Conversations with Hair
By Pamelagrace Beatty
Do you talk to your hair? I do. I ask it to be gentle; to be cooperative; to look nice for me and to not take forever to do what I want it to do. My hair ignores me. No matter how much conditioner, straightener, heat, or curl I attempt to control it with, it still refuses to do exactly what I want.
You might be thinking, “Really, is she going to tell us all about her hair?” Well… No, I’m not. OK, maybe just a little. You see, I used to think that only Black folks had hair struggles. Despite the many commercials and the entire wall of hair products at Safeway — products that were actually more targeted toward the white population – I still thought it was only us Black folks that were constantly trying to tame, smooth and control our hair. Yes, there have been many commercials that show some woman with blond or brown hair trying to get the frizz under control. Still, I thought I was struggling more than the folks with straight, slightly frizzy or curly hair were. Maybe not.
In case you are wondering, not all Black people have the same hair challenges. Some have curly hair, and some have straight hair, both of which are different from kinky hair. They might have the same struggles as white people with curly or straight hair but in my opinion curly hair is nothing like kinky hair when it comes to getting that stuff under control! These days a head full of curls is attractive. Back when I was in college, that was not the case. I had a roommate, who was white, with long wavy hair. She actually slept with her hair rolled in orange juice cans to straighten it out. You know the cans frozen orange juice still comes in? I couldn’t begin to imagine how anyone could sleep with their hair wrapped around those cans! So, those girls won the contest of who went through the most to straighten frizzy hair. Maybe.
Why maybe? Because those girls never spent a Saturday morning sitting in a chair in the kitchen while their mad mama straightened their hair with a hot comb. You didn’t see that scene in any commercials! That was my experience. And yes, my mama was angry! Usually, I had done something during the week that she was still festering over. Every time she pulled the hot comb through my kinky (not curly) locks, she jerked and yanked my hair and commented on whatever I had done that had pissed her off that week. There was always something. I was an imaginative, active, determined-to-be-myself kind of kid, none of which worked for my mother.
Oh, in case you’re not familiar with a “hot comb,” they weren’t in any of those commercials either. Hot combs were thick metal combs that were used to straighten overly curly or frizzy hair. Once the hair was straight, then it was curled with a curling iron that looked just like today’s curling iron only the former curling iron was heated on a stove like the hot comb and today’s curling iron is electric. Currently, flat irons are used rather than hot combs. They also have replaced the orange juice cans for straightening that still-frizzy hair a white person may have.
The invention of the hot comb is frequently attributed to Madame C. J. Walker but that is not actually the case. Although Madame Walker made millions on hair products and processes for straightening Black women’s hair, she didn’t invent the hot comb. In fact, it is alleged to have been invented by a Frenchman in the late 1800s. It is hard to track and prove who truly invented it, but it is interesting that heated curling and straightening implements were used to control white women’s hair back then. The Marcel Wave was an example, and Marcel Grateau, who is most often given credit for these implements, is where the name “Marcel Wave” came from. By 1886, this curling iron was being marketed to white women in American stores.
Back to my Saturday morning with my mad mama, and a very hot hot-comb. The hot-comb was heated by sitting it on the eye of a stove. The eye was at its hottest level and so it was bright red. When heating the comb there was some sort of way of knowing when it was hot enough to straighten the hair but not so hot it would fry the hair to a frizzle, causing the hair to crumple off. Since oil was used to keep the hair from burning right away and to help the straightening process work, the smell and crackle of burning oil was a hint that the hot-comb was too hot. However, when the oil got that hot – yep you guessed it – it, too, would burn the scalp.
Eventually, when I reached my early teens, my mother sent me to a hairdresser who had no ax to grind about my previous week’s behavior and who was quite accomplished when it came to knowing how hot the hot-comb was – most of the time! Finally, life became so much easier for controlling hair when the hair relaxing permanent came out. It took all of the curl out of frizzy or kinky hair so that it was close to perfectly straight and much easier to deal with. Whoever sold that product made a lot of money too, but not as much as Madame C.J. Walker did.
You can see now why I think Black women, in particular, had such a burden dealing with their hair. This was especially so prior to the Black Power movement when kinky hair was something to be ashamed of and hidden under scarves or lightly fried with the hot-comb. Permanents were and still are an easier way to manage kinky hair although more Black women are wearing their natural hair with a flourish! It is common today to see Black men and women in commercials with a head full of long, kinky, curly or wavy hair extending out and past their shoulders (shout out to Angela Davis who proudly did that in the 70s!!!). So now we have all sorts of choices.
Imagine my surprise, however, when I went to a short workshop on Hair while in a 3-day conference and saw five white men in it. There was a lot of diversity in the group attending the conference. When I chose the “Hair” workshop, I really expected only Black women to attend because I knew we have so many challenges with styling our hair. Also, there was something in the description of the workshop that led me to believe it was targeted toward us. So why were five white guys there? They don’t have hair challenges, except for going bald, and these guys all had hair, but what they said actually touched my heart. The men talked about their struggles as boys growing up and having their hairstyles dictated by their parents. Their humiliation and upset rivaled my experience of ducking burns when getting my hair straightened. It never dawned on me that boys could get so upset about how their hair was cut, although I’ve seen enough ridiculous haircuts on little boys to understand how it could make them feel bad. I imagine we all have our hair challenges, just like the girls who slept with their hair rolled around orange juice cans.
Fortunately, there is that wall full of hair products at Safeway and other stores to help all of us manage our hair, and new products continually coming out. I still struggle with my hair, but I have lots of choices now on how to handle it. And when I get tired of the struggle, I have no problem wearing one of my interesting and fun wigs and using the two hours I would have spent cajoling my hair into shape to do something fun like painting, singing or writing a blog! Drop us a note about your experience. We would love to know!!
Carpe Diem
