December 13, 2003
Just 'Fro Stories: How SMoCA and New Times Jump Right in Da Guilted Frame; or, Don't Blame Your Bad Black Hair Days on My White Skin
[This is the first part of a three-part review of the HairStories art exhibition at SMoCA, concerning the theme and core of the show. The other two parts, explained below, will follow shortly.]
"Good" hair flowed. It was silky, smooth, shiny, and sometimes blonde. It blew around wildly in the wind and then fell back into place -- perfectly. "Bad" hair was kinky. It was nappy and hard to comb. It needed to be tamed. (Dawnie Walton, "Natural Hair: Untangling the Fallacies of Good and Bad Hair," Florida A&M University Journey Magazine, August 1996)
by Catherine King
High on the right wall as one enters HairStories at SMoCA, latex letters spell out a quotation for Elastic QP, from a 2001 Sally Beauty Supply catalog:
If you think in terms of good hair and bad hair, the problem isn't on your head.
-- implying that someone may have some issues or baggage, psychological in nature. The problem with HairStories is that the exhibition itself is based on the strategy of letting erroneous, irresponsible thinking slide, or pass, rather than critically examining the self-imposed limitations of the recent past. When the issues are as important as personal and collective power, sniveling about past perceptions is no help at all in furthering the essential discussion about Race that must at some time no longer be avoided.
[The dance piece "Hairstories," which inspired the art exhibition of the same name] has two things to say.
1. People in the black Diaspora have long been shamed by the thick, tight-curling nature of their hair, their self-image undermined by its being judged ugly, even somehow "bad," by a dominant white culture fixated on European ideals of beauty.
2. In recent decades the descendents of African-American slaves have rediscovered African concepts of glorious hair and used them audaciously to cultivate self-expression, self-worth, and cultural identity. -- from the Urban Bush Women website [emphasis added]
The organizers of HairStories begin by attempting to foist off on the targeted audience (white, middle-class) the assumption that black Americans have been cosmetically deprived:
Since slavery, African-American hair has been central to multitudes of racist notions that devalue and diminish the legitimacy of African-Americans in the New World. (Dr. Neal A. Lester, page 33)
Some people have refused to admit that you can do whatever you want to do with your hair in 20th/21st Century America, no matter who you are. It's a claiming-POWER thing, which is more significant than a beauty bitch. The best art in the exhibition dealt with hair as an expression and embodiment of Psychological Power. The poorest art in the show was reactive to cultural notions and never got past alternately trying to kowtow or to blame.
It isn't just about art, or hair, but a stubborn defeatism. African-American writer Debra Dickerson, in her 2000 book An American Story, describes her father's psychological legacy:
Later, I came to understand that he both expected and needed blacks to fail, otherwise there was no proof of white perfidy and soullessness. He never understood that his fatalism was a self-fulfilling, self-defeating prophecy. . . Among ourselves, we say "the white man's ice is colder" to describe the many of us who won't believe or value anything unless it comes from white people. . .
Before I can discuss my most and least favorite pieces in the show -- which I will -- I feel I must address the easy and shameful way SMoCA, its backers, the writers, curators, organizers and some media have jumped right into the black racism frame. And some of the artists either followed suit or helped initiate it. There are shockingly anti-American endorsements in the catalogue as well. Nevertheless, HairStories led me to a more profound realization of the responsibility of being a vital, thinking artist, as well as a higher level of hairstyling. Finally, in a tilt at balance, I will sum it all up with my own modest hair story -- my FairStory.
Creative Writing Black Studies Style
The writers in the exhibition catalogue didn't seem to let the lesson of Elastic QP sink in, because Good hair = flowing = white versus Bad Hair = kinky = black thinking, was defended and rationalized far more than it was overcome in the writing for HairStories.
The show's premise was hatched after [curator Kim Curry-Evans took part in] "hairparties" Kathy Hotchner organized for African-American women from all walks of life here in the Valley for the purpose of swapping stories about their hair triumphs and tribulations . . .
There is far more tribulation than triumph described in this catalogue, and reflected in the exhibition. A strong undercurrent of the show is portrayal of black beauty as a dark mirror of the oppressive white majority, the Cult of the Victim well-represented. Here are examples of the overwrought tone in which we are told of the anguish of styling one's hair in order to appease a society that demanded silkiness:
In Burning Hair, 1993, [Cathleen] Lewis scorched unstretched canvas[wrong: it's a cotton gown made square] with a hot-comb -- a reminder of the damaging effects of the straightening process endured by many girls and women. (Ms. Curry-Evans, page 14)
Even before chemical relaxers, hot combs heated on kitchen stove eyes and hot plates burned many scalps and left permanent marks on many an ear. (Dr. Lester, page 34.)
The quest for straight hair was often a tortuous obsession for the slaves.
(Byrd & Tharps, Hair Story, page 17.)
There is a shipload of blaming others needlessly for what one is free to change at any time. Madam C.J. Walker made herself a female millionaire beginning 97 years ago by developing an array of wonderful products exclusively for black hair. That's a tremendous accomplishment, inspirational I should think. It was also a very long time ago.
The essays in the catalog exaggerate racial dichotomy, attempting to rewrite, to twist (or overlook, or ignore) recent history by whining, falsely, that we all haven't had complete freedom to develop hair that's knotted, polka-dotted, twisted, beaded, braided, powdered, flowered, and confettied, spangled, bangled, dangled and spaghettied going on -- what -- at least forty years now.
Bad Grandma Stories
The foolish and destructive negative beauty and self-image lessons passed down from generations of slaves' descendants are characterized as revered knowledge because of their sources. And Dr. Lester, consulting scholar and essay contributor, along with Guest Curator Kim Curry-Evans, continue to pass the buck as far as ideological responsibility goes.
To slaves -- particularly to slave women tending white children with silky hair -- hair became an ideal. (Dr. Lester, page 33)
From Dawnie Walton's "Natural Hair" [see above; of course, being a university publication, this legitimizes the racist assertions]:
I learned "hair aesthetics" from my grandmother, who straightened her hair with a hot-comb lying on the eye of a lit stove burner. I watched the smoke coming from her thinned hair, and I smelled it burning -- but it was all in the name of "good" hair. I learned from my mother, who took me to get my hair permed when I was seven years old and too nappy-headed for a hot-comb to handle. I learned from television, which taught me that Buckwheat was stupid and Barbie was ideal . . .
To Dawnie:
I don't want you to blame my white race because your black grandma taught you some bullshit. Why don't you blame her for trying to teach you to hate your kinky hair? Why don't you teach yourself different as you grow older and hopefully wiser? Isn't that really up to you to do for yourself? Or is it easier to project that blame farther out and cast it over the whole white race?
Big Bad Art Critic Joins Art Museum Inside Guilted White Frame
From Kathleen Vanesian's latest Phoenix New Times art column:
HairStories is a potent reminder that it's been less than 40 years since the civil rights movement [sic] in this country began the long, painful process of weeding out long-entrenched prejudices that forced African-Americans to use separate rest rooms, to attend separate schools and to straighten their hair with white-hot, death-defying instruments of torture, including chemicals and potions like lye, kerosene and axle grease -- or to hide it with wigs -- so that they would look whiter and, thus, be socially more acceptable.[my emphasis]
Vanesian uses the same overwrought tone in her standup foldup review as the writers of the essays in the catalogue. I thought she told her readers, a few reviews ago, that she was going to be so formidable -- the bitch is back, no PR flack, and so on -- but here there's no criticism from this critic. Consider this excerpt:
I eavesdropped on one docent, who pointed to a series of black-and-white photographic self-portraits titled "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" (1996) by Cynthia Wiggins, the title a takeoff on the Kelly LeBrock shampoo commercial from several years ago. The well-executed images are unrelenting close-ups of Wiggins' less than perfect complexion and mane of untamed hair, which has been allowed to grow in naturally.
"Who thinks the lady in the photos is beautiful?" chirps a graying, white male docent (who deserves a Best Explanation of a Difficult Social Issue Award) to his all-white, obviously middle-class, fourth-grade entourage. Two, then three hands tentatively rise.
"And who thinks the lady is not beautiful?" All the boys thrust their hands skyward. With an almost imperceptible sigh, but unflagging cheerfulness, the dogged docent begins a lesson that should have been learned long ago from parents, school and church:
"Where do we learn what is beautiful? And who sets the standard of what is beautiful?"
Herd those white schoolkids right in to Da Guilted Frame! What disingenuous propagandizing! It is inappropriate for the art museum docents to be using scripts that prompt white, obviously middle-class, little boys to make judgements about female beauty (sexual attractiveness) just to prove the racist agenda of the show's organizers.
Why is the administration okaying a script that is trying to draw adult responses from little boys selected for their racial and social characteristics? Most of these little boys weren't even alive or aware when the commercial this piece riffs on was made. Is it fair to lead them with questions the responses to which are going to be used to condemn them? Because Cynthia Wiggins appears multiplied six times before them, looking her worst, unkempt and unadorned, we are to blame the little white boys for not finding her beautiful? Nobody told them that Ms. Wiggins's face had been "purposefully darkened by make-up (she is light-skinned) [page14]." Why not? And why did she do that? The implications behind this overheard exchange are racist and unethical.
Beverly McIver, hogging a whole wall elsewhere in the show, appearing in her trademark clown shtick, longing to be embraced, costume, black greasepaint and all -- yech! -- poses a similar ridiculous dilemma: "Do You Think I Am Pretty?" -- and apparently, if one isn't turned on by the Fat Clown Look, then one is racist against black women. Just because Cynthia Wiggins and Beverly McIver have no pride in their appearances, how is that our fault?
If our star recipient of the Best Explanation of a Difficult Social Issue Award had turned his little group of fourth-graders ninety degrees to the right they would have seen, in a more modest scale and without duplication, another photographic portrait, this one of the stone cold gorgeous Kathleen Cleaver. [Not available for reproduction, but look below.]
If our disingenuous docent (I'm taking back his award) had been honest enough to ask the boys if they found Kathleen Cleaver beautiful, I am quite sure they would have, unanimously. But then, that would not be the answer or the response sought by the organizers of HairStories. So, point the kids toward a frumpy woman or a freak, and then feel racially vindicated when the white middle-classers prefer a different aesthetic. See? We told you so!
It's a trap. Ms. Wiggins is already trying to be ugly on purpose -- the makeup, the title -- and it has nothing to do with her race. (Ditto with Ms. McIver.) The little boys were ambushed. Why didn't she put on some real makeup and fix her hair before presenting her multiple self? Oh, am I being sexist? And the docent with his suggestive, leading questions wasn't? And what ever happened to the incisive art critic? Not there; just some dumb-ass fool smiling warmly like an indulgent aunt.
Oh, Really? That's Not How I Remember It.
More history twisting in "Black Hair and Art: Collective Consciousness," where Ms. Curry-Evans writes
[At the hair parties] there were . . . recollections [from the 60s/70s] of powerfully big Afros and the hostility they attracted.
For whites, the Afro was synonymous with Black militancy . . .
I have my own recollections of an active life in the late sixties and the early seventies in the Bay Area, stomping grounds of the Black Panthers, and even then and there whites I knew did not feel even mildly threatened by the Afro. Maybe because empathetic, respected, even beloved, public figures and hundreds of thousands of curly-headed (some people have all the luck) long-haired white hippie kids, as well as Black Panthers, had already been wearing 'fros for several years.
Is there a little bit of wanting it both ways here, wanting to be threatening and oppositional, while at the same time wanting to claim passive, enforced victimhood? This sounds a lot like Thelma Golden, curator of the popular "Freestyling" exhibition a couple of years ago, when she explained the post-black position: "[it] recognizes racial identity as something to be simultaneously defied and kept alive; it's both a hollow social construction and a reality with an indispensable history." How convenient, and how pomo. (Quoted by Sarah Valdez in Art in America.)
"With This Hair:" The Transformation of Neal Lester into Natty Dread
Dr. Neal A. Lester, consulting scholar for HairStories sure wants it both ways. He wants to be on the edge and the center of attention at the same time.
For me, the issue is not that people are curious about my hairstyle but that public representations and acceptance of such hairstyles are far from the mainstream in this country. In this sense, the difference becomes exoticized, like a side-show. With this hair, I continue to learn much about myself and those around me.
I'm not so sure about that, but Dr. Lester reveals that he has based an academic stance as well as attitudes at home on bad ideology, ideology which is never questioned -- just passed. He never requires himself to back up his own words:
Since that moment in 1989 [when he started "locking" his hair], I have become more aware than ever that African-Americans en masse -- despite the alleged 1960's cultural and ethnic self-realization -- have not dealt with the "hair issue" in such a way as to prompt honest and sometimes painful self-examination. (page 31)
He describes what happened after his dreadlocks started growing:
Whites often mistake me for other black men with dreads . . . I was never mistaken for anyone when I wore the Military, flat-top fade. Often folks from across the rainbow want to touch my locks, as did a white cashier at a local restaurant. An Asian gentleman at an auto repair shop was curious: are the locks "real," he asked as he proceeded to touch them hesitantly to verify my response. Whites who heard his question immediately chimed in with questions. I began to tell the story of my locking journey . . . A few years ago, a young white mother was mortified when her three-year old son started running his hands through my hair . . . I was just as amused at her response as her son's curiousity.(page 41; emphasis added)
While my students thought the new dreadlocked do was cool, some colleagues were curious about my motives . . . I have persevered as though on a mission . . . it was exciting to have the subject of my hair become part of interview conversations . . . a true demonstration of what and how I teach.
Cascading some three or so inches past my shoulders, my dreads command attention. (Wait -- three? Is that a typo? A three-inch cascade? C'monnn.)
. . . my hair requires little of me but generously affords me spiritual richness . . . Indeed, my hair continues to lead me toward greater self-knowledge . . . confirming Nekhena Evans's assertion in Hairlocking: Everything you Need to Know about Dread, African and Nubian Locks (1993), that "there's something about locks, in that even when a person decides to do it as a fashion statement, they're going through a healing and transformation process."
(All I can say is, "Keep growin, mon.")
The Bad Hair Days of a Biracial American Princess
In his essay for the catalogue, Dr. Lester also shares with us his perverse obsession with his own daughter's hair texture and style.
Dr. Lester writes about his anxieties concerning his biracial daughter:
Family, friends and strangers were curious about Jasmine’s newborn skin tone . . . They also wondered anxiously over her hair texture . . . attention shifted to its characteristics . . . Without fail, whites consistently commented that Jasmine would have "nice hair," and blacks said that she would have "good hair." Both terms refer to hair that is closer to white people’s hair . . . (pp.31-32; emphasis added)
Let me ask the white people out there, because this quote didn't exactly sound like each and every one of you, so I just wanted to check, did you or would you say that and what did you mean by nice hair? Because I'm white, and if that's our secret code for "long and silky," well, you ofays forgot to tell me.
Get over your bad self, mon.
The internalized good hair/bad hair thing is schizophrenically demonstrated as Dr. Lester finds his daughter's blown out hair an "embarrassing poof." Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver would probably take him to task for that. Poof, maybe, but what's the embarrassment about? So much anxiety is directed at Jasmine's skin color and hair texture by her father who goes around lecturing people about the heavy burden of the White Beauty Ideal, which he, like everyone, is free to lay down at any time.
With blatant hypocrisy, Lester draws inferences about an ad’s rhetoric:
The rhetoric of the advertisement makes clear that black hair in a "natural" state is undesireable. It needs to be "tamed," as if blackness was animalistic and whiteness was civilized . . . Hence, the struggle for straight hair becomes cyclical and self-perpetuating. [page 37]
And yet, a few pages earlier, he had written:
Although my wife and I participate in these straightening rituals [for his daughter Jasmine's hair], we recognize the expense, time and energy of waging a war against hair that cannot be tamed . . .
In fact, let's have the whole story. Here's the father of 13-year-old Jasmine:
Trying desperately to avoid the chemical relaxants and heat treatments that have historically straightened -- and damaged -- African-Americans’ hair, we tried blow-drying. What a big, poofy embarrassment! . . .
We bit the bullet for chemical relaxing, which took almost three hours . . . A week after the first relaxing session, we washed Jasmine’s hair and quickly learned that beauty shop dos are hard to re-create at home. With a hot curling iron in my hand on one side of her head and another in her mother’s hand on the other side, we pulled and tugged and pressed, but with disappointing results. We phoned the cosmetologist . . .
Now, four to five chemical relaxing sessions later, Jasmine still prefers her hair straight. No matter that we extol the beauty and healthiness of her natural curls, she wants straight hair . . . Even the discomfort of the unfortunate brushes of the hot curling iron against her skin fades when her hair is straight to her satisfaction. Although my wife and I participate in these straightening rituals, we recognize the expense, time and energy of waging a war against hair that cannot be tamed . . . (page 33)
Dr. Lester relishes the belief (or hope) that there is still anyone out there who can be shocked by his locks. But the image he paints of himself as a grown man fussing like a nanny over his teenage daughter's hairdo doesn't seem so edgy -- just unhealthy.
SMoCA Brings You The Twin Pam Slam Where It Hurts
HairStories is also the first exhibition in the museum's short history to attempt thematically-specific artists' projects and extensive community partnerships, and as such tests new ground for us. The exhibition represents an innovative approach to the stubborn and highly-sensitive problem of class and race in America; a team-based approach to curatorial practice; an imaginative attempt to reach broader constituencies with challenging subject matter. (first Hairstories website, since revised)
The black academic organizers and contributors to the show (and how many of the artists fit this category, by the way? Can you say . . . Beverly McIver?) are to some extent black racists.
For example, Dr. Lester, SMoCA's consulting scholar, quotes hair-care specialist Pamela Ferrell on Neal Cohan's NPR show in late November 2001, two months after we had our hearts torn out:
Ferrell challenged a guest who insisted that the hair issue as it related to African-Americans was not the same [as it was for whites]. She reminded [!] the audience of an ongoing effort on the part of racist white America to devalue and discriminate against African-Americans on the basis of hair differences:
[White people: raise your hand if you're part of this "effort" . . . I thought so.]
More Ferrell: "It's so interesting to hear the conversation and people talk about the Taliban controlling people in terms of their hair and not being able to cut it. And it's interesting how Americans act so concerned about people being oppressed when we know America is the world leader in oppression and discrimination . . ."[my emphasis]
She doesn't acknowledge -- she is too cowardly to admit -- that she would never have been allowed to have her own business or practice cosmetology in Taliban Afghanistan. I wouldn't go to Pamela Ferrell's beauty salon if it were the last one on earth. But Dr. Lester -- whose precious princess Jasmine can drop into any beauty salon she wants to -- signs off on this anti-American horseshit, explaining to us how:
Ferrell shows that hair seamlessly weaves the personal and the political, the private and the public and the past and present in the lives of African Americans.
The great scholar has just pronounced two sentences of bullshit a "seamless weaving." But doesn't this indicate extremely low standards of debate, discourse, and proof? We all know America oppresses the whole wide world, case closed. Scales have fallen from eyes with a wave of Ferrell's verbal wand.
Wait a minute . . . Was it the clearly black racist, Anti-American Pam Ferrell declaring an ongoing effort on the part of racist white America to devalue and discriminate against African-Americans on the basis of hair differences? -- or was that Arizona State University professor Dr. Neal Lester talking? It's clear that he is at least in 100% agreement if not the author of that statement.
And SMoCA, as it physically sits in, soaks in, basks in, and profits from the glorious abundance, freedom, and affluence surrounding it, signs off on Dr. Lester's and Pamela Ferrell's old, poisonous lies. Way to lead, Susan Krane! Great use of money, Ted Decker! Fantastic PR, Bill Thompson! Thanks for being stand-up, Scottsdale!
America hasn't been so bad for any of the black academics who spun and wove this exhibition. I predict that Dr. Lester's light, light brown great, great grandchildren will be puzzled and probably bored when they hear that one of their eight great, great grandfathers has a "HairStory." Why the bizarre negative obsession with hairstyles? In 22nd Century America, Land of a Million Hair Products, hairstylin' will have become elevated from ugly political trappings and raised to its proper, rarified level of Vanity, which will still be very important to "folks from across the rainbow." Dr. Lester's great, great grandchildren may never stop to think much about the tortuous days of slavery. Hopefully, they'll be way too happy just stylin' freely.
More twisted history, this by omission, appears in Pamela Sneed’s "poem" to accompany Beverly McIver's work. It's called "MOVE" and it's about the Philadelphia tragedy of 1985. Ms. Sneed connects it to hair by noting that the MOVE people were the first she ever saw with dreadlocks [!], and somehow this was significant. More importantly, she then lists eight human-made tragedies and atrocities, including Amadou Diallo, Eleanor Bumpurs, Patrick Dorrismond, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Rwanda, Oklahoma City and Waco.
Guess what she left out? The Holocaust, for one, and 9/11 for another.
That's right: the Holocaust and 9/11 were omitted by Pamela Sneed -- just as that section of her rant, with those glaring omissions, is itself omitted from the exhibition catalogue. Why?
A chicken-shit SMoCA maybe figured an omission of an omission would surely "pass" if all the tangible crap slipped so compliantly into the White Guilted Frame. But everyone who signed off on this catalogue should be ashamed to be part of it.
[Part Two is here, and Part Three is here.