Musician and Actor Cab Calloway, one of my favorites, contributed to a documentary about the Cotton Club in Harlem, NYC many decades ago. He explained at one point that Black Folks often went in the club to enjoy entertainment by Black women that sometimes approached the fair hair and skin coloring of whites in their appearance. It was commonly held that the lighter-toned the skin and hair color of the woman, the higher status and/or the more desirable she would be. The tagline passed among club-goers was "Light, bright, damn near white."

In the the early 2000s, an acquaintance of mine felt sure that as an entrepreneur with a small non-profit foundation as well, she was not held in the highest regard in her Black community, because her skin tone was one of the darkest. It seems that, as Cab Calloway and others have suggested - at least in some communities - the darker the skin tone, the lower the social status and the less opportunity and respect afforded. My friend said she witnessed lighter skin-toned individuals receiving all the grant moneys and other opportunities offered to foundations in the community, every time. I was appalled to hear it. (I still don't understand this color dynamic.) She let her foundation go, laying off folks in the following order: medium- and light-skinned Blacks, whites, and finally, darkest-skinned individuals. I don't know if that was by design.

In the late 2000s, comedian Chris rock's daughter Lola came to him upset about her hair. She asked hi why she did not have "good hair." Apparently, this meant white hair and Chris decided to look into the whole beauty and appearance aspect of Black America. I'm glad he did, because now I understand a little more about it. It is a $9 Billion business in products and services in America and to use these things is a huge lot of work and sometimes some torture. I respect anyone that is able to purchase and/or undergo these things tremendously.

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unless otherwise credited. 

Good Hair (2009)

→ Documentary with a sense of humor and a serious intent. 95 minutes.

By Chris Rock and Jeff Stilson, with additional screenwriters Lance Crouther and Chuck Sklar.

Featuring famous names such as the Reverend Al Sharpton, Ice-T, T-Pain, Raven-Symoné, Maya Angelou, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Nia Long, Paul Mooney, Cheryl 'Salt' James and Sandra 'Pepa' Denton of Salt-N-Pepa; and many others.

Chris Rock's film examined the African American hair care industry and its customers in depth, from gathering human hair in Indian temples to visiting The Bronner Brothers International Hair Show events, to beauty salons and barber shops and other purveyors of natural and synthetic hair additions.

One particular product and process, the hair weave, is very expensive, time consuming, and even tortuous to endure. Once the hair extensions are sewn into a crown of natural hair braided tightly into cornrows, the hairdo must be re-tightened after a period of weeks, then evenutally replaced. One session can cost a few thousand dollars.

In a barber shop featured in Good Hair, a man tells his friends and Chris that for Black women, buying a new weave time after time is an expensive addiction. Another man feels that that weaves are like pornography in their addictive potential. Whatever the case, the process of the weave that I saw looks at least wearying and expensive - and it might hurt.

Soon int he firlm, another man states that he dates white women because they allow him to touch their hair, the weave being untouchable lest it be destroyed or ruined. Later we hear a Black woman tell us that she might have to be high on drugs to allow someone to touch her weave. So, for some people, a white woman is in this way more accessible than a Black woman. Color seems not the major reason in this case.

The most bothersome scene for me however, was that in which two 3-year-old girls are forced by parents to undergo the chemical relaxation of their hair, even though they don't want it. One of the little girls finally says,” Everybody is supposed to do it”, but she doesn't like it. The straightening "perm” burns, even if milder formulas for children are applied.

Being burned for having kinky hair and rejected or diminished for darker skin coloring even within African-America must be torture.

The 1970s were a time of Afro hairstyles in America. An African America nurse that recently retired once told me that she and several of her colleagues and friends visited Africa during the 1970s and wore their Afro styles. Upon being greeted at the plane, she told me, one of their African counterparts asked, "What happened to your hair?" They all laughed, but it seems non-Afro natural and braided styles were the norm in Africa and many of us in the States just did not know.

Patti Labelle and her singing group Labelle experimented with stiffened space-age hair extensions and others have worn dreadlocks, while many have returned to more natural styles. Yet, 1000s of people every year purchase new weaves and straightening perms and work hard for a more socially acceptable hairstyles.

I think that it costs a lot be become something else - sometimes, too much.