A Series of Hairy Situations

I have an aunt that can braid. When I was younger, she would tame my "happy" (my misinterpretation of the word "nappy") hair into neat, intricate cornrows. And all of the women in the family would give a collective sigh of relief, assured that even if I didn't inherit their "good" hair, I wouldn't be walking around looking bad.

That was nearly thirty years ago. Now, my aunt does my daughter's hair. A couple of weeks back, I asked her if she could switch from the cutesy ponytails she likes to give M to the cornrows that I remember from my own girlhood. She was reluctant.

"Her hair won't hold them; it's too soft," she told me.

No, I insisted. It's not that soft. Just try it.

Well, turns out baby girl's hair is too fine for cornrows. She did inherit the "good" hair gene that passed her poor mother over.

I say this with my tongue tucked blithely in my cheek, because the truth is I don't consider my hair "bad." Like so many women today, I don't buy into the good/bad binary at all.

Yes, I got my first relaxer at five, and remained dependent on the creamy crack until I was 22. I did the big chop and went natural then, but have gone back and forth between natural and relaxed easily, willfully since then. Over the last 10 years, my hair has been natural as often as it's been relaxed. And I appreciate it both ways. I regard my hair as an ornament, not a political or cultural statement.

Even still, I understand that hair represents more than aesthetic preferences. Aside from signifying that American blacks are a unique and beautiful mix of African, European, Native, and any- and everything else that has landed on these mythical shores, hair is also a symbol of the conflicted feelings many blacks have about their biology.

Case in point: I had terrible carpal-tunnel in the last trimester of my pregnancy. After I delivered, instead of going away, it intensified, making it extremely painful to handle the girlie. I went to the doctor, and was sent to a physical therapist to be fitted with braces. While sitting in the waiting room, girlie in tow, an older black woman with a sizable afro walked up to the stroller and peeked in.

"Oh, he's pretty," she said. When I corrected her assumption--the blue stroller used to throw off many an admirer before she began wearing braids and barettes--she nodded and went on with her fussing.

"She's got good hair. Where did she get all that good hair because..." she lifted her eyes and scanned my short, curly taper. "...she sure didn't get it from you?"

This was the first of a series of hairy situations in which the girlie and I have found ourselves since she was born.

Before I had her, a friend asked me, what will you do if she's "one of those girls"--light skin, good hair, oddly colored eyes? This was a distinct possibility; her father, paternal grandmother, and paternal grandfather are all light-skinned, and her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother both have very long, fine hair.

I told her that I wouldn't care if she had the finest or nappiest hair in the world; I could never begrudge my daughter any gift she was given, genetic or otherwise (By "gift" I mean beauty, not light skin or good hair specifically).

My concern would be making sure that black people didn't use her hair, or any aspect of her looks, to work out their "plantation issues," whether she landed on the so-called "good" or "bad" side.

I am a brown-skinned girl that carried a great deal of resentment for lighter, assumedly brighter girls when I was younger, and I didn't want her to be a victim of that same sort of jealousy, or the ugly arrogance that many of my old classmates developed after years of hearing how "cute" they were because of their "good" hair or "pretty" (i.e. not brown) eyes.

She came out with my face and her father's complexion; she got hair that is a mixture of his mother's long, wiry hair and my mother's long, downy hair. I think that my daughter is beautiful. I understand that by societal standards, she is a pretty girl, and I do get a certain level of comfort from that. Still, the regularity with which people comment on the texture of her hair and tone of her skin really worries me. It is constant and unmistakable in its deification of "good" hair.

A couple of weeks ago, I was wheeling her through Wal-Mart. We passed a cart carrying two slightly older, darker girls, with the "happy" hair that I had as a kid. They couldn't have been any older than five and three, but the envious look they gave the girlie, the palpable collapse of that envy into despair, was instantly recognizable. I felt protective of the girlie and extremely empathetic to these girls at the same time--split into two.

I could imagine girls like them snipping one of the girlie's offending braids off in art class one day when a boy that they like decides he likes M instead, punishing her for something that she can't help and didn't ask for, and I could channel the dejection that they would be feeling as they snipped that braid, the desire to erase all things that negate the beauty of their browner skin and coarser hair, which they can't help and didn't ask for.

I wondered how to help all three girls escape the plantation paradigm.

A couple of days ago, I took the girlie to the ER with a rash. The black woman in admissions fawned over M, going on and on about how pretty she was. The culmination: "She has some good hair."

M is two. This woman was probably 35. I thought to myself, it never ends.

The trailer to Chris Rock's new movie is circulating on the internet this week. It's called "Good Hair," and promises to be an insightful, if comedic, exploration of the ways that the binary damages black women of all shades and textures.

I can't wait to see it.

I am not so eager, though, to start helping the girlie navigate the treacherous sea that is black girlhood. I am so determined to keep her from defining herself by her appearance, buying into the binary, that I worry that I may thwart her from developing any appreciation for her beauty. This is just as crucial to a healthy sense of self as groundedness. So balance, I guess, is the key.

But how to effect that, when black people's attitudes remain so wildly out of proportion when it comes to hair?

If only mama knew.

I do know that I will work as hard as I can to make a new mold for M, one that doesn't lock her into debilitating beliefs about her looks or anyone else's.

Wish us luck.