Review of Good Hair (2009) by Edith N — 18 May 2010

We Never Do Think About Where Anything Comes From, Do We?

I don't own any hair-styling products. I don't even own a hair drier. We have a container of mousse, but it's from when Graham's hair was long and in his way a lot but not long enough to actually put in a ponytail. Of course, I don't really own much makeup, either. How much time and effort people put into their personal appearance varies wildly from person to person. I'll freely admit, for example, that I will spend the time and money to buy a box of hair dye on a semi-regular basis. However, I had a friend in high school who would take as much as ten minutes doing makeup in the morning, and she also put a lot more time and effort into her hair than I did. (Generally, I brush it and put it in a ponytail.) Physical appearance, however, is very important to women. Different cultures also put their focus on different things. As such, this film is as much anthropology into a different culture than anything else. True, I spent a lot of time with black girls in grade school, but only once did I spend said time doing anything hair-related, and I think that was for a badge in Girl Scouts.

Chris Rock has two young daughters. Of course, this means that they will grow up in a culture which apparently puts a lot of emphasis on "good hair." What history indicates to us is that this means having certain things in common with white women's hair. The first female to become a millionaire by her own efforts was a black woman whose empire in part involved developing haircare products. Today, the hair care industry in the black community is a multibillion-dollar industry, and Chris Rock works to explore it all. He talks about relaxing agents, perms, and weaves. He interviews prominent black women, and even a few black men. He goes to barbershops, salons, and a bizarre hair-cutting competition. He goes to India to where the hair which ends up in weaves gets shaven from the women who grew it. Frankly, it made me want to get a good look at his wife, given how surprised he was about a lot of the stuff he was encountering. Which is weird, now I've looked it up, because she actually runs a charity involving hair care.

Anyway. Hardly any of the black people in the movie have "natural" hair. Chris Rock trims his down very close to his head, which is a good look for him, as does one of the other men. There is one woman who wears her hair long and in tight curls, which is apparently how it grows naturally, and that's also a good look for her. Several of the women talk about their weaves, and almost all of them share experiences with the relaxing products they've used, which are generally made of sodium hydroxide. We see a four-year-old getting her second perm. Another very young girl says she doesn't like getting perms, but she'd tell other girls her age to, because "you're supposed to." Even the woman with relatively natural hair used relaxer on it in the past, and in the beauty parlors, we see women who have spent thousands of dollars on weaves. Even on a teacher's salary.

What's pretty awful is what Rock finds before reaching the salons and the flashy convention. Most alarming is the example a chemist gives of what happens when you put sodium hydroxide--lye--directly onto a piece of chicken. It eats right through it, and soda cans dropped in the stuff dissolve in just a few hours. When informed that people put it directly on their heads, the chemist is horrified and demands to know why people would do that. The vat of the relaxer is enormous and kind of scary. In India, we see people sacrifice their hair to the Gods in gratitude. It's shaved off and sold to companies which make it into the raw weaves and sell it to American salons. So much is gathered and sold, in fact, that it's measured in kilos and not scalps. Rock doesn't much go into the history of these hair fashions, but that's pretty terrible, too. And the whole thing ends with women's not being willing to let people touch their hair or even see it when it's wet.

If Maya Angelou told my favourite hair abuse story to Rock, he didn't include it in the film, probably because it's one of her books. When she was touring with [i]Porgy and Bess[/i], the female cast members went to the hotel's salon to take advantage of the hair-straightening they advertised. As soon as the solution was applied to Maya Angelou's head, it started burning, and she demanded that they wash it off. The other women scoffed at her, letting her leave the salon while they stayed for the straightening. She made the right choice. Some time later, Maya's mother wrote to her and told her that she'd read that all the women on the tour were now wearing wigs, and she asked Maya why that was. Maya, who was now the only one who still had all her hair, sent a picture back to San Francisco of her grabbing her hair in either hand and pulling it. She told Chris Rock that she didn't use relaxer until she was seventy, and one rather wonders, after that story, why she'd start at all.