Hair-raising Issues

To be or "knot" to be...that is the question

Usually I’m not this topical, preferring to rant about the personal rather than the public, but the stars – and the media – converged when I found that yesterday was apparently National Real Hair Day.  According to Tyra Banks, at least, when she doffed the weave and the lace-front to show America her “real hair”.  Hah!  Let me tell you about REAL hair.

My hair is a disobedient dog.  It stands there when you tell it to sit, ignoring you even when you push its rump to the floor.  The color is fading and even when I feed and groom it, its not as animated as it used to be.  It goes where it wants, indoors or out, and generally exasperates me to the point that I want to get rid of it.  Then I look at it, scratch it behind the ears and promise to let it go another week.

If you recognize this relationship, you may have natural(ly curly) hair.

For the majority of my life, I wore my hair straight:  a “press and curl”, relaxer, flat iron.  (For my Caucasian friends, my hair is not like yours.   Its generally textured and requires hours of chemical/heat processing and some kind of grease, elbow or otherwise, to get that bouncin’ and behavin’ look you may take for granted.)  This is not a complaint, as I happily performed the requisite styling ritual from age 7 to 35 and was very good at it.  I could shampoo, blowdry and curl my very thick shoulder-length hair in 45 minutes from start to finish.  If you’ve ever had your hands in my hair, you know that’s impressive.  I never knew my natural hair texture since I booked it to the salon religiously for my retouch.  (Another aside for my Caucasian sisters:  having 2 textures of hair  - kinky and straight – is bad for styling and for hair breakage, so we get a “perm” – not the curly kind – every 6-8 weeks)

To continue the canine metaphor, by age 35 my hair had begun to play dead.  It was unresponsive, bored, listless, and overprocessed from relaxing and permanent haircolor – grey get thee behind me!  I sported a ponytail nearly every day, which is

After "The Big Chop"...see how happy I am?

when most people decide to go for a haircut.  On my 35th birthday, I shampooed my beyond shoulder-length bob, and went to work.  At lunchtime I pulled a Britney, and returned with a closely-shorn Afro!  Somewhere inside my head that day was the desire to get rid of things I didn’t need, like the guy I was seeing at the time who couldn’t bother to wish me a happy birthday.  Also, I’d thought about it for a while, and the other women in the office with naturals pulled me over the edge.  It was fantastic: no muss, no fuss, and thick curly ringlets…who knew?

Fast forward to 2009.   I’m unemployed, no longer working in Ethnic Haircare, and I’ve gone 0 for 3 with the hair, which I’ve cut off 3 times since “the big chop”.  I have dreams of a huge Angela Davis ‘fro with a pick sticking out the back, you know the kind with the fist.  I even own one.  But I have no patience, which one needs when attempting to deal with new hair, and I’m off to the barber on wings of frustration.  As we speak, I’m sporting some mean Bantu knots (thanks, Dana!) and fighting the urge for yet another cut.

You may be asking, who the hell cares about your hair when there are so many important things going on?  First, hair is very important to women, especially Black women.  And to White men who are going bald but insist on clinging to scraps.  Anyway, Black hair holds sociopolitical significance, to wit my reference to an Angela Davis Afro which likely conjures images of revolution and protest along with her signature spherical ‘do.  In the ’60s, Black women stopped straightening to make the statement, “Black is beautiful” in all its natural shades and forms.  In the ’80s and ’90s, we sort of gave up on all that and looked to Clair Huxtable’s silky locs as an image of corporate success.  Lately, with the proliferation of styling methods and individual fashion, dreadlocs are becoming mainstream-ish and Black women of all walks of life are walking away from chemical straightening.  A few years ago, an editor at a top fashion magazine was fired for telling a group of female attorneys that Black women had to wear straight hair to be professional.  Now, with a Black woman in the White House, Time magazine and The New York Times are talking about why Michelle’s hair matters.  Not to mention the recent outcry over the inappropriateness of Malia’s twists for an overseas visit.  The only remotely comparable hair hub-bub was Jen Aniston’s signature “Rachel” cut, but nobody thought it was some pro-Greek statement about her heritage; it was just fashion.

The hair was healthy here, after 4 months of braids and a 3-inch haircut. I miss it about once a year.

Admittedly, my decision to go natural was about getting healthy hair and a strong curiosity about what my God-given texture actually was.  And, of course, using permanent haircolor to get rid of the grey – let’s be real!  But now that I’ve done it, I’m not going back.  I’ve worn braids and twists for convenience, but I haven’t worn my hair straight since July 12, 2007.   Even the idea of wearing braids with straight hair feels egregious to me: the point of fake hair is to mimic your real hair, not to fake the funk.  My hair has become my personal statement as much as my personal statement.  But I’m not hating on my relaxed sisters; you do you and I’ll do me.

Into this melee of consciousness comes my need for a new job, and my fear that my hair will somehow be inappropriate.  After all, the MBA machine taught me how to fit in, wear the blue suit and say what I have to say to get the job.  The recession has brought out career coaches as talking heads reminding us that when all applicants are highly qualified, culture and personality matter more than skills; you don’t want to give them a reason not to hire you.  Is my hair that reason?  With the White male across the desk think “Black Power” when he looks at what my hair is doing?  My big earrings are to stop people from calling me “sir” because I have short hair, but will the interviewer take them as counter-culture and hire the woman with neat (read: straight)  hair and small pearls?  Don’t tell me I’m being paranoid until you’ve had random Caucasians pawing at your hair, asking how it got that way, or inquiring if you wash it or some such nonsense.  Part of me wants to interview with the black-fist pick in my hair, wearing a dashiki under my corporate suit.  The other part of me – the one that needs money and healthcare – says “get thee to a hot comb and suck it up”.  I know there’s a happy medium where kinky twists rest comfortably atop a twinset and a knee-length skirt, but its gonna take me a while to get there.

Oh, and for the record Michelle’s hair is natural, and she rocks the flat iron on the regular.  I know her stylist.

High Thread Count

This bedroom? Like porn to me. Actually, better.

I just want to be regular people.

You remember that episode on The Cosby Show when Theo tells Cliff that he doesn’t want to go to college? He wants to be like regular people and “work in a bank, drive a bus.”  Never having attempted either of those jobs, I have no idea what they’re like, but they’re certainly regular.  Of course, any job dealing with the public is bound to have some issues.  But bus drivers are in a union (stability) and banks are quiet (low stress), and either way you get to clock out at the end of the day and leave work at work.  So tellers and bus drivers don’t make a ton, but they do make a living wage.  And overtime.  Where do I sign up?

My problem – and yes, I know I have many – is that its waaaaay too late for me to be “regular”.  First of all, I can’t get a refund on the time or money it cost to get my degrees, or the time and money my parents spent to make me un-regular.  So here I am with my 157 IQ (either that or 173, and I know I don’t act that smart…it measures potential, silly), a couple of framed certificates and a brain I can’t turn off.  And second of all, there’s thread count.   Everyone knows that the more money you earn, the more you spend, and I don’t spend my money on cars or jewelry or designer clothes.  I spend money on sheets.

Not just sheets, my whole bed.  I LOVE my bed. Since childhood I’ve been a chronic insomniac so I know how important sleep is, especially when you don’t get enough. I spent more on my bed than some people make in a month.  To steal a line from a steak sauce commercial, its that important.  Pillow top, yet firm.  Queen size, of course, like a big-girl bed.  And several 400-thread count sheet sets because you can’t put percale on a bed that expensive.  Its the kind of bed that you sleep in not on, and the sheets are always soft, cool, and inviting.  My dad slept in my bed and admitted it was better than his.  (A-ha! Finally something I know better about than my father!  P.S. I bought him sateen sheets for Christmas in 2007.  The next Christmas they sat, unopened, in the linen closet.  Victory was short-lived.)  Many a day I looked forward to coming home, taking a hot shower, and climbing onto fresh linens for a restful sleep, lavender-scented eye mask in place.  It was the bomb!

Alas, sleepytime comfort is temporarily past tense, now that I’m staying with my aunt until I can find another job.  The Bed of Dreams is currently in storage, along with the sheets.  I’m now on a full size mattress that’s a little hard for my taste, but that’s the way my cousin likes it.  The bed is hers, after all, she can literally fall asleep anywhere.  Her sheets aren’t the same as mine either and I considered buying a new set, along with a featherbed, four new pillows, and a bolster…  Right, I’m unemployed and I need that $500 for medication that I can’t do without.  But the question is, can I do without the rest of it?

In keeping with my pop culture references, Savannah said it best in Waiting to Exhale:  Once you get used to being treated well, you can’t go back to bullshit.  She was talking about men, but it applies to how you treat yourself too.  Like after you try on a pair of $500 shoes, the ones at Payless are so not comfy.  You may think I’m being shallow, focusing on material things and falling victim to consumerism.  Don’t forget, I’ve got a career in marketing so I’m supposed to believe what I see on TV.  The reality is, I know what I like and I know what I’m used to,  and sometimes what I want is expensive.  Very often quality costs, like they tell you at Whole Foods.  But does the quality of my things equate to the quality of my life?  Would my life really be dismal if I had to do without Wamsutta Luxury Sateen and all it represents?

I dunno about dismal, but I bet I’d spend more time looking for the cool spot on my pillow.

Beam me up, Professor

This could be me, and probably would be...

You’ve probably figured this out already, but I love the sound of my own “voice”.   Well, maybe that’s not really accurate.  I love to think, to figure things out, put ‘em together, and then expound upon them at great length.  Since I’m unemployed at the moment, and none too jazzed about my former career, I’m exploring my options.

Perhaps I can be an author, write a book about my life experiences.  They’re pretty interesting if I do say so myself, and if nothing else my friends and family would buy it.  In the interest of full disclosure, I toyed with the book idea during a hospital stay, and it seemed like a great idea.  Maybe there was nothing else to do.  Maybe it was all the talking about my feelings or whatever.  Maybe I needed a laugh.  Anyway, the book would be filled with the sarcastic and humorous observations I made during two weeks in a psych hospital.  You read that correctly.  I see it as a cross between Girl, Interrupted, 28 Days and Madea Goes to Jail.  In my head, it’s Black Girl, Interrupted, and don’t you DARE steal my title.  You know, the funny side of mental illness, because there is one:  it’s not just nervous laughter you’re hearing during visiting hours.  You’d be amazed how many intentionally hilarious people I’ve met in treatment, and I’m just the kind of person to write about it.  More disclosure:  in my secret dreams, this blog is the springboard to my life as an author, and perhaps someone in publishing (Cherise, we still need a meeting!) will see it and give me a deal.  Perhaps not.  Anyway, I still think it’s a good idea and I can envision myself on Oprah and The Today Show promoting my tome.  The problem is that my vision gets cloudy somewhere around the time of my second book, or my inability to get a full-time job because I’ve written extensively about being in the nut house.  Yes, I use “nut house” is a term of endearment, so deal with it but don’t use it yourself unless you’ve had occasion to occupy said domicile.

So maybe I can’t sustain a career as a writer, but I could get my PhD and become a professor!  Very often I opine about the papers I’d write if I were still in college, where I discovered my particular brand of intellectual wit.  One of them is about the prevalence of young, butch, Black lesbians in New York.  You’ve seen the girls on the A Train wearing cornrows, wife-beaters and

Maybe Prof. Lloyd wouldn't be arrested, but I'm thinking my haters would be on the tenure committee.

sports bras?  Grabbing their crotch and shouting “hey girl” at the ladies.  Are they lesbians because they love women and having sex with them? Or is their appropriation of the Black male thug persona, and the corresponding attraction by their femme counterparts, a result of a society without appropriate father figures where young women must recreate popular masculine and feminine roles?  The preceding is a real theory I developed over 3 years of living in Brooklyn, taking the subway to my corporate job where I frittered away my intelligence dumbing down full sentences for the PowerPoint culture.  Or I could study cultural anthropology and write my dissertation on public rituals.  I don’t have a particular thesis yet, but after years of getting my hair braided by African women and witnessing how they prepare for weddings and baby christenings – both of which are all-day affairs with multiple costume changes, film-quality makeup and partying until dawn – I’m sure there’s something there.  Or I could study women and hair and race, since the preoccupation with Michelle Obama’s wardrobe and the twists in Malia’s hair is simultaneously enraging and intriguing.  Spending two years working for SoftSheen-Carson and letting my own hair go natural makes me somewhat qualified to comment, so my post-MBA career wouldn’t have been a waste.  I’m sure I could come up with some grant money to go back to school, because another degree is just what I need.  Sometimes I think I need another Ivy League degree because some of my friends have two or three, and the competitor in me thinks I’m falling behind.  I long for the perceived freedom of academia, where I can formulate my own theories, write about them, get young people to read them, and churn out a generation of people who think like me.  No more corporate politics or sales meetings or talk about “making the number” and saying “incentivize” and “let’s take this offline”.  Then again, there are the politics of the canon, and since I can never really keep my mouth shut, the tenure committee would shoot me down because of my attitude, no matter how much publishing I did.

Apparently I’ve got to figure out a way to say what I want to say, be honest about my life, and somehow get paid to do it.  Maybe I should become a reality TV star.  Or just a TV star.  Or I can continue to star in my very own life, burning brightly among my peers with an occasional twinkle just for laughs.