This Will Be My Undoing

by Morgan Jerkins

  The root of the word “refined” is “fine,” meaning the absence of impurities or blemishes. The Old English root of the word “white” is “hwit,” meaning “bright, clear, radiant, and fair.” As one of the oldest English surnames, it also means “morally pure.” The term “white” was first recorded in association with fair complexion in 1600—less than twenty years before the official start of slavery in the North American colonies. In 1852, “white” in American English began to pertain to white people, and in 1868, after the publication of Dr. John H. Van Evrie’s White Supremacy and Negro Subordination, “white” pertained to not only white people but also their hegemony over nonwhite people. We are taught to straighten our hair because our hair in its natural state deviates from what white people consider acceptable.

  An African-American perm, or hair relaxer, is usually made from sodium hydroxide or guanidine hydroxide. (For white people, the main agent for a perm is ammonium thioglycolate, which is considered the mildest of the three chemical straighteners.) Sodium hydroxide contains such a strong chemical base that it can be used to unclog drains and dissolve cellulose fibers from wood and wastepaper. It can cause second or third degree burns in contact with skin, blindness if eyes are exposed, and gastrointestinal damage if ingested. Now imagine this being slathered on a three-year-old child’s head. Imagine black mothers consulting dermatologists to see whether they can use relaxer on a one-year-old’s head.2

  You may consider this to be grotesque. In a sense, it is. But the more significant tragedy is that black women are forced to shoehorn themselves into a model of white female beauty. Many of us—myself included—jeopardized our health by not working out because sweat would mess up our perms. Many of us make fiscally bad decisions, skip a bill or two, in order to keep up with regular perms. When we can’t get perms, we gel our edges and hair to squeeze it back into the biggest ponytail that we can create. We get the rat-tail comb, we get the wide-tooth comb. We get the paddle brush, we get the bristle brush. We get the flat iron, we get the hot comb. We get the bobby pins, we get the barrettes. We get the small rubber bands, we get the wide rubber bands. We get the sponge hair rollers, we get the plastic hair rollers. We get the bonnets, we get the scarves. We get the plastic caps, we get the wraps. We get the gel, we get the Vaseline. We get the water, we get the grease. We eschew swimming in the pool because chlorine damages our hair. (I haven’t swum in over ten years.) If we do get in the pool, we immediately have to wash our hair. We often do not allow others, even black men, to touch our hair. We run our fingers through our hair to see if the naps—or “beadie beads,” as we liked to call them—were beginning to grow, which meant another perm was soon to come. Why? Because black women are conscious of how much our appearances are scrutinized, so we painstakingly put ourselves through these beauty rituals to paradoxically create some kind of peace, to “fit in,” and therefore be left alone.

  We need to consider how we talk about black women’s hair. So much cultural scripting happens around our hair, perhaps more than any other place on our bodies. In the 1700s, black women’s hair was categorized as wool, which immediately suggests they are more animal than human. In Old English, “shag” meant “matted hair or wool.” “Nappy,” derived from the word “downy” in the late fifteenth century, is related to “nap,” another bed-related activity. The word “nap” was most likely introduced by Flemish cloth workers, but its Old English cognate means “to pluck” and its Gothic cognate means “to tear.” Somehow, this term, “nap,” which has both sexual and violent implications, became a derogative term for black people’s hair in 1950.

  “Kinky” means either “full of twists and coils,” or “sexually perverted.” When we conjure up images of a black woman’s hair growing outward, thick and wild, we are unconsciously likening her hair to the imagery and act of sex, with an undertone of force. This is why there are so many examples throughout history of the desire to tame black women’s hair in any capacity. Even touch becomes political, a narrative of black women’s bodies as spectacles, freak exhibits. It is understandable why a black woman wouldn’t allow anyone who is not black to touch her hair because this petting is a form of that fetishization. But what about those who are also black? In Chris Rock’s Good Hair documentary, an array of black male celebrities express their discontent at not being able to touch a black woman’s hair. Many of them admit that they have never touched their partners’ hair. Touch is a form of intimacy, and for a black woman, to achieve this kind of connection comes with many challenges.

  The significance of black women’s hair is nothing new. In many West African cultures, hair possesses a spiritual, aesthetic, and sociocultural importance. During the fifteenth century, many tribes, such as the Wolof, Mende, Mandingo, and Yoruba used hairstyles as a communication system through which they carried messages. The comb was a special implement, too. Men would carve symbols into combs that indicated their religion, family history, and class. As Africans were transported to the New World, their hair became defiled by perspiration, blood, sweat, feces, and urine, and so slave traders shaved their heads, justifying this practice for sanitary reasons. However, many writers and researchers believe it was also intended to dehumanize them and strip them of any legacy from their respective cultures.3

  When they finally arrived in the New World, Africans had no palm oil, combs, and herbal ointments with which to treat their hair. Instead, they made do with cornmeal and kerosene for scalp cleaners, coffee as a natural dye, and butter to condition. Field slaves especially were not encouraged to invest in hair care, and the women wore scarves for both aesthetic and comfort purposes. But scarves were also enforced as a means of repression. In 1786, Governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró of the then-Spanish provinces of Florida and Louisiana, passed restrictions affecting black women, called the tignon laws. These mandated that women of African descent, either enslaved or free, cover their heads with a knotted headdress so that they would not compete with white women in beauty, dress, and manner, or confuse white men who might otherwise make inappropriate advances towards them.

  Over three hundred years later, our culture is still grappling with how to control black women’s bodies and identities through their hair. Before 2014, two-strand twists were not accepted in the US Army, Air Force, or Navy. In that same year, both the Army and Air Force decided to remove the words “matted” and “unkempt” from their grooming guidelines. In 2013, the Horizon Science Academy administration in Lorain, Ohio, sent a letter to parents outlining a ban on afro-puffs and small twisted braids. That same year, seven-year-old Tiana Parker of Deborah Brown Community School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was sent home for having dreadlocks because they did not look “presentable” and would “distract from the respectful and serious atmosphere it strives for.” In 2016, the administration of Butler Traditional High School in Louisville, Kentucky, sent home a list of guidelines mandating that hair be kept “clean and neat at all times” and banning dreadlocks, cornrows, and twists because they are “extreme, distracting, or attention-getting.”4

  In pop culture, we don’t take kindly to black women with natural hair. When I was growing up, the only black female characters whom I saw regularly with natural hair were Moesha and Maxine from Living Single, although their hair was always styled in braids, not in an afro or twists.5

  When we straighten our hair with chemical products, we are surrendering to the dominant white culture. We do this to appear more docile; we do this to get jobs, move in and out of various social circles. This is not to say that every woman who gets a perm is subjugating herself. For many it is truly an aesthetic choice.

  Around age fifteen, I’d had enough of the creamy crack and so I stopped, cold turkey. I didn’t realize until my hair broke off that you cannot quit any drug cold turkey. You have to be weaned off it. I hid my hair’s damage with braids, weaves, ponytail clips, and full wigs. I flinch now at photos from that time. My thick hair puffed out from my scalp underneath straight dark brown hair. Anyone could see wh
ere my real hair ended and the weave began. In the summer, the difference was far worse. If I flat-ironed the hair left out of the weave, I had to make sure I didn’t make too sharp of a movement in windy weather, or engage in too much activity, because my hair would puff out again. I wore wigs that aged me, but at least my hair then was entirely straight, an ideal I was still chasing; I could be less picky about the length. Braids gave me length but not straightness. In both cases, I was never satisfied because I never fully accepted what came naturally out of my own scalp. It was not worth adding onto what brought me shame; no genuine happiness could come from any extension of my hair.

  In the summer of 2015, news broke that Rachel Dolezal, the president of the NAACP Spokane chapter and former professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, had been masquerading as a black woman when she was, in fact, born to two white parents. Dolezal predicated much of her racial identity on outward appearances. She wore bronze foundation and traditionally African-American hairstyles, such as micro braids and kinky wigs, in her effort to “be” a black woman. When asked about her race, Dolezal first said, “I don’t understand that question,” and in a later interview, she said, “I wouldn’t say that I’m African-American, but I would say that I’m black.” And then she explained she was “transracial,” which is not only bullshit but an insult to people of color who are not afforded the privilege of a malleable identity. I do not condone what Dolezal did. I abhor it, actually. But interestingly enough, she caused me to turn inward, to consider my experiences, my looks, my ideas, and piece together what black womanhood means. And believe me, it is more than naps and brown skin. I may not be able to fully articulate that thing, but that’s because I’ve never been asked how and who I imagine myself and other black women to be.

  Since slavery, black womanhood has represented the perverse, the grotesque, the ugly. Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin defined a grotesque image as one that is frightening and funny at the same time, and there is no more acute example of this than Hottentot Venus, whose large body was a source of entertainment for white people.

  Born in 1789 in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, Sara “Saartjie” Baartman experienced great hardship at a young age. Both of her parents died before she reached adulthood, her fiancé was murdered by Dutch colonists, and her child also died. Because Baartman had steatopygia, or extremely large buttocks, she drew the attention of Hendrik Cesars, in whose house she worked as a servant, and Englishman William Dunlop, who sought to capitalize on her body. Legend has it that although Baartman was illiterate, she signed a contract that she would travel with both Cesars and Dunlop to Europe in order to participate in shows. Promoters nicknamed her “Hottentot Venus,” “hottentot” being a derogative term used by the Dutch towards the Khoisan people, an indigenous group of Southern Africa. Besides gawking at her onstage, wealthy people could pay for private exhibitions of her in their homes where they were allowed to touch her. After Baartman died at twenty-six, naturalist Georges Cuvier not only preserved her skeleton, but also pickled her brain and genitals, containing them in jars and displaying them at Paris’s Museum of Man. They remained there until 1974.

  We as black women are not afforded ownership over our own identities, our own bodies, the color of our skin and the texture of our hair, and yet white women can appropriate our bodies in order to suit their own selfish desires. bell hooks writes in “Eating the Other” that “. . . ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.” White women’s privilege allows them to do this with little, if any, reproach.

  That black women’s bodies are problematic manifests in several flash points, such as hair, but when embodied by white women these flash points are neutralized, even admired. Case in point: Marie Claire praised Kylie Jenner’s “epic” cornrows while black women are still discriminated against in the workplace for wearing such a hairstyle. In February 2013, the international fashion magazine Numéro did an editorial spread called “African Queen,” in which the lily-white model Ondria Hardin was in blackface. Black skin and hair are considered “epic” and regal as long as they are not found on the black female body, because that kind of authenticity is not the kind of beauty that mainstream culture values. A simple Google search for “beautiful women” reveals a proliferation of white women.

  Some may ask how we can demonize Dolezal when black women try to “look white,” with weaves that look nothing like their natural hair texture, or blue contacts. The answer is that when there is no equality, there cannot be equivalency. In other words, we cannot judge black and white women in the same way. Although black women are pressured to be as close to the white ideal as possible, they can never call themselves white. There are benefits to looking “respectable”—a chance at getting certain jobs, moving in and out of elite circles, vast networks, and so on—but like a black child who places her face through a cutout on top of a white body at a carnival or amusement park, a black woman with a Russian weave and baby-blue contacts will never be viewed as a white woman. She will be seen as a black woman with a Russian weave and baby-blue contacts. We all know that we cannot identify as something that we can never inherently be.

  Dolezal, on the other hand, managed to embody whiteness, white womanhood, in the guise of black womanhood. Only a white woman could pose as a black woman and not be immediately laughed out of town. Rachel Dolezal’s massive media blitz after she was “outed,” everywhere from MSNBC to Vanity Fair, was no accident. Although Dolezal darkened her skin, she still inhabits a white female body and, as such, possesses the privilege to take black female characteristics and subsequently become a newsworthy subject. While actual black women are stigmatized for the bodies that we live in, when Rachel Dolezal attempts to wear our bodies as a kind of costume, she becomes intellectualized. Only a white woman could inspire others to discuss if races can be switched, and when someone like Rachel Dolezal does so, she is protected—even defended. It is true that she was also condemned and mocked, but this backlash was followed with a book deal and massive press junket, not obscurity. Dolezal is not an innovator. She’s just carrying on tradition. In the late nineteenth century, white women wore bustles to make their buttocks look bigger than they were. Hottentot Venus influenced this style, and yet what was natural on her was seen as disgusting; what was artificial on white women was seen as a sign of luxury. The offense does not lie only in the imitation itself, but also in the reception of black women’s body parts, which are only coveted once a white woman decides that she wants them for herself. Black women cannot reappropriate from white women and be equally desired. White women are not pressured to look like anyone else but themselves. Yet when they want to look like black women, they still are seen as both original and acceptable. Under the white gaze, the black body cannot exist without white people encroaching upon our right to be. We are like bendy straws, able to curve and snap depending on a white person’s curiosity. We are not black “people” on our own, but rather the opposite of whiteness. I am beyond questioning if all of this is mere coincidence. Because of history and current pop culture references, it seems as if it’s all by design, which makes the discussions around beauty—who gets to own and determine it—very difficult and painful.

  When I was growing up, every black girl I knew had a Barbie—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfect-white-woman prototype. I hated dolls; their still eyes made me feel like I was always being watched, and I much preferred stuffed animals. Still, I saw girls carrying Barbie everywhere because Barbie was a hot commodity back then. But even more than that, she was a status symbol: a small piece of white luxury available for purchase. If you bought her, you, too, could share in that counterfeit ideal. Why do you think you don’t see many white girls with black dolls? I saw a video online of two white girls having a fit when they received black dolls for Christmas. Black dolls don’t represent beauty, luxury, and perfection. These things are for white girls, not black girls.

  Like the girls I grew up w
ith, Claudia MacTeer in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye treasures a “blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll.” The possession of one, as she says, is what every little girl in the world, whether she be black or white, wants. Black and white girls want the same white doll. Only problem is, white girls stare at Barbies and see potential. Black girls stare at white dolls and see impossibility. This is what stirs Claudia to ask, “What made people look at them and say, ‘Awwwww,’ but not for me?” Her quandary can only be solved if she destroys a white doll, a symbol of white womanhood. White women can weave magic around others in a way that she cannot.

  In our patriarchal culture, both white and black women have to fight for the reclamation of their bodies. But we cannot group all women together under the patriarchy without considering race, which further stigmatizes us as black women but provides a buffer for white women.

  Their womanhood does not eliminate their whiteness. We as black women are doubly disenfranchised in the throes of two spaces, race and gender, and there is no solace. Toni Morrison once said that “the black woman has nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality, she may very well have invented herself.” Morrison’s predecessor Zora Neale Hurston wrote in Their Eyes Were Watching God that black women are “de mule uh de world.” The offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, a mule is not quite one, not quite the other. Mules require less sustenance and support than horses. Their hooves are much harder, which helps to ward off disease and infection, and they have thicker skin. Black women, like mules, have always had much less support and a greater burden. And our efforts rarely receive acknowledgment; if they do, it is only as footnotes on our cultural narrative. This is why the idea of the Strong Black Woman is sweet in sound but damaging in effect.