After this reading, I had so many questions. There were many points I agreed with, but some points I could not agree with. I am a black woman who loves weave, and I do not agree with Thompson point that wearing weave is portraying self-hatred. Personally, weave is just as important as displaying natural hair. You can exude “black girl power” with long floor length weave as much as you can a full afro. I completely agree with Thompson point on “It seems almost hard to believe. How is it possible that millions of black women do not know how to care for their hair?” I was not educated on taking care of my natural hair for a long period of time. It is a sad reality, but putting my thick, frizzy hair into a ponytail was the easiest way of “taking …show more content…
Black women begin to wear weaves because the European straight hair look was more “desirable”. Another point that raised red flags to me was the corporate companies not allowing afros and dreadlocks. It is alarming to me that companies try to take the freedom of express, and more importantly culture away from African American women. I believe that the socio-physiological uproar began with issues like these. Corporate companies have deemed it “right” to not celebrate black culture. Once black women in corporate positions conform, we lost a sense of self. There are always the black women that keep the culture alive. For example, Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox from 2009-2016, wore a natural short hair style. She thrived in the corporate world, and it did conform to the “Just say no to the ‘fro,”” phenomena. It is world like her who change the face of black excellence. This article was by far my favorite in the class. Not just because of the length, but because of the content I gathered. It was so relevant to society stereotypes of black hair, and I believe younger black women should analyze this text. Although I wear weave, I have much self-love with or without
Alice Walker’s short creative nonfiction, Dreads uses imagery to convey her narrative about a hairstyle that was inspired by singer, Bob Marley. Dreads are defined as a “hairstyle in which the hair is washed, but not combed, and twisted while wet into braids or ringlets hanging down on all sides”, according to howtogetdreads.com. Imagery was chosen for this paper by the depth of Walker’s illustration of beauty that natural hair has that might seem to be abonnement or not professional by society standards. This reading sparks interests just by the title a lone. That people have mixed feeling about dreads, some might see it as being spiritual; or as a political statement. However, Walker loves the way her natural hair is supposed to form without
She had spent her whole life prior to her move with her long, dark hair braided, like so many other Native American woman, so it was a significant moment when she chose to cut it. With her hair “too short to braid and… trained to curl at the edges in a saucy flip,” one could infer that she had hoped taking this step toward conformity would make her seem like she belonged in her new environment (Power 37). However, cutting her hair did not mean she would be able to completely let go of her old life. She kept the long braid intact and in her possession as a reminder of her true self, even though she no longer looked the
When novels are adapted for the cinema, directors and writers frequently make changes in the plot, setting, characterization and themes of the novel. Sometimes the changes are made in adaptations due to the distinctive interpretations of the novel, which involve personal views of the book and choices of elements to retain, reproduce, change or leave out. On the contrary, a film is not just an illustrated version of the novel; it is a totally different medium. When adapting the novel, the director has to leave out a number of things for the simple reason of time difference. Furthermore, other structures and techniques must be added to the film to enhance the beauty and impressions of it. Like a translator, the director wants to do some sort of fidelity to the original work and also create a new work of art in a different medium. Regardless of the differences in the two media, they also share a number of elements: they each tell stories about characters.
The article Straightening My Hair by Bell Hooks makes her argument of finding the reason of why African American women straighten their hair. She first states that Black Americans straighten their hair because it is the stage of transformation; it closes the door of innocence and opens the door to adulthood. Slowly, she starts changing her views. She comes up with the statement that African Americans do not straighten their hair for reasonable reasons, but to imitate the characteristics of white women. She informs that black people repeat this process because they have low self-acceptance of their roots and background, and that they have lost beauty in themselves. My argument against this statement is that it is erroneous to claim that the straightening of African American hair is misinterpreted as their acceptance into the white community; straightening of hair is the symbolism of impending womanhood, closing the door of innocence, and sharing a time to meditate by relaxing your soul.
The new face of Black feminine beauty comes with a price. It alienates nearly half of those in the culture that don’t fit the standard. While the hairstyle challenges the majority culture, the newfound search for thinness that comes with the hairstyles returns Black women to the confines of White beauty standards. The ideology that natural hairstyles bring enlightenment came from the Rastafarian tradition. However, what new ads and cultural myth discount is the religious dimension that the Rastafarians placed on their hair. Natural hair doesn’t mean immediate spiritual or intellectual wisdom. What at first seems to be the advancement of Black women, shows the backwards regression of Black beauty.
The origin of the controversy surrounding African American hair dates back to slavery. It was a major phenotypic characteristic used to classify African Americans’ racial identity, intelligence and attractiveness (Guthrie, 1998). European culture was used as the reference group of comparison. Whiteness became identified with all that is civilized, virtuous and beautiful, whereas Blackness was deemed as inferior, rebellious, and inadequate. Guthrie (1998) reported that the hair of the black man was wool, not hair. Subsequently, this racist ideology was internalized by many African Americans, which resulted in what Jones and Shorter-G...
I instinctively squeeze my eyes shut. The distinctive odor of chemicals and the sweet aroma of coconut oil intermix in the air and the monotone sound of scissors and clippers fill my ears and the warm water streaming down my scalp overwhelm my senses. Once again I’m sitting up in my chair and before me are stacks of hair magazines filled with minority women modeling bold or day-to-day hairstyles. Optimistically flipping through the pages of one of the magazines, I stop mid way through, “This one,” I say assertively while I use my thumb to point to the women modeling a braided updo. My stylist smiled and nodded at me and walked to the other side of the salon to retrieve all the supplies that she’ll need.
Banks and Rooks research on Black women’s beauty occurred in the 1990’s. As time has progressed, so has the politics surrounding Black women’s hair. Both Authors create an opportunity for discussion, and provides a foundational framework for modern scholars to investigate the current laws of hair for Black women in America. Since much has changed, while certain ideologies have remained stagnant. Despite the controversy on natural hair, going natural was the best hair decision that I’ve made thus far. I have never felt more beautiful, or freer from society’s limitations and stipulations on
The often pushed their male spouses into voting and standing up for their rights as citizens of the United States, and with the “Black is Beautiful” movement making headway through the late 1960s onward Black women were finally able to take control of their femaleness back to their African roots, most notably through their roots. In Hair Story, Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps write “Blacks and Whites came to believe that the way Black people wore their hair said something about their politics. Hair came to symbolize either a continued move toward integration in in the American political system or a growing cry for Black power and nationalism.” Up until the “Black is Beautiful movement” black women wore their hair as straight as possible. With the advent of the hot comb and hair relaxer (aka “creamy crack”) Black women, and men alike would put themselves thorough rigorous processes to straighten, and make their hair look as white as possible by means of very literally burning their hair and scalps. Malcom X said “We hated our African characteristics. We hated our hair. We hated the shape of our nose, and the shape of our lips, the color of our skin. That is how [Whites] imprisoned us.” That is how white Americans normalized the popular
When people think of feminism they usually think of Susan B. Anthony and women’s suffrage maybe even the Seneca Falls Convention. People then think about the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960’s and the sexual revolution, both of these were extremely important but, they both lacked something very crucial, women of color. Women of color were definitely around but most of them usually ignored their femininity because, They thought that they could only be one thing or the the other, That was until the 1990’s where Third Wave Feminism occurred and the future got brighter for women of color.
Gary Soto and Cathy Song, the authors of Black Hair and Lost Sister, have had to come to terms with their culture. Living in America, it’s hard to think outside the box because of stereotypes and pre-dispositions. In order to find you’re self and come to terms with who you are as a person apposed to what the rest of the world may view you as, you have to approach the stereotypes head on and grow from them. Both of the speakers in Black Hair and Lost Sister has had to recognize the short comings of their culture to be accepted and grow in the American Culture.
Just as their male counterparts often do in a barber shop, American and non American black women utilize the hair salon as a sounding board for mundane woes, social and political opinions, and of course, relationship problems. her hair natural among other things. Ifemelu’s Auntie Uju states that “[when] in a country that is not your own, you do what you have to do.” By further persuading Ifemelu to relax her hair, she is stressing the empirical importance of “economic security and assimilation” (Barnett 73). Straight hair does not threaten affluent whites and is professional enough under Eurocentric standards; It is the ultimate representation of fitting into the “mainstream”. As Ifemelu alludes to in her blog, black women who have mainstream support (to a certain extent) like Michelle Obama and Beyonce Knowles are never seen wearing their hair as it most likely grows out of the scalps. Black women have co-opted European ideology to the point that “going” natural is perceived as having something (negative) “done” to your hair, when it is simply leaving your hair unaltered. It is the process of straightening or “forcing your [natural] hair to do what it was not made to do” (Adichie )that is more labor intensive. Ifemelu felt that by relaxing her hair she had
Almost 250 years of slavery and anti-blackness within the United States has created a divide in what type of hair is acceptable. According to Cynthia L. Robinson, “Black hair texture is graded” (Robinson 2011). Precisely, this means that a Black woman has either good hair or bad hair. Good hair has a resemblance of European hair texture, meaning straight and wavy curls. Good hair also diminishes the look of African ancestry. Bad is the complete opposite. The texture is kinky, coiled, and thick, giving the appearance of short hair (Robinson 2011). Hair that bears a resemblance to Eurocentric beauty standards is more beautiful and makes the individual with that hair type more beautiful as well (Robinson
As previously mentioned, Black women were described as the other by racist and sexist stereotypes to silence her voice. Despite the growing interest in feminism and Black feminism in higher education, limited research has focused on Black feminist practice in education in K-12 setting (Whitehead, 2008). Feminist’s studies in art education do not focus on the Black female art educators experience as the other in an educational institution and how might this influence her instruction to children. To better understand how race, sex, and gender affects Black women, more research is needed on the construction of the stereotypes she face as she walks down the hallway. In addition, what educational resources and materials are available to counter these images? I propose to do an in-depth study of K-12 Black female art educators in the State of New Jersey, to establish what happens to a her when she steps out the degrading stereotype role that threatens the hegemonic educational society and the existence of the patriarchal power system.
Also the efforts they went to too fit in with the whole community and experiences and what the struggles of having kink hair mean for him and the community. Blacks liked doing their hair and the effort they went to get it perfect, but there was negative comments due to the Blacks having different hair styles to the whites. Gates also talks about times with growing up in the period of Black Civil Rights and learning how to deal with not being treated the same as whites. In the text Gates states, “because daddy had straight hair I would do anything to have straight hair, and I used to try everything to make it straight, short of getting a process, which only riffraff were dumb enough to do” (Gates, 45). In other words, this means that they would do anything possible they could just to get straight hair so they were not picked on by the white people for being different. Another attitude that the community portrayed was that they were ashamed of their hair and how they looked. For instance, Gates stated “Mr Charlie would conceal his Frederick Douglass mane under a big white Stetson hat which I never saw him take off. Except when he came to our house, late at night, to have his hair pressed” (Gates 43). As a result, it shows that he was too embarrassed to be seen in public because he did not want to be personally invaded or harassed for