70% of the 9 billion dollar black hair business is from weave hair alone. From the film, I learned that the weave itself is 1000, and the hair can range from the 100's to the 1000's (depending on length, amount and type). Some of the women in the documentary put their hair expenses at 18,000-30,000 a year, and Sandra Denton of Salt-n-Pepa claims to have spent 150,000 on her hair to date.

So what do you do if you don't have the economic means to support this beauty ideal? Go all natural? And what does that mean? I wish the film would've explored more the thought process of choosing not to wear weave, not to relax the hair, not to add extensions. I remember in feminist theory reading about one woman's experience keeping it natural as being a political statement for her. Interestingly enough, in the film there's one scene where a group of black women are gathered and talking briefly about the one girl there who had not relaxed her hair or added any extensions, and they plainly stated that although they thought it was 'cute', that they couldn't see how she could be perceived as professional in the business world. I wondered how much of this is at the root of this topic? How much does that desire to be taken seriously (and of course, accepted as 'normal') stem from our hair? It's true that appearances matter in the professional world. If you walked into an interview with cut offs and a tube top, you probably wouldn't get that investment banking job or be the next schoolteacher making a difference at your local public school. I guess what Eve says is true: it's just part of the persona, just like your shoes, your clothes and your jewelry you put on every day. This film, however, elaborates on just how important this part of the persona is, and how quiet is has been kept, as well.

The movie was very educational, and of course Chris Rock made it really entertaining. But there were two things that really stuck out to me in the dialogue. Firstly, comedian Paul Mooney appears in the film with this line: "If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, they're not happy." I wondered how much of that statement was actually true, how much of that statement is why black women and some black men get their hair relaxed? I would venture to say that doesn't have to be something boiled down to race, especially if it involves faulting. Are white people curious? Probably. But uneasy? I'm not so sure about that. Then again, I'm not black...but I am white, and I have seen black women get their hair done, black women without relaxers, without weaves, and even without hair! And none of it made or broke my opinion of them. And then again...most black beauty supply companies and distributors are owned by either asians or whites, something that leads me to the second thing that stood out about this movie: Al Sharpton appears throughout the film echoing the sentiment of women being chained to this beauty ideal as a form of oppression and economic exploitation and loss of control. His dialogue follows: "No wonder the schools and everything else is out of control. I mean you get up and comb your oppression and exploitation every morning, or you attach your economic exploitation to the back of your head every morning or your shove it down, or you put it on the nightstand. 'Here's my symbol of economic exploitation,' Lights out, go to sleep, wake up, and cover it back up. How are you going to think right when you are wearing exploitation all the time? That is a real grass-roots need, to recapture the fact that we can't control something as close to us as the hair on our head?" Doesn't Al Sharpton have a relaxer right now?

Regardless, I thought that sentiment by Sharpton was a bit ironic, seeing as the majority of the weaves put on the heads of women here in America come from the heads of women in India, where most are living below the poverty line. Their prized hair, mostly sacrificed in a religious ceremony called tonsure, is auctioned off to the highest bidders without any economic benefit to the women. But someone is profiting---mostly the temples themselves for providing it, the asian manufacturers for buying/distributing it, and the beauty salons that spend hours wrapping it in (Rock's documentary goes into this briefly, see tonsure ceremony for more details). Interesting play on economic exploitation, I thought.

Also, in researching this piece, I watched this video from Oprah where Solange Knowles talks about her decision to cut off all her hair after being fed up with spending 40-50,000k a year on it. She says: "I just wanted to be free from the bondage that black women sometimes put on themselves with hair. [In] this phase of my life, I want to spend the time, the energy and the money on something else: not in the hair salon."

VIDEO: OPRAH, CHRIS ROCK & SOLANGE TALK “GOOD HAIR”

I know, as women, we all have to acknowledge our own sense of self worth outside of that beauty ideal, beyond that pressure to conform. Whether it's our hair today, our breasts and bellies yesterday, our wrinkles tomorrow, or now even our feet and vagina's (the foot shaving cinderella procedure or vajazziling anyone?), we as women have to pick and choose which areas we may conform to, which areas we choose to rebel against, and which areas we choose to reinvent for ourselves within that beauty ideal. How we navigate this is ultimately up to each individual person, and I appreciate Rock's film to 'pull back the curtain' on black hair and the desire to attain 'good hair'. I am curious if anyone out there has anything to add to this dialogue.