Let's Put it Out There

I went to see "Good Hair" today and I loved it. It talked about the hair industry good and bad. One thing I appreciated is that even though he exposed some rather ludicrous aspects of black women and our hair, Chris Rock never once made the women feel less than about the choices they made with their hair. In my personal opinion he should have went hard on them women who was perming the babies head. That was kind of heart breaking but in the end that's not my daughter and if Lord ever saw fit for me to have a daughter it will never be. I don't care how nappy my daughters hair may be if ever she perms it will be under her own will as an adult. But this is not a critique of the film, community, or my veiws on hair and what it represents.

The realest quote from the movie came from Ice T of all people. "If a woman aint happy with herself she aint gone do nothing but bring pain to every fuckin body around her." Notice this comment isn't race specific, but it is gender inclusive, and it can be applied to everyone. It is human nature for people to find some company for their misery. With that said I'm going to go ahead and state my piece.

As women we subject ourselves to some off the wall shit for the sake of achieving something that we don't naturally have. The love-hate affair that women have with their hair has been disected, documented, criticized, debated, and flipped inside out. Everyone says that a woman who chooses to weave or straighten their hair is trying to assimilate to Eurocentric standards of beauty and so on and so forth. That's cool. You have some valid points, but this shoe fits another foot. It's time to flip the script. Come on down off your pedestal becuase you have your green eyed monster too.

What is it called when the white woman visit's her locoal nip/tuck specialist to gain fuller lips, fuller bottoms, and fuller breast? It is called body motification or "slef - enhancement". Give us our credit please. White women long for the exotic features that derive from Africa, yet when they gain them there is no mention of them trying to assimilate to Afrocentric standards of beauty. What is the difference between a butt enhancement and a sew in weave? Both parties are trying to recreate some asthetically pleasing trait of another culture and are in search of... I use ellipses because I have no clue what these women are trying to attain, and in some cases neither do they. I didn't draw this parallel to suggest one act as right and the other as wrong. I'm just saying no one has room to judge, critique, or codemn. Everybody has eyes their are green with envy. Everyone has a distored sense of self.