You Can't Touch My Hair

by Phoebe Robinson

  JANELLE MONÁE, 2012

  Janelle Monáe’s poof is so on point that I would pay to live inside it and #RealTalk, it’s bigger than my NYC apartment, so this is a win-win.

  You know how Steve Madden is totally fine with his line of products just being knock-offs of luxury brands? Well, I am the Steve Madden to Janelle Monáe’s Christian Louboutin. When she came on the scene, I immediately incorporated more black-and-white ensembles into my wardrobe, and when she started wearing black patent shoes to red-carpet events, I ran out and found a pair of knock-offs and wore them to every special event instead of heels. I’m not the only one who has done this, so clearly, Monáe is a trendsetter for many black women and girls, and hopefully will remain that way for the rest of her career. Yet, for me, I think the peak of her career will always be 2012. That year, Monáe became the first black woman sporting natural hair to land a campaign for a major cosmetics company. Monáe being a face for CoverGirl was a game changer. Not only did she provide a positive example for countless black girls and women, but by featuring her front and center on a national campaign, the makeup conglomerate was finally acknowledging that black women were a consumer buying base. And by doing so, they stepped up and expanded their color palette, so black women no longer had to Bob Ross their way into making a foundation that worked for them, aka combining a bunch of “close, but no cigar” shades together to get one color that matched their skin tone.

  VIOLA DAVIS TAKING HER WIG OFF ON HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, 2014

  Let me just start by stating that THIS IS THE SINGLE GREATEST MOMENT IN BLACK WOMEN TELEVISION HISTORY. Sorry, I don’t mean to go caps lock on ya like that, but I really feel it is the only way to emphasize how important this moment was. Let me set the scene, and then you’ll see why I’m not exaggerating. BTdubs, what I’m about to tell you is a major spoiler, so if you haven’t seen season one of How to Get Away with Murder, read this at your own peril.

  To set the scene: Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) is a high-powered lawyer with dubious morals, who has been married to her husband, Sam, for a long time. They’re both cheating on each other, which isn’t as trifling as it sounds. I mean, two people cheating on each other is like when you and a bestie both have New Year’s resolutions to find better jobs and then on January 2, it all goes to shit because you both independently discover that there’s a Judge Joe Brown marathon on TV and decide it’s way more fun to watch that than it is to upload résumés to Monster.com. Then when you find out the other messed up, instead of getting mad, you just giggle and share a look like, “No one will ever get me the way that you do.” What I’m getting at here is that Annalise and Sam both messed up, so it cancels out. That’s how relationships work, right?

  Anyway, while Sam was fooling around with a college student, Anna was hooking up with a superhot black cop who would show up to her job and go down on her, aka the man was a true American hero and every time he showed up on screen, I pledged my allegiance to him like he was the damn United States flag. These side relationships were going swimmingly until Sam knocked up his jump off and then, under mysterious circumstances, she was killed. Sam denied any wrongdoing, but when faced with incriminating evidence that would ruin his life, Annalise decides to call him out.

  Here’s a lesson to all of us: If you are going to confront your cheating husband with the greatest nine-word question in television history—“Why is your penis in a dead girl’s phone?”—you want to have your wig off when you say it. Because no matter what his answer is going to be, it’s only going to piss you off and make you want to fight, and you can’t fight if you’re too worried about your wig getting snatched like a white teenage girl in a Lifetime movie. So you must take the wig off and carefully hang it somewhere the way Jews delicately hang a mezuzah outside their homes to protect those inside it. And that’s exactly what Annalise did right before talking to Sam.

  That’s right! And not only did she take off her wig and makeup, they then showed her putting on cocoa butter before the interaction. Damn! If the show’s producers had shown her in the kitchen turning on the stovetop to medium heat and putting a hot comb through the hair of some neighborhood children, I would have fainted. It’s not an overstatement when I write that watching a part of the black woman’s beauty routine reflected back at me made me praise dance the way I do when I’m in the Pillsbury crescent-roll section of my grocery store. This scene was so real, so honest, so raw, so everything because this is what a lot of black women look like when not in public. To present that to America was huge. Not only did it show what beauty preparation is like for many black women, it let most, if not all, nonblack people into a world that had previously been off-limits to them. Usually, the media has shown black women as resilient and unbelievably strong in the face of crisis, so for a show to reveal a BW’s vulnerability is monumental. This scene, and in particular the wig removal, illustrated that black women do have emotions, do get hurt, and do express themselves. To have this happen on an extremely popular nighttime show on ABC was incredible. It made me die, go to heaven, say “wait a minute,” and come back down to Earth the way you come back to your house when you realize you left the bathroom light on, because I needed to be alive to see how else Viola Davis is going to recontextualize black women for the rest of the world. And that, ladies and gents, is why Viola Davis’s wig removal on How to Get Away with Murder is THE SINGLE GREATEST MOMENT IN BLACK WOMEN TELEVISION HISTORY.

  Well, there you have it. This concludes your CliffsNotes guide to all the notable moments in black hair history. Surely, I left some of your favorites out, and for that, I’m only half-sorry. To be honest, you’re lucky you got this much from me. This essay was originally going to be nothing but a series of photos of me kneeling before a Solange Knowles shrine I built for her (which is just images of all her various hairstyles, Lawry’s seasoning salt, shea butter lotion, a piece of weave I found off the street because Solange likes “found art,” and flakes from my ashy kneecap as a sacrifice), but then my editor was like, “That’s ignorant.” To which I responded, “Good. Point.” So here we are, friends, with a list that will remind us all to celebrate black hair and black beauty no matter how it’s presented. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go be busy not dismantling my Solange shrine I didn’t build. Heh.

  My Nine Favorite Not-So-Guilty Pleasures

  I’ve never liked people labeling certain things I enjoy as a “guilty pleasure” because it’s usually code for “Phoebe doing ‘white-people shit.’” OK, fine. That assessment may be a skosh valid when I’m playing boccie or going to a Billy Joel concert. But somehow that phrase now includes me buying sliced fruit and attending the doctor regularly. That’s not me doing “white people shit.” That’s just me “living my best life shit.”

  Generally, guilty pleasure describes run-of-the-mill activities such as reading gossip blogs, putting whipped cream on a latte, and crashing a real estate open house with—gasp!—no intention of buying a house but all the intentions of eating the free cookies. Sorry not sorry, but none of these count as guilty pleasures, and since I went to a Catholic high school, I ought to know. Guilt is what a guy feels when he’s on the dance floor and realizes that his boner has gone rogue and is banging against his classmate’s back as if he’s a cruise-ship musician during a steel drum solo. Liking a cheesy ’80s movie? Not so much. At least not for me. I like what I like. No guilt to be found here. No sirree, Bob. In fact, I think we ought to come up with a better term than guilty pleasure.

  How about Your Life Is One Big Bowl of “Oy Vey.” Here’s Why. Not bad for a first pass, but we can do better. You Is a Damn Fool. Here Are Exhibits A–P to Illustrate Why. Hmm, closer. Things You Are Strangely Proud of Liking Even Though They Clearly Prove You’re Kind of a Hot Sloppy Joe Mess. Hmm, doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it? Guess we’re stuck with guilty pleasure, but please note that I don’t feel sheepish about anything that follows below. Without further ado, here are my nine
favorites:

  Not-So-Guilty Pleasure #1: Ranking Members of U2 in the Order of Whom I Want to Sleep With

  I, Phoebe Robinson, am a U2-aholic. As of writing this, I’m in my seventeenth year as a fan. I once saw them thrice at Madison Square Garden in the span of eight days, and I wore a KISS ME, I’M IRISH T-shirt to try to get their attention. It did not work, but the offer still stands, fellas. Anyway, being a superfan means I think and talk about them often. Whenever I meet someone new, I often present them with this deep philosophical conundrum: Rank in order from first to last choice the members of U2 you would sleep with and why. This, of course, is asked only so I can reveal who I would sleep with and, naturally, I pretend as though this is the first time I ever thought about it. This may seem strange on my part, but I feel like you really get to know a person this way, as opposed to asking the standard “What would you do if you had a time machine?” Kill Hitler? So clichéd! News flash: One cannot simply walk up to Adolf Hitler and take him like he is a steamed dumpling sample from Costco. More important, hypothetically killing Hitler tells me nothing about who I’m talking to other than that the person is not a sociopath. Now, ranking the members of U2 as potential sexual partners? I’ll learn everything about him or her that I need to know. So where do I stand with the boys of U2? Glad you asked:

  1. The Edge, Lead Guitarist

  OK, sure he’s a great guitarist, songwriter, and backup vocalist for Bono, blah, blah, blah. Those things originally had him at number three on this list, but he skyrocketed straight to the top because at one of the concerts I attended last year, he winked at me in front my then-boyfriend. Please note that The Edge’s eye foreplay was not the cause of the breakup. I mean, c’mon, give me a little credit here. This isn’t some Jane Austen novel where stolen glances across a crowded room are enough to ignite a romance. However, I’m a straight girl, and a rock star winking at you is classic straight-girl catnip whether she is betrothed or not. So even though I didn’t go to the bone zone with The Edge, I at least window-shopped there and said, “Hello, lovah,” like Carrie Bradshaw used to say to shoes all the time on Sex and the City.

  Now, I’m sure some of you are like, “Yeah, but what about those knit caps, tho? He’s always wearing some sort of hat to cover his baldness.” Annnnnnnnd? I’m always wearing some sort of padded bra to hide the fact I’m a 32A. The point is that The Edge and I both have some insecurities about our bodies, which bonds us like wig glue does a wig to Beyoncé’s scalp. And when you’re that deeply bonded, the sex will be bomb.com.

  2. Bono, Lead Singer

  His singing voice is angelic, powerful, and raw. His speaking voice is that of a sexy Irish god. When he opens his mouth, I start behaving like an old black church lady, which means I fan myself and pass around a collection plate, except instead of money, I’m putting my vajeen in it. But his voice is not the only reason I want to get down with him. He’s philanthropic (through his RED campaign, he’s helping to fund AIDS research), he’s all about commitment (he’s been with the band and his wife for over thirty years), but above all, he’s physically attainable, or as it was described in 2015, homeboy has a “DadBod.” No one tells you this, but when you enter your thirties, you will find vaguely in-shape bodies ridiculously attractive as opposed to your Chris Hemsworth predilections of the past. This is not to say that ripped dudes turn you off. It’s just that the DadBod signifies comfort—in one’s skin, in throwing a middle finger to vanity, and in eating what tastes good as opposed to what makes one look good—and for me, comfort equals home. DadBod is a home that smells like cinnamon and plush carpeting that you can massage your toes in. Seeing a dude be that chill in his own skin makes me want to get turned out like a reversible white-water rafting jacket from Eddie Bauer (aka get laid a lot).

  3. Adam Clayton, Bassist

  Y’all, I’m just going to be really real here. Adam is next because he dated Naomi Campbell. She’s black; I’m black. So there’s no way I’m getting rejected. Right? OK, there’s one teensy tiny difference between Ms. Campbell and me. She’s a supermodel. I, on the other hand, am a supermodel in the way that a McDonald’s salad is a salad. And much like that bowl of Mickey D’s wet lettuce and tomato slices, you’ll settle for it, but you’re not going to post a picture of it on Instagram. The point is that Adam is clearly down with the brown (that sounded way cooler in my head), so he can do as the great Billy Ocean once instructed and “Get outta my dreams, get into my California king with Target bedding.” J/K. It’s a queen. J/K, the sequel, I live in NYC; I have a full-sized bed. Doy.

  4. Larry Mullen Jr., Drummer

  Yes, his modelesque jawline is gorgeous and sharp enough to grate a wedge of Parmesan. Sure, he’s got biceps and triceps for days. Of course, being incredibly talented at banging on drums all day means that he is most likely to put his thing down, flip it, and reverse it. But his name is Larry. Y’all. I can’t call out “Larry” during sex. I’m not about that life.

  Not-So-Guilty Pleasure #2: Traveling with a Suitcase Full of Dirty Clothes So I Can Do Laundry for Free at My Parents’ House

  My New York City apartment is old and overpriced, and my upstairs neighbor blasts Luther Vandross because, I guess, it’s easier and less invasive then spraying Jheri curl juice all over my bedroom walls. My home’s biggest flaw, though, is that it’s too small to have a washer/dryer. Right now you might be thinking, Hey, Pheebs, that’s not much of a sacrifice; you could live in any of the other forty-nine states in America and have a washer/dryer. LOL. Eighty-three percent of the reason people stay in NYC is that the city has seduced us by negging us like a dude trying to pick up a woman who is way out of his league. I know I’m great; the city knows I’m great, but it doesn’t give a damn, which makes me go, “Maybe I’m not?” and therefore I sometimes put up with going to a neighborhood Laundromat that smells like meat pies left on a window ledge.

  If the only issue here was that the Laundromat stunk, I could put up with it. But there are other annoyances that add up that allow me to justify flying dirty underwear halfway across the country. First of all, there’s the logistics of getting to the Laundromat, which involves schlepping heavy rolls of quarters in my purse. Listen, I already have cocoa butter in my bag—and not just one safe-for-airplane-travel-sized bottle. I have three. That may seem like a lot, but I like having enough lotion on hand to moisturize all black people within a hundred-foot radius. Just think of me as a Wi-Fi hotspot for ashy knees and elbows. Plus, whenever I arrive, without fail, half the washers are out of order, meaning that I have to fight over the available ones with OBLs, aka old black ladies, who always give me that “You know, the arches in my feet sure are tired from marching for your rights” look. I can’t compete with that. So they win the washers, and I have to wait my turn.

  During this waiting period, I have a bevy of options to help pass the time. I can watch whatever is on TV in the Laundromat, which is typically something from the latter half of Diane Keaton’s oeuvre, where she’s having an orgasm for the first time since Ford was shot, or she’s trying to encourage Rachel McAdams and Sarah Jessica Parker to hug it out over tuna casserole. If I’m not in the mood for a movie, I can always read a book, judge other people’s kids who are running around like they’re at a Chuck E. Cheese’s, or do my all-time favorite thing: avoid eye contact with strange dudes who read somewhere that they should go to unexpected places like the library, grocery store, and you guessed it, the Laundromat to pick up women. Men of the world, stop this. Women need a break from horny dudes charging at them like soldiers in Braveheart. Please let us sort through our dirty clothes in peace without worrying about you trying to get a sneak at my Blue’s Clues underoos. (Please tell me I’m not the only grown-ass woman still buying cartoon undies for funsies.) And while significantly less annoying than the dudes that hit on you, it’s worth noting that there’s also always an assortment of people of color wandering into the ‘mat, selling bootleg DVDs. I want to be like, “You k
now United Colors of Benetton exists, right? Go model, you cinnamon angel. Or be a jazz musician down at the bayou. Whatever. Just save yourself!” But I say nothing and they continue to be pushy about moving product. I gotta tell you, it’s really difficult to refuse purchasing Snow Dogs for moral reasons while sorting knock-off Lululemon yoga pants into piles.

  Anyway, the wait eventually ends, and I finally get to use the washers. Then it’s on to the dryers. I have a theory about them. Remember in The Dark Knight when Alfred (played by Michael Caine) tells Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) that “some men just want to watch the world burn”? Those men are definitely the ones who designed Laundromat dryers, which is a very specific breed of the devil. These dryers either dry clothes until they’re scalding hot like a Golden Corral fondue fountain or they leave them damp like a men’s bathroom sink.

  As you can see, I simply have no recourse but to rack up frequent flyer miles transporting dirty clothes across the country. I don’t know about your parental units, but mine really have it together when it comes to laundry. They have it together in many other ways, such as having a fully stocked fridge at all times—and not just with the basics, like bread, milk, and eggs. I’m talking about luxury spices that you might only see in a wicker basket on Chopped, vegan food items that Oprah has endorsed, and enough produce to make a fresh summer salad whenever the mood strikes. Just like when Honey Boo Boo said everyone is a little bit gay, it seems like every parent is a little bit Gwyneth Paltrow: the Goop Years after the kids leave the house. And Ma and Pa Robinson are no exception.