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.Now some women who wore Afros were militantbut certainly not all of us.It was sad to see militant lighter-skinned blacks trying desperately to keep Afros when their good hair just swayed and sank back to their heads.Theyhad few of the braiding or other upkeep problems that folkswith more naturally kinky hair had.Getting a geri curl meant slightly less care, but it meantyou were also more likely to have greasy collars and pillows.Then, too, there was the issue of chemical processing.A gericurl was not unlike what black men had gone through fordecades in getting  processes. It was still an unnatural wayof treating black hair.Depending on the grade and texture of[ 130The Ubiquitous Hairthe hair, the process might cause the hair to fall out or someother problem.Black hair care is an endless preoccupation, and there areseveral magazines and Web sites nowadays that address it, notto mention the huge numbers of companies that produceblack hair care products (many of them white-owned).Frombraids to weaves to shocking shades of coloring, black womenare always doing something to their hair, and at very regularintervals.The industry is probably worth hundreds of mil-lions of dollars in annual revenue.In the past couple ofdecades hair coloring has become all the rage with blackwomen.When certain well-known public black female figuresbecame  blondes, so did many young black female imita-tors.The first time I saw a black woman (a really dark-skinnedblack woman) with platinum blond coloring in her hair, itgave me pause.Not only was it a shockingly incongruous pic-ture, but it was even more shocking to contemplate what itmeant in terms of that person s self-definition.It was also anindication of what I take to be a truism: people who love youwill sometimes lie to you.They will occasionally tell youperhaps because they feel you desperately need to be toldthat something looks good when it really makes you looklike a buffoon.If indeed someone earnestly believed thewoman looked good, then something is seriously wrong withhow women of African descent in America know and namebeauty.I have been in beauty shops where women were planningto spend eight to twelve hours to have elaborate patterns ofbraids created in their hair.Fake hair extensions are oftenadded to these braids, despite the fact that some of this hairlooks so unnatural when attached to a live human head.131 ]SUMMER SNOWOther hair extensions that are avowedly made from humanhair blend in better but still may create a distracting pattern.Let s say that the black woman wants the long look.She willhave braids of four to six inches against her head and thenlong tresses cascading down her back in a constant reminderthat she wishes to imitate her oppressors or at least besomething other than what she is.This  bleaching out, so tospeak, is a contrast to the women who braid in patterns thatthey claim are African-derived.Both styles are aiming for thesame result that is, lesser attention to hair but with dra-matically different outcomes.One signals a deep identity cri-sis while the other signals deep racial and cultural pride.For all this attention to hair, however, the sad truth is thatthe styles with which black women adorn their hair have not,during the course of their tenure in America, made blackwomen any more desirable in that grand scheme of beauty bywhich American women are generally judged or any moreacceptable to the larger public.Bo Derek might have madebraids fashionable beyond black communities for a while,but it was a short while.White women traveling south of theUnited States might get their hair braided in various coun-tries, but they never keep the braids for more than a few daysonce they return to the United States; their bit of exoticismnever turns into permanent change [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]