Good Hair

I'm in Atlanta now, and from the moment I touched down, I've been focused on trying not to melt into a puddle of chocolate sweat. The oppressive heat that's engulfing much of the US is leaving me drenched most days, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. The only good thing about this situation is that I haven't had to worry about my hair.

If you're reading this and you're NOT African American, or of African descent, you may not understand the depth of my gratitude. You see, for the past 4 years, I've gone natural, first with short twists and now with dreadlocks (or "locs" as purists refer to them, because they think the word "dread" lends a negative connotation.) But actually, the word dread does a good job of describing the anguish black women endure trying to make their hair acceptable to everybody else in the world but themselves.

Since I started loc-ing, I don't spend nearly as much time obsessing about my hair. It seems like another lifetime when I worried about straightening, cutting, curling, or braiding my hair into submission. Basically, with locs you're just waiting for it to grow out and get so matted, it fuses together. Once that happens, you don't have to comb it, brush it, or straighten it. It's total hair freedom...

Up to a point. In the beginning, it's a challenge because once your stylist starts the process, you have to wait a few months before you wash it. You're actually trying to get a good jump start on the matting process by just letting it do what it does, and washing it would disturb that process. You're courting a serious scalp itch during that interim period, and you have to constantly massage and scratch your scalp, and maybe spray it with medicated concoctions that ease the tickling and prickling. Even once the loc-ing process has kicked in, you're only supposed to wash your hair once a month or so.

Well, after just a week and a half in sweltering America, I had to run to the nearest salon to get my hair "did." The picture above is from a shop near my brother's house in DC, off of Georgia Ave. NW. Sitting there for an hour or so felt like a scene from one of the Madea movies. Every stereotype about African American women came to vivid life, as sisters queued up to get their hair "dyed, fried and laid to the side."

My first week in DC was a blunt reacquaintance with what I refer to the phenomenon of "Hoochie-dom." Now, I love my black American sisters, because as one myself, I know what it's like to try and do your thing in a world that already has its mind made up about who you are based on the color of your skin. But sometimes, the stuff we do to our hair gives people a lot of ammunition.

Frankly, it's totally unbe-WEAVE-able. You see every shade of the rainbow, every manner of synthetic hair and human hair clipped and shipped from Third World Countries pasted, tied, woven and braided into our own hair. You see it clipped and snipped, flat ironed and pomaded, swirled and curled into the most outrageous styles. You just don't know whether to laugh, cringe or alert the authorities.

And the thing is, hoochie-dom has different permutations in different regions of the country. A DC hoochie's "flava" is different from an Atlanta hoochie. Sure, the spandex clothing and the precarious heels and the doorknocker earrings are the same, but there's just a different texture in each city. LA hoochies are more relaxed, DC hoochies have that East Coast attitude--but hoochies from the ATL take the cake, the pie, and the peach cobbler to boot.

Lest I venture into the realm of the insensitive and borderline self-hating Negro, I need to rush and assure you there's a healthy dose of admiration about the way some sisters rock their bodacious 'do's. And I began to feel bad about making disparaging remarks about hoochie-dom earlier today, when my sister Marilyn and I were out driving around running errands. Unlike me, she has seen Chris Rock's documentary "Good Hair", which explores the complex relationship between African American women and their hair. Marilyn said she left that movie feeling extremely depressed, because it seems like women of African descent are the only ones who go to such desperate lengths to negate something so essentially a part of who they are, just to be accepted by the larger society.

I definitely wasn't worried about what the larger society thought about me when I went natural, but I was thinking about that on Monday, after I went to an Atlanta salon to get the sweat and grime of the past few weeks washed right out of my hair. And as is usually the case with me, Karma paid a little visit to the salon and plopped down in the chair right next to me.

The next few postings below will highlight a process that I'll just sum up with the title.......