by Catherine King
What I Learned from HairStories
Actually, I got an awful lot out of my HairStories experience. The exhibition got me thinking a lot about hair in general, and as a result I came to a deep insight about Hair Styling. Here is my very important revelation:
In order for hair to be styled to the owner's personal expression, the hair's texture may first require preparation or modification.
For kinky hair, or hair that the owner feels is too coarse to achieve the desired style, this will may or may not require relaxing in order to achieve the desired results. It may very well require some amount of relaxing.
For straight hair, or hair that the owner knows is too fine to achieve the desired style, this will undoubtedly demand tons of curling ritutals and products in order to impart enough structure.
Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Brown, male and female African-American Presidential Candidates, each has a hairstyle which perfectly illustrates Freedom of Choice in hairstyling. Reverend Sharpton and Congresswoman Mosesly-Braun, each proudly taking very different approaches to what the organizers of HairStories frame as the Issue of Black Hair. Reverend Sharpton has been celebrating the wonder of his hair by processing it into that bizarrely flowing flip ever since the Civil Rights Movement (and we never once had to listen to him complain about burning chemicals and/or irons). Congresswoman Mosesly-Braun, on the other hand, does (or doesn't do) something mysterious to get that always perfect-looking pretty, tight, shimmering crinkle. I am sure both candidates fully appreciate the hair benefits we all share in this great Land of a Hundred Thousand Hair Products.
After many years of struggling with my own hair's inherent racial limitations, decades of desparate experimentation, I finally realize that in order to shape a desired style, it's about relaxing the curly just a little, and giving the limp just a bit of a boost -- in order to aquire maximum manageability. It's about the HairStyle-- the freely chosen HairStyle.
I guess I've always realized that although I didn't start out with naturally 'good' hair, with faith in Research, Development and Free Enterprise, I could at least have confidence in having access to a constantly deepening and widening flow of better and better hairproducts. Given enough time, and the American Way, and I can have really GOOD hair.
The other really important benefit I received from my HairStories experience is that I discovered the art writing of Kerry James Marshall in his monograph. The artist and the book are inspirational because he shares with us the artistic challenges that he consciously set before himself, even as a really little boy, in order to develop mastery:
Everything I did was designed to make it possible to do pictures like the pictures I had seen . . .
I tried to codify the difference between really great work and mediocre pictures. Without this standard, it seemed quite impossible to set a mark that would guide my explorations and serve as the foundation for critical self-evaluation.
It's just so inspirational and kind of moving too, to picture a little boy trying so hard to grow into the great vision which he himself, independently, has dared to visualize. It caused me to acknowledge that I couldn't claim I was working really hard at my artistic practice without continual goal striving. It makes me demand more of my art.
Fairstory
Just to balance the picture a little, I've prepared my own FairStory.
And let me say, right off the bat, that I have memories of sitting long hours in the kitchen as a mere toddler, while the ammonia solution from my Tonette perm dripped into my little "not-green, not-blue" eyes. But you don't have to cry for me. Since about the age of 9, every step of my Hair Adventure has been taken freely and independently. The same is true of every other American of every age and color in this great Land of a Hundred Thousand Hair Products.
This is all the stuff that has been done to my naturally thin, limp, "dirty-dishwater blonde" hair to try to get some curl and "body" into it (like those lucky black folks). (Also, tip to Dr. Neal Lester: Way past time to back out of Jasmine's Hair Life.)
One other aside: Reading about the social warmth of black beauty salons makes me envious. There wasn't any female bonding going on in my mom's or my aunt's kitchens -- none the less, that little girl, the little me, understood it was about looking good, looking finished, like you cared about your appearance (which also felt good), so it never occurred to her to complain. Poker-straight, unfinished hair, was unacceptable. It made you look like white trash, a hillbilly, a hick -- a nonsophisticate, inadept and deficient at one's own grooming. She hated how it felt bad -- scratchy; it got stuck in your collar, got hung up on your ears and fell in your eyes. You couldn't let it hang down, but it drove you crazy pulled back. She hated how it looked bad -- plastered to your head like a wet dog, making you look like you had a small head, maybe making you look like you wern't very intelligent. Also, the smaller your head looked, the bigger your body looked, and you didn't want to draw stranger's eyes to your body.
She wanted to look good and feel good. It seemed to help her self-esteem. So, without complaint, here we go then, the trials and tribulations of having naturally "silky" hair:
My hair's been permed, teased, ratted, sprayed and braided. I've been spit curled with spit that wasn't even my own in front of the whole Sunday School choir (too traumatic -- don't go there) . . . I've learned my way around plastic rods, wound on rags, pin curls with bobby pins, pin curls with metal clips and SPOOLIES. I've wrestled with plastic rollers, steam rollers, electric rollers and sponge rollers. People, let me tell you, it hurt so much sleeping on those brush rollers just to get a little bend in my hateful straight hair! Don't feel sorry for me, though. In my freely undertaken journey of hair exploration I also mixed up and drank gallons of orange juice, that I might then use the empty orange concentrate cans to improvise JUMBO rollers. (A dramatic bouffant was produced with this one.) Bendable curling sticks were a space-age method. And I, too, have used the "death-defying white hot iron", and let me tell you, it burns white skin just like black.
But the curling apparati were never enough without plenty of "setting" media, including, but not restricted to: DEP, Dippity-Do, mousses, volumizers, and hair cement.
And finally, not to brag, but by this time I've gotten pretty good at making custom-blending my own hair extensions, inspired by the vast array of products at Sally's Beauty Supply.