Good Hair

Carley's Beautiful Natural Hair

Carley's Beautiful Hair Extensions - You know, she's beautiful no matter what!

During my recuperation, I've had the chance to catch up on watching some movies I've been wanting to see for a while.  This morning I watched the Chris Rock movie "Good Hair".  I was blown away.  I think it's a should see for all Americans, but is definitely a MUST see for any parent, black or white, of a child of African descent, in particular if their child is a girl.

The movie starts out with Chris Rock explaining why he made the film, because his 3 year old daughter came to him crying and asking, "Daddy, how come I don't have good hair?".  So he started researching what the Black American culture considers "good hair" and it is not the natural African hair, which was often referred to as "nappy" by the African Americans he interviewed.  In fact one black woman he interviewed that wore her hair natural in locs stated that she was often considered revolutionary because of her natural hair style.

What were the preferred hair styles for most black women was relaxed hair or hair weaves, basically European type looking hair.  To relax the curl from African hair takes some incredibly harsh chemicals.  They showed 3 and 4 year olds getting this done.  When I got Carley's hair extensions put in last month, the African American beautician had no problem with relaxing Carley's hair at age 2.  She said she had relaxed hair of kids as young as one!  After seeing this movie, Carley's going to have to be much, much older, maybe when she's 21.

The price and source of the human hair for the hair weaves was a major eye opener.  Most of the hair comes from India where people either have their hair shaved as a religious sacrifice or have it cut off and stolen and sold to hair brokers.  After the hair is processed and sold in the United States, it goes for $1000s.  This made me feel a lot better about the $65 I spend on Carley's non-human hair extensions.  I also felt a little bit better about getting the extensions when the black mom of the 4 year old getting her hair relaxed said the main reason she was doing it was the time it took to comb out her daughter's hair.  Even though I think the majority of wanting straight hair is more cultural than anything else, let's face it, unless African hair is kept pretty short, Lindsey's Asian hair which is long and straight is so much easier and quicker to take care of than Carley's hair which is considerably shorter than Lindsey's but is dry and thick with very tight curls.  So there is a convenience and time factor as part of this as well.  Even though it took over an hour of Carley sitting in the chair at the salon to have the hair extensions put in, on a daily basis we're having to spend much, much less time styling it.

This movie made me laugh in places, taught me a lot about the African American hair culture in this country, gave me a lot to think about regarding what Carley will be facing as she gets older with her hair and her self image and then made me cry at the end when Chris Rock said that what he wanted to teach his daughters most was it's more important what's inside of their heads rather than what's on top of their heads.