You Can't Touch My Hair

by Phoebe Robinson

  “Hey! You don’t look/think/act like me, and as Hall & Oates sang, ‘I can’t go for that, no, no can do.’ Stabby, stabby, gunfire, explosion like from a Jason Bourne movie. Yes, I did just quote a lyric from a Hall & Oates song. Who doesn’t like Hall & Oates, the face of blue-eyed soul? Oh, you don’t? Stabby, stabby, gunfire, explosion like from a Jason Bourne movie, everybody dies.” Repeat until the end of time.

  Minus mentions of Napoleon, Tesla, and the invention of peanut butter, that sums up the history of the world fairly accurately, no?

  While black hair is no longer typically met with stabby, stabby, gunfire (thank goodness), it still does mostly receive a collective (and not-so-friendly) Dikembe Mutombo finger wag from society. The message that society sends to black women is that their hair does not belong to them but is fair game to be discussed, mocked, judged, used, and abused, and it serves as a home for people’s preconceived notions about blackness, as if it is an abstract concept that is not connected to living, breathing, and feeling human beings.

  To me, the concern over the state of black hair is so ingrained in society, so ingrained in black people’s DNA that it, in some ways, defines who we, I’m using the black we here, are to people and subsequently to ourselves. Kind of like how there is Career Girl Barbie, Aerobics Instructor Barbie, and Army Medic Barbie, there is Professional Black Hair (straight like uncooked linguine), Makes-Her-Own-Incense Black Hair (dreadlocks or twists), and Super-into-Malcolm-X Black Hair (Afros, duh), just to name a few. The point is that we are aware that how our hair is styled determines how we will be treated by others, and that treatment or mistreatment (for example, the word angry doesn’t get hurled at me nearly as much when my hair is straight as when it’s in an Afro) can affect our own opinions of ourselves. But this isn’t always the case. Some black people haven’t been lucky enough to be exposed to differing outside perspectives of black hair and as a result the loudest perspective—the one that says black hair = bad—is often what reigns supreme in their minds. We black girls are conditioned from a young age to treat our natural hair as a problem that needs to be remedied, that we need to have that “good hair,” meaning hair that, in its natural state, is not difficult to comb through. I don’t know about other black ladies, but my natural hair is so tightly coiled, it gets hella vagina dentata on comb teeth. I. Break. Them. All. The. Time. By societal standards, my hair is The Beast from The Sandlot. It’s a problem to be handled.

  And so I have joined a community of black women throughout history that have embarked on this mission to get desirable hair: undergoing the various hair modification processes (hot combs, blowouts, weaves, and perms/relaxers) that are often uncomfortable and/or painful and pricey, clearing a minimum of four hours from your schedule to get it done, hanging out in a hair salon that has a damn Etsy shop within it where they sell homemade shea butters and baked cookies, realizing that picking out colored weave in the hair store is a lot like going to Lowe’s and picking out paint swatches. Compare and squint, compare and squint, compare and squint. And on and on. If you’re a nonblack lady, you’re probably thinking, That’s an awful lot of time to be spending on one’s hair. You are correct, but I will say that it’s not all just expensive and time-consuming. Black hair is fun! When I have dreads, I feel like a badass Marvel comic superhero. When I shaved my head a decade ago and was bald, I felt free. I didn’t have any hair to think about. Yippee!! And when I recently switched up my kinky curls for a beach wave, ombré look, aka the #LowBudgetCiara, I always felt like someone was following me around with an industrial wind fan. Clearly, it’s not all just an inconvenient time suck for me when it comes to my hair, and that’s also true for other black women. There’s an element of play, like being a pop star who constantly reinvents her look. There’s also a bond, a band of sisters, if you will, because when we see each other, we know exactly what it took to get our hair to look a certain kind of way. In a simple look, a whole conversation can happen, which often boils down to “Queen recognizes Queen.” In a glance, we can recognize our sister, dap it up, do the Kid ’n Play dance, let her know that we know what she’s going through and more. With black hair, there’s a whole culture of shared experiences that many outside the black community do not understand. The amount of time, effort, and money that is spent on black hair is not because of superficiality as some would have you believe; it’s because black women know that the quality of their life and how others will treat them is riding on the presentation of their hair. And if we’re going to dabble in real talk, the simple truth is that black women sporting natural hair deal with more bullshit than black women with straight hair or the adorable Julia Roberts curls of her ingenue years.

  To be fair, people aren’t always opposed to the natural look. For example, when Oprah graced the cover of O magazine wearing a three-and-a-half-pound Afro wig in 2012, she received nothing but positive feedback. But that’s Oprah. And she was rocking a big-ass Afro on the cover of her own magazine, which is named after her. And it’s a magazine that had ads for Pottery Barn wall sconces inside to counterbalance the Queen of Sheba vibes Oprah was serving with the ‘fro. So, if anything, Oprah ended up doing the highly difficult and rarely achieved “straight-up black with a you-can-stop-clutching-your-purse-now-because-I’m-not-trying-to-start-a-revolution-that-will-be-televised-I’m-just-trying-to-get-retweeted-by-my-fans” look.

  For all of us black women who are not #Blessed to be Oprah, we don’t have the luxury of being celebrated when rocking natural hairstyles. You’ve probably noticed the examples: E!’s entertainment reporter Giuliana Rancic “joking” that singer/actress Zendaya must smell like weed because she was wearing dreadlocks; Blue Ivy Carter, Beyoncé and Jay Z’s daughter, being dogged on social media because her hair isn’t straight; comedian and cohost of The Talk Sheryl Underwood, who is black, flat-out stating that Afro hair is nasty. Yikes. I could keep going, but if I mention each and every time black women are slammed for their natural hair, I’ll end up being sadder than I was watching the ending of My Girl. When black women’s (and girls’) hair does not meet beauty standards, they are bombarded with negativity that can cause feelings of self-doubt, shame, embarrassment, and confusion about who they should try to be and whether it’s better to fully be themselves or not. Now, that doesn’t mean that if a black woman straightens her hair, she doesn’t have self-worth, or is trying to be white. That’s a tired argument typically implemented by a woke black person who does his faux-deep version of the Fetty Wap triple greeting of “Hey, what’s up, hello”: “Sister, queen, goddess, don’t you know what the white man is doing to you? You should wear your natural curls like a crown.” Whenever I hear that, I always think, Oh, shaddup. Just because you wear Buddhist beads doesn’t mean you’re enlightened. But yet, this kind of gentle admonishment is said to black women way too often, so let’s clear this up right now:

  If a black woman straightens her hair, it doesn’t mean she’s rejecting her blackness. Sometimes a black lady wants her hair straightened because it looks cute that way, or she just wants to switch it up, or sometimes . . . well . . . OK. Take a seat, because what I’m about to tell you is a BPS, aka a Black People Secret.

  For the uninitiated, a Black People Secret can fall under one, or be a combination of, the following categories:

  1. Classified information that is kept under wraps for fear of cultural appropriation or judgment by society at large.

  2. Something that’s common knowledge within the black community but not society at large.

  3. A fact that black people would openly acknowledge if so many nonblack people weren’t vocal about said fact in the first place.

  I’ll give you an example. All BPs know that Ice Cube can’t act; however, we can’t say anything because sites like Rotten Tomatoes have made it clear that his films are the equivalent of a bushel of bruised apples found in a back alley of a Trader Joe’s. So now black people go on the offensive and effusively support him like he’s th
at kid with bad eye-hand coordination who keeps swinging and a-missing during a game of T-ball. We’re like, “Don’t worry! Here’s a pat on the back. Let me buy you a slice of ice-cream cake from Dairy Queen. Bless your heart.” I don’t know about other black people, but I don’t want to condescend to a grown-ass man like I’m a Southern debutante. What I really want is to say, “Stop the madness, Mr. Cube! Every time I spend two hours watching one of your movies, that’s time I can’t spend writing my erotic fan-fiction novel entitled The New Reparations, which consists of detailed descriptions of Scandal’s President Fitz greasing Olivia Pope’s scalp.” But neither other BPs nor I can say this because everyone else won’t shut the hell up about Cube’s lack of acting talent, so we have to, as Bruce Springsteen once sang, “Take care of our own.”

  Now that you know what a Black People Secret is, I can explain why sometimes a black lady may straighten her hair. If she is anything like me, her natural hair has special shape-shifting qualities of epic T-1000 proportions, which means it has a mind of its own. For instance, when I sport an Afro, I may want to relax by sitting on my bed and leaning my head against the wall. When I get up from that spot, my hair has assumed the shape of said wall:

  Yep. What was once a light, airy, and fluffy Afro has turned into a condensed mass of tightly coiled locks that resembles fiberglass insulation used on House Hunters Renovation. Forgive me for not having the exact wording down for this particular scientific phenomenon, but I believe it’s called: That’s Some Damn Bullshit. Just in case you’re like, “Calm down, Pheebs. It’s no biggie. You’re still cute,” let me tell you a little something about myself in order to put things into perspective for you. Not only will I unironically wear culottes, but I will also pose in pictures while rocking them with the swag of Georgey Dubs in the famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Clearly, I have confidence, alright? But I reach my limit of fierceness when, while relaxing in the comfort of my own home, my hair is twisting into itself until it’s knotted like a pile of tangled iPhone earphones. Do you want to know what happens when my hair looks jacked up like that? Dudes stop trying to tap this and my dating life dries up. And if my dating life dries up, my vajeen will get covered in vines and moss like Edie Bouvier Beale’s house in Grey Gardens. I can’t live my life like that and neither can the thousands upon thousands of other black women whose natural hair suffers from this sort of shrinkage. So say it with me: “That’s some damn bullshit!”

  Ergo, black women’s penchant for perming/relaxing/straightening their hair. But this was not the concern that I, nor other black women, had when they started straightening their hair at an early age. So let’s go back in time Quantum Leap–style and see exactly what Yung Pheebs (which is coincidentally my rap handle) thought of her hair.

  If, as a kid, I had a While You Were Sleeping–type head injury and a doctor was testing to see if I had amnesia, he wouldn’t have to ask me to identify myself or name the current president. He’d simply need to have my mom show me a hot comb, and instantly, I’d answer, “It’s Sunday. 8:59 P.M. Living Single is about to come on. My mom has to straighten my hair so I won’t go to school tomorrow looking like Frederick Douglass.” This scenario may seem strange to the average person, but I guarantee that most, if not all, black women my age and older could be tested this way. Sure, the details may be different—swap out Living Single for Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, and Sojourner Truth as the go-to reference instead of Frederick—but the point remains the same: From a very early age, the experience that most black girls have is one in which their hair is transformed from its natural state.

  When I see the pictures of me, pre–hot comb, with Afro puffs, nothing registers. No memories come rushing back, which is a shame because those important formative years where I could’ve gotten acquainted with one of the most controversial signifiers of my blackness—my natural hair—without negative outside influence are forever lost. For me, there is only AHC: After Hot Comb. I was only six years old when my mom started straightening my hair. Every week, Mama Robinson would place a hot comb on the stove, and I’d sit down on a stack of telephone books—remember those?—waiting for it to heat up. The comb looked like a relic from an Earth, Wind & Fire tour and smelled like the entire hair-care line at Walgreens. Once the comb was hot like a pancake griddle, I’d snuggle between her legs and she’d get to work. I’d go on talking about whatever it is six-year-olds talk about (Dr. Seuss?), and every once in a while, I’d wince, and she’d go, “You have to sit still so you don’t get burned.” Yeah. If you’re thinking that’s a lot of responsibility for a very young person—to stay still as a piping-hot piece of metal hovers mere inches away from your scalp—you are correct. Getting little burns on my temples hurt like a mofo and was not a good look for school. After my hair was straightened, she would put it in cornrows or braids, painstakingly making it look perfect. Like a bartender tops off a Shirley Temple with a cherry and an orange wedge, my mom would finish off my braids with cute little barrettes from Sally Beauty Supply store. Aww, right? I mean, when you are rocking braids with tiny bear-shaped barrettes, it’s hard not to be, as Beyoncé sang, “feelin’ myself.”

  And to be fair, I’m not just bragging. I was a cute kid. Check my stats: My go-to ensemble was OshKosh B’gosh overalls, Disney-themed T-shirts, and Keds sneakers. My smile? Helen of Troy–esque, except instead of starting wars, it charmed adults. Add in the expert hair job my mom did, and we’re talking straight-up catnip for The Mickey Mouse Club or Kids Incorporated. These years, the grade school years, are what I use as my Exhibits A–Z in the case of Robinson Could Have Been a Child Model If Her Parents Got It Together v. Everyone Else Who Says the Exact Same Thing about Themselves. To illustrate my point:

  I mean . . . I was such a cute little kid that if I were up for adoption, Angelina Jolie surely would’ve snagged me.

  That self-confidence only blossomed into full-blown delusion as I got older. Eventually, the braids were replaced by a bob cut with bangs that had the presence Tina Yothers’s bangs did at her peak during Family Ties. Wait till these white boys at my new school get a whiff of me, I’d tell myself as I got dressed in the morning. Oh, they definitely did. And if Calvin Klein were to bottle that odor, it would have been called: Eau de Weary Grandmother at Post Office Who Hums a Negro Spiritual Parfum. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? To make matters worse, I often paired my asexual hairdo with lived-in black dress shoes, pleated khakis, and a primary-colored turtleneck from Eddie Bauer. At best, this outfit could be described as “Jehovah Witness Chic,” and at worst, “recent Heaven’s Gate defector.” This, my friends, was the milk shake that did not bring all the boys to the yard. It was the milk shake that made them go, “You know, I’m really not into dairy right now. Or gluten. Or literally anything else that Phoebe Robinson is about.” But in their defense (and mine), I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where most, if not all, black women and girls simultaneously looked like a twenty-five-year-old new-hire local weatherwoman and a seventy-five-year-old anchorwoman signing off for the last time after four decades in the business. So my aesthetic during these years is somewhat forgivable, yet also? Unforgettable.

  Recently, I’ve started to question my deep fondness over my childhood looks. A lot of my self-love during that time was tied to my hair being manipulated to mimic that of white people’s. Not that that was necessarily my or my mom’s intentions, but looking like everyone else made me feel good. Fitting in, especially when you’re a kid and don’t realize that standing out is the way to go, was important. It’s necessary for survival in school. Not that I was bullied—I wasn’t—but knowing that straightening my hair wasn’t going to cause any negative attention or elicit a “What’s that?” surely brought me relief. You know the teenage edict: Fly below the radar. Assimilate.

  The middle school years are, hands down, the most critical in my understanding of my hair because that’s when I upgraded from my mom using a hot comb on my head to having my hair pro
fessionally straightened, aka getting a perm or a relaxer. This was the big leagues, which meant that getting my hair done was no longer a fun, if sometimes painful, bonding time with my mom. I was now in the hands of a trained professional who introduced me to “creamy crack.” For the uninitiated, creamy crack is code for the chemicals used to straighten/perm kinky hair. My hair was going to finally look like those black ladies I saw on TV: Perfect. Shiny. Straight. Unfortunately, my permed hair was less Jet magazine “Beauty of the Week” and more “Little Rock Nine,” aka a chaste chin-length cut with a tightly curled bang and a headband. It’s the perfect do for when saying “I’m a virgin” simply requires too much effort.

  I quickly learned that getting a perm was serious business. There were a lot of rules that came along with relaxing my hair. I had to have a scarf on hand at all times in case it rained, otherwise my hair would turn kinky again and ruin what my mom just paid for. Similarly, getting my hair wet while showering was no bueno. The solution? Donning a shower cap that made my head look like a package of popped Jiffy Pop popcorn. Also, sweating was not encouraged, so yes to half-assing it in gym class and double yes to full-assing it on the couch, watching Boy Meets World. Oh! Forgot to mention. There was absolutely, positively, no scratching my scalp because if I did, when I would get my hair relaxed again later, the chemicals from the perm would sting the areas, causing a scab to form. “Aaah!” exclaimed my ex-boyfriend, a high school teacher, after I explained this to him a few years ago. “I was wondering why I only saw black girls doing this. Didn’t want to think it was a ‘black’ thing.” No, babe, you were right; patting our heads like they’re the bottoms of ketchup bottles is indeed a black thing.