That burning didn’t just affect my scalp. My skull could feel it, too. Every time I was sure that I was going to be injured, but I tried to soothe myself by imagining how pretty I would be once my hair swished and swayed whenever I walked. As soon as the hairdresser returned, I dashed to the sink and rolled my butt around on the cushion in order to get comfortable. When the water hit my scalp, it stung. Each time the hairdresser worked her fingertips through the back of my head, a new scab would appear, and she would admonish me not to scratch my scalp so much in between sessions; then, she said, it wouldn’t burn as much, and new scabs wouldn’t appear on my scalp. I took her advice and patted my head whenever I had an itch, but the scabs still appeared. All of the pain disappeared, though, when my hair was finally dried, trimmed, and flat-ironed. I would stand in front of the large mirror wall in the salon sitting area and twirl around and around, beaming at how my strands flew in the current created by my outstretched arms. This, I thought, was how I was supposed to be. Nothing else would do.
I was obsessed not only with my hair’s straightness, but also with its length. I thought that if I had long hair, not only would I fulfill my beauty’s ultimate potential but I would also elude the restraints of my blackness. I was already mistaken for Dominican and Puerto Rican by Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. Besides the white girls, the Latinas were the most sought after in my school. They were often called sexy or hot, and I began to think that these attributes were inherent to their ethnicity. I watched rap video after rap video of black and Latina women dancing and swimming in pools with their hair flowing past their shoulders (not realizing that many of these styles were lace front wigs and weaves). Long hair would seal the deal for me.
Each time I got my hair permed or braided, I asked the hairdresser to show me the length of my hair before she started. One birthday, my eleventh or twelfth, I wished for hair that stopped underneath my breasts before I blew out the candles on my cake. If straightness would draw me closer to purity, length would draw me closer to sexiness, and stretching between these two poles would make me perfect. At the age of eleven or twelve, I stretched only to undo myself.
Now that I have been natural for almost the same amount of time as I was permed, I can better understand the tremendous amount of duress that both black girls and women put themselves under in order to look “good,” whatever that means. The perm is sometimes called “creamy crack,” which is quite charged given the racial and socioeconomic context of America’s crack epidemic and the War on Drugs. It is a widespread misconception that Madam C. J. Walker, the first female self-made millionaire in America, created the perm. She did build an incredibly successful business around a system of scalp cleansers, massaging methods, and petroleum-based ointment applications that black women could use to combat hair loss due to a previously nonexistent black hair care industry, infrequent bathing, and poor diet, but it was actually Garrett Augustus Morgan, an African-American inventor, who accidentally discovered that the solution he used to ease the friction of sewing machines in his tailor shop also smoothed the nap on fabric and straightened hair. He patented G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Cream and also sold pressing combs and skin bleach.
The root of the word “refined” is “fine,” meaning the absence of impurities or blemishes. The Old English root of the word “white” is “hwit,” meaning “bright, clear, radiant, and fair.” As one of the oldest English surnames, it also means “morally pure.” The term “white” was first recorded in association with fair complexion in 1600—less than twenty years before the official start of slavery in the North American colonies. In 1852, “white” in American English began to pertain to white people, and in 1868, after the publication of Dr. John H. Van Evrie’s White Supremacy and Negro Subordination, “white” pertained to not only white people but also their hegemony over nonwhite people. We are taught to straighten our hair because our hair in its natural state deviates from what white people consider acceptable.
An African-American perm, or hair relaxer, is usually made from sodium hydroxide or guanidine hydroxide. (For white people, the main agent for a perm is ammonium thioglycolate, which is considered the mildest of the three chemical straighteners.) Sodium hydroxide contains such a strong chemical base that it can be used to unclog drains and dissolve cellulose fibers from wood and wastepaper. It can cause second or third degree burns in contact with skin, blindness if eyes are exposed, and gastrointestinal damage if ingested. Now imagine this being slathered on a three-year-old child’s head. Imagine black mothers consulting dermatologists to see whether they can use relaxer on a one-year-old’s head.2
You may consider this to be grotesque. In a sense, it is. But the more significant tragedy is that black women are forced to shoehorn themselves into a model of white female beauty. Many of us—myself included—jeopardized our health by not working out because sweat would mess up our perms. Many of us make fiscally bad decisions, skip a bill or two, in order to keep up with regular perms. When we can’t get perms, we gel our edges and hair to squeeze it back into the biggest ponytail that we can create. We get the rat-tail comb, we get the wide-tooth comb. We get the paddle brush, we get the bristle brush. We get the flat iron, we get the hot comb. We get the bobby pins, we get the barrettes. We get the small rubber bands, we get the wide rubber bands. We get the sponge hair rollers, we get the plastic hair rollers. We get the bonnets, we get the scarves. We get the plastic caps, we get the wraps. We get the gel, we get the Vaseline. We get the water, we get the grease. We eschew swimming in the pool because chlorine damages our hair. (I haven’t swum in over ten years.) If we do get in the pool, we immediately have to wash our hair. We often do not allow others, even black men, to touch our hair. We run our fingers through our hair to see if the naps—or “beadie beads,” as we liked to call them—were beginning to grow, which meant another perm was soon to come. Why? Because black women are conscious of how much our appearances are scrutinized, so we painstakingly put ourselves through these beauty rituals to paradoxically create some kind of peace, to “fit in,” and therefore be left alone.
We need to consider how we talk about black women’s hair. So much cultural scripting happens around our hair, perhaps more than any other place on our bodies. In the 1700s, black women’s hair was categorized as wool, which immediately suggests they are more animal than human. In Old English, “shag” meant “matted hair or wool.” “Nappy,” derived from the word “downy” in the late fifteenth century, is related to “nap,” another bed-related activity. The word “nap” was most likely introduced by Flemish cloth workers, but its Old English cognate means “to pluck” and its Gothic cognate means “to tear.” Somehow, this term, “nap,” which has both sexual and violent implications, became a derogative term for black people’s hair in 1950.
“Kinky” means either “full of twists and coils,” or “sexually perverted.” When we conjure up images of a black woman’s hair growing outward, thick and wild, we are unconsciously likening her hair to the imagery and act of sex, with an undertone of force. This is why there are so many examples throughout history of the desire to tame black women’s hair in any capacity. Even touch becomes political, a narrative of black women’s bodies as spectacles, freak exhibits. It is understandable why a black woman wouldn’t allow anyone who is not black to touch her hair because this petting is a form of that fetishization. But what about those who are also black? In Chris Rock’s Good Hair documentary, an array of black male celebrities express their discontent at not being able to touch a black woman’s hair. Many of them admit that they have never touched their partners’ hair. Touch is a form of intimacy, and for a black woman, to achieve this kind of connection comes with many challenges.