Every one of you can relate. Every one of you. Not that I've had any problems here at the Atlantic. No one's ever made a Kobe Bryant joke. Or asked me if black people use shampoo. Or asked me where to buy weed. Which really sucks for them. My connect is off the hook this year!
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Yes, I can relate.
Very early in my career, I would too often got the "you are so articulate" comment from my white co-workers. If was as if they were shocked that a black person could use multi-syllable words.
But the thing that irritated me the most -- and still does -- is the "can I touch your hair?" obsession. WTF. I don't go around asking white women if I can touch their hair every time they wear a new style.
I'm not a black woman, so take this for what it's worth: I think, as long as their polite, I'd let them touch my hair. If they ask nicely I might even let em pull my hair...
Erm, sorry, wrong thread. ANYWAY, I think that question comes out a genuine curiosity. Especially when it comes to natural hair. Here's the thing--black people can actually relax their hair, but it's not like white people can "nappy up" their hair. I'm familiar with the Jewfro, but in the main, black un-permed hair--especially worn long--is, I imagine, just a world away.
White women always marvel at Kenyatta's hair. And it's almost always polite and exceedingly kind.
That's nice, but does Kenyatta let them touch it?
You reach for my hair you better be prepared to fight.
I feel you. You don't touch my hair and I won't ask you what color yours would be if you didn't dye it.
I'm currently outside the US and cannot view Hulu, so I may be missing the point of this post, but I have to agree with Ta-Nehisi here.
I spent some time in both remote parts of East Africa and India with a female friend who is naturally blond. People used to come up and touch her hair all the time. It was just genuine curiosity. Kind of like when a little kid stares.
Of course it's incredibly awkward (and a bit impolite in American culture), but I don't think there are any bad motives here.
Well just reaching for someone's hair is fucking rude. So yeah, they better be prepared to fight.
I don't think asking, very nicely, is rude. But then I don't think politely declining is rude, either. I'm just trying to see it from another side. Not saying you should be under any law to oblige.
As for Kenyatta, I'll ask, but I'm sure it's been years since someone asked to actually touch her hair. But then, she's back in college. So who knows...
Right, as long as they are polite..yes,ok...I get that. And, I even get the natural curiosity factor -- I wear my hair natural and change my styles on a regular basis.
But I call it an "obsession" for a reason. I get this question (or similar ones about my hair)all the time. On the street. On the elevator. At work. In the supermarket. Etc., Etc. Etc. So, after a while, it becomes exhausting, no matter how polite the question is asked.
I often see white women with incredibly beautiful hair styles -- I happen to love white women with curly, curly hairstyles. But I have never once thought of asking if I could touch it. Maybe I should start asking.
You must have really nice hair! Now I am curious.
I admit I have asked my share of stupid questions about "black" things over the years. But luckily, my best friend since 8th grade is a black woman, so I got to ask my questions of her and not of some lady on the elevator! Being my BFF for over 30 years, she has been patient and informative, lol.
Also, I know it is not the same, but this does remind me of when you are pregnant, people asking to touch your stomach - or, they don't even ask, they just reach out and touch it. Some people just aren't raised right.
(Note to self: When seeing natural black hair (more rare than diamonds here), just continue sincerely saying, "Your hair is amazing." Don't be a burden. Be a force for awesome.)
My buddy has an enormous Jewfro and everyone's always reaching out to touch it. I don't think it has much to do with race or skin color. It's just the natural human desire to feel the springiness of a big curly fro.
Echoing Ace Tomato up there: if you're a natural blond in parts of the world where that's rare, people want to touch your hair. In China they want to put you in all their photographs--my blond niece is in photo albums all over that country.
Though I will say that the grabby part is much, much more pronounced if the blond is a kid--who may wind up swearing never to leave the hotel again. People have asked me to give them my hair, but only little kids asked to touch it.
@Deborah:
Yup, I know exactly what you're talking about with your niece. I spent 3 years in Korea as the only white guy working in a particular government ministry.
While my hair never got touched (it's brown, nothing exciting), I regularly got recruited for international training videos. In fact, I got "pimped out" to multiple government agencies just for training videos.
My point is not to make fun of the Koreans, but to show that diversity breeds curiosity and that's not a bad thing.
I can relate to some of this. Particularly the questions about my hair and about knowing where to get good weed.
I have a short hair cut and whenever I get it done, the questions start....how did you do that? do you wash your hair everyday? Or if I throw on a wig, forget about it....is that you hair? you did something really different with your hair, did it grow that long?
then there was the question about where to get good weed. I don't even smoke weed, i never have! I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that my coworker asked me that question because we are both around the same age, in our mid 20s; and not because I am black. But I am still not so sure.
But honestly, I don't get angry, it really makes me laugh. Sometimes it sucks answering the same questions but I haven't snapped on anyone
You should work with my husband; he won't notice a thing that happens to your hair short of shaving it all off. Actually in his building full of scientists I imagine that's the norm.
Yes. When Obama won, white people at my brother's job were congratulating him, MY BROTHER - like he won or some shit! Friggin hilarious!
I went out for drinks with two white co-workers who I am pretty cool with. During the course of the evening, they started talking about weed and such and how they hadn't smoked any in a while. And then I get the "look." I personally don't smoke weed, never had (seeing relative after relative locked up over the herb will curb your enthusiam). They were stunned. I didn't have a "oh no you didn't moment." It was kinda funny. I just explained that weed was never this "cool" thing or exotic habit for me, since it was essentially a family enterprise. Which then had the fuckers asking to come home with me for a weekend. smh
But hey, maybe you just seem like the type of guy that likes to get high. I'd take it as a compliment. It just means they think you're cool. Or, you're instincts were correct and they think every black person smokes weed. But it's definitely one of those two!
Ehhh... you're=your. It's time to leave when you're violating your own grammatical pet peeves.
Maybe I seem like the type of woman that likes to get high, you mean. :) No harm no foul.
It was harmless. Very tame in comparison to some of the stereotypes I have confronted. I'm used to it. I have piles of white friends. I even let these two ride in the backseat of my car.
@GAPeach7 way funny, do you let them use your bathroom too?
I don't mean to derail this, but where the hell do you guys live where you can't walk a block without hitting either a current or retired (white) hippie? And when can I move there?
Berkeley, CA? Cambridge, MA? Those are my two best guesses.
Vermont. In addition to the hippies there are old school rednecks and just about everything in between. The downside is it's really, really white here.
Sometimes I come across an entry like this and realize how different where I live is from the rest of the country. Around here you'd never hit a black guy up for weed unless you knew he smoked; you'd look for the white dude with terrible dreads.
This has happened to me more than once and I think it's hilarious (and mildly flattering) but sometimes when I'm in the Village, around 14th Street, random people ask me if I sell hashish. I figure they either think an ethnically ambiguous brown long-haired dude with two braids in his beard would be the best source of hashish or there is another person like me, which is oddly disconcerting. Or that all Arabs sell hashish, which I'm not sure is a stereotype. But generally, I politely say no, and then think in my head how cool I must seem and go about my day smiling.
Persia: I'm in Portland, which I believe is the whitest city in America. We also have a lot of hippies, who are of course the go-to peeps for quality smoke.
Caleb, I had sort of the reverse experience in Cairo last year. I have long red hair, and people just naturally assumed I liked to get high. Not wanting to offend my hosts in a foreign country... I could barely walk out of my flat some days without getting smoked up.
Oh, and tons of people want to touch my hair. I take it as a compliment. I'm not sure I would do the same if I were black.
Cambridge has its share, but we really get some other characters. Like the guy who was led around by a fat Husky from a chain around his (the guy's) neck. I thought I was going crazy until I saw the guy wrap his leg around a street light and proceed to hump it. Mind you, this was on move-in day for Harvard. Can't even imagine what those poor kids must have thought they got themselves into.
LOL! I remember my own moving in day. My mother and I went to get something to eat at Au Bon Pain in the Square. She said to me at one point, "Don't look now, but one guy over there looks like Santa Claus, and one over her looks like Jesus Christ." She was right!
That's really funny. I was just in Central Square this morning, and the first thing I saw after coming up from the subway was a guy wearing a flower pot on his head. He had fashioned homemade antennae out of tin foil. Just another day in Cambridge.
@mpbruss if you dont have an antennae made out of tin foil how else do you think you're going to keep the aliens from reading your thoughts?
Theres a lot of hippie diversity in Cambridge, in particular the hippie/yuppie crossover is the most prevalent, thats a man or a woman who lives in the area, rides a bike or drives a volvo, has Wesleyan or Vassar stickers, Kerry/Edwards and Obama/Biden stickers, wears clogs, messenger bags, scarves, interesting hats, square glasses, reads alternative press papers, listens to NPR, shops the co-op, doesnt use plastic bags, and drinks Sierra Nevada. These people may not do any drugs at all and probably shower a fair bit, they often work in non-profit or publishing. The real hippies are old, usually overweight and just pass out pieces of paper about ending the war all the time outside the T.
This commercial seems to be a distant cousin of blackpeopleloveus.com; so distant, in fact, that I think they're ripping them off.
It's an SNL short from a few seasons back. When Queen Latifah had just come out with the standards album, I think.
I love the quick voice-over at the end: "Fast relief for hundreds of years of nagging pain." That might be the sharpest thing said about race in this country on TV in a long time.
I think that most white people actually don’t understand black people's hair. Socially and residentially, our society is still quite segregated, and relatively few black women wear natural styles in the workplace, which is the primary arena where white people encounter black people. Maybe Chris Rock’s movie will change this.
Yeah, this. If you consider that we're only, what, 15 percent of the pop? Then consider, out of that, the percentage of black women. Then further consider the percentage of black women who wear their hair natural. It really is quite uncommon.
Truthfully, that's one of things that's kinda cool about it--it's unconventionality. I don't get the sense that white people are asking to "touch" because they think it's ugly, or there are insects crawling inside. I actually think it's flattery. Now it may be socially awkward flattery. But it's not "Nappy-headed ho" flattery.
Yeah. I still remember the first time I saw corn rows.
There were black kids in my high school, but I never saw corn rows until I was in my 20s. They were on a guy at the W 4th St basketball courts.
I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. I thought the Martians had landed.
Yes, some of it may be flattery. But some of it is also the "exotic" factor.
If white people's curiosity with black woman's hair is going to lead to more acceptance of natural hairstyles in the work place, then I am all for it. I don't see that happening yet. But I can continue to hope.
I think the negative side of that flattery can be fetishization, though.
I know you hate the phrase "as a white person" but I think it's necessary to include here. I get pissed off at white people who ask that. First of all, I feel like it's almost a cultural running joke that ignorant white people ask to touch hair. Maybe that's just how I grew up and I'm falsely applying that, but for me, it's there. Secondly there's a balance i think in how much is curiosity and how much is ignorance. Maybe the hair touching is such a basic unnecessary action that I can't really see anything being learned from it, while at the same time you're objectifying someone else. Thirdly, people ask to touch my hair and it pisses me off, so maybe there's just some sympathy. Not saying you should get more upset, just stating where I come down on it.
This might not be the right thread for this, but any thoughts on the story in today's post about the white homecoming queen at Hampton?
Open thread is up now. Awesome for Hampton.
I remember being about 16 years old and working with lots of other high-school-age kids at a local amusement park. Another girl there had a hairstyle I'd never seen before -- of course I've seen it since then -- the hundreds of long, tiny-skinny braids, themselves gathered into braids and hanging down her back. I thought it was striking and beautiful, and I told her so, without even thinking about it.
She gave me such an odd face --not quite an eye-roll but something like it -- and moved away, and it took me a while to figure out that maybe I had crossed some line. Or maybe I'm just not very convincing when I complement peopl. Could be that Asperger's syndrome of mine... Anyway, the experience multiplied my social anxiety for the rest of the summer...
I spend a lot of time in Egypt, in areas far from tourist centers, and my short brown hair doesn't attract as much attention as the very fact of my existence. Kids come RUNNING to see me when I walk through the town. But my colleagues with blonde hair are truly stars, and the little kids really want to touch their hair.
I think it's natural to be curious about what's strange to you. I had a colleague who used to shave his head every spring, and I used to love running my hand over his head. I never did it without asking permission, and he got a huge kick out of it. I used to have another colleague who would occasionally put his hair in twists, and I found it beautiful and fascinating. I would ask him about the process. I never touched it, but I'm sure he would have let me. We're pretty good friends.
We also have a lot of African-American women employees here who do some really intricate stuff with their hair, which I love to see. I compliment them on it, but I've never asked to touch it. I don't know why. I would LOVE to touch it. But that's awfully intimate, isn't it?
As someone above mentioned, black women can straighten their hair, so they can learn for themselves what white women's hair might feel like. But nothing can make a white woman's hair do what black women's hair does. And I can't be the only one who finds it beautiful and intriguing. I can't even imagine what it must be like to do with my hair what African-American women are doing with theirs. My options are pretty limited, really, since my hair's too thin to grow long. So I've had the same haircut for over 20 years, basically. Boring!!
I suppose it's a lot like touching pregnant women's bellies. We all understand the impulse, but I hope we're not all so rude as to do it without asking permission.
Growing up in the suburbs, I didn't know a black person until I roomed with a guy from Harlem (Jefferson projects represent!) randomly my freshman year. And I really didn't know how black people's hair worked. Trust me, about 1% of white people know that do-rags are actually functional and not just a fashion choice. It was a great meeting of cultures! Ben taught me about the city, and I taught him about napster and internet porn
And TNC, nobody's hitting you up for weed because everybody knows Sully has the bomb shit
Huh. As I'm apparently part of that other 99%, I'm curious now (I'd always assumed do-rags were just a fashion choice). Never occurred to me that there might be a function. What is it?
Waves. Some hot water. Sportin Waves hair grease. And a do-rag, and you can get waves.
Check out these, although they're a little overt for my taste:
https://www.gigibeauty.com/product_info.php?products_id=519
Silk scarves serve a very functional purpose for black women I learned this after scanning through Tina Knowles' book, at night your hair loses moisture when it rubs against your dry pillow case, when you wear the scarf to bed it protects your hair. Thanks Tina!
People wear them to bed.
Sorry, I thought we were talking about brothers.
AFAIK, their use as a fashion choice should be credited to Deion Sanders.
Hey, thanks. Learn something every day :)
Oh, I don't think it's gonna change it. That movie does little to delve into the issue. I've been telling people that I was gonna fly to his NJ mansion with some yellow police tape and get to work.
I LIVED this. Been called "Tyrone" more times than I can count. Tyrone is 5'9" 170, clean shaven, with a full head of hair and wears gold rimmed glasses. I am 6'2" 215, bald with a beard. And this at a company we were in for 10 YEARS. I had a manager who used to bring up "smoking" or "running down some good smoke" or "that time he had the killer oh-zee", once a WEEK. Once had a different manager note in a review as a criticism that I was "professorial". Just glad I able to fight down the urge to "keep it real..."
The weed thing-if I were going to pick out someone from a lineup to ask them to smoke me up I would say an unattractive college aged white man with extra cash would be my first choice, doesnt that seem kind of obvious?
Yeah, exactly. The thought never even crossed my mind to associate a black person and weed like that. It was always a certain type of white kid that was the connect.
Also, too. Though I've never smoked. Actually the people I knew who smoked were all white former-hippie yuppies.
The thought never even crossed my mind to associate a black person and weed like that
There is a line in Caddyshack, where Spaulding ( Ted Knight's spoiled grandkid) is passing around a joint and someone calls him out on the quality of his weed. He responds by saying "It's the best man, I bought it from a negro".
I think the weird thing about the whole get weed from black people thing is that empirically its exactly the opposite. 16% of white said they were drug users compared to 12.3% of black people. Same pattern for drug abuse (but more simillar for drug dependence). Weird how these stereotypes get spread.
Title
Yeah, that stereotype never made its way up to Canada. I think we have five black people in Vancouver. They're all incredibly popular and becoming their friend comes with a waitlist.
Weed always seemed more of a white suburban thing. Far as ethnic minorities, only First Nations folk got tagged with that stereotype. Generally, you looked for a scruffy dreadhead on a street corner. Or someone in a band. Or a delivery service where folks in suits carrying briefcases came by if you paged their number from a "safe" house. I think they got busted recently. I was very sad but by then, I'd moved to NJ.
Yep, well dressed and relatively punctual, with a briefcase and a half dozen strains of this and that in little glass jars lovingly labeled. They were shut down earlier this year, sad to say.
Too funny re: black people in Vancouver. As rare and precious as unicorns. Happened to be at a club last night when Jay Z showed up, and I swear the glow of a hundred people texting their friends was equal parts "JayZ just walked in!" and "omg black man, neat!". Vancouver does cultural diversity, to a degree, but it's very much Pacific Rim diversity. I lived in Toronto for a few years and found it a much more interesting mix of cultures, with lots more Europe, Africa, South American and black thrown in. Great city. (I don't get the TO hate).
Very funny video. Damn she's talented.
I first started spending a lot of time in China for my career about 10 years ago. I'm a 6ft 1, green eyed, black wavy haired wei guo ren (foreigner) wondering why everyone is staring at me.
Even then, many people in the big cities had never seen a live foreigner before and certainly the rural tourists and tier 2 and 3 city people in the big cities for work or holiday certainly hadn't. My experiences in the hinterlands are a whole 'nother kind of wild.
Often I was stopped by people who wanted to touch my nose or my hair. Even more frequently entire families would want to take a picture with me (and I would always oblige).
A few times people touched me without asking and I let them know I was not happy. Almost always though people asked politley, were sincerely curious, and more than a few just wanted to practise some English and to go home and tell their familt they talked to a foreigner.
Note: Please don't confuse those experiences with the "do you want to see our artwork studio" crowd or the "let's go get some tea, food and drinks and we leave you with the inflated bill from the restaurant owner we know crowd."
As a white girl who lives and works in "Chocolate City"(nola) I can tell everyone that I have always been asked by young black girls with whom I'm working (when I was in teaching and recently volunteering) if they could touch my hair. My theory was that I may have been the first/only white person that wasn't in law enforcement that they had encountered in person and in a non-confrontational situation. I always let it happen.
Latifah is a national treasure. She is so damn talented, and pretty, and funny and charming...
Now, about that hook up...
Maybe the other employees at the Atlantic have weed and Kobe Bryant joke parties all the time and don't invite you.
As an immigrant, this sketch made me realize something: black people are treated like foreigners in their own country. The odd-but-universal questions are different, and with a bigger negative subtext (I'm English so the stereotypes are from wildlife documentary narrators rather than rappers), but there's that same sense of being treated as an unknown quantity.
I'm more than happy to put up with the curiosity, but then I made a conscious decision to sign up for it. It boggles my mind that someone who grew up here can still get treated like that.
I'm English so the stereotypes are from wildlife documentary narrators.
Hee. This is great.
Though the experiences elsewhere (e.g. mine in Africa and my niece in China) are always things where you are the only blond person within miles. VMMNola's experience is comparable--the only white person with whom the kids are on a comfortable "hey I've always wondered" level to actually ask, whether to touch hair or why the do rag. That adults at work are getting "whoa, your hair is so totally new in my experience of the world" is telling and weird.
Related story: When I was in the Peace Corps a redheaded volunteer in a remote valley got a white neighbor, a German who crossed the Sahara in an ancient van and joined the taxi drivers' union. The village was just thrilled and, as she put it, hoped to get them together to produce puppies.
Ok, SINCE we're talking about Black women and hair, I have what feels like a very embarrassing question to ask of TNC's Black readers (and TNC, should he care to chime in!), but, hey, if not here, where else?
Sometime in the last year, I found myself having a lot of conversations, on the internet and in RL, with African American women about their hair, women's hair in the Black community, and the shitload of cultural, social, and political freight that gets loaded onto what is, seemingly, not a terribly important body part.
I have come to understand, in ways that I (a white woman)had only barely grasped before, that there is, in fact, a shitload of cultural, social, and political freight attached to the issue of hair and hair care for Black women, starting from when they are little, itty-bitty things. For this reason, I was really excited to learn that Chris Rock was making Good Hair, and I am really looking forward to seeing it.
So, here's the question: How would it feel, Black folks, if you were sitting there, settling in with your popcorn to watch this movie about your community, and a white woman and her white husband came strolling in? Would it feel weird, disrespectful, intrusive?
I am very seriously considering waiting to watch it on DVD so as to avoid any weirdness!
An easy smile and the presumption that you have the same right to be there as anyone gets respect. A diffident half-smiling, apologetic grimace--in all contexts, actually--may merit a very different response.
By and large we wouldn't care, wouldn't notice. The white presence in the black community is vastly underestimated by white people who aren't frequent visitors. I was at a black jazz club yesterday, white people came and went. They were engaged in friendly and unremarkable conversation by the black patrons and participated in the experience without regard to their minority status. Some things are able to escape the weight of what they might carry and just be what they are. Chris Rock wants you to go...
I'd say that if you want to see it, knock yourselves out. But after you watch I'd suggest you read Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps' Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America for a deeper look into the politics of our hair.
@ Kai, Ulysses, thewayoftheid:
Thanks so much, you guys! The knee-jerk nervousness of a white liberal is not always a pleasant thing to carry on one's shoulders, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to brush some of it off.
I'll go, and I'll report back!
I know I'm late, I'm gonna be honest with you, because I've been thinking about this. I was in a movie theater full of white people when the Good Hair trailer came on, and when Chris Rock told the Indian girl with the head full of hair to "run if she saw a black woman," and the whole theater laughed, it made me extremely uncomfortable.
So it's not like I'm not expecting to see white people in the theater (it is a Chris Rock movie, after all,) but I don't know if I'm going to be able to distinguish between them laughing AT the people Rock is profiling or laughing WITH them. And I'm pretty sure trying to tell the difference is gonna annoy me. :/
Wish I could help you out, but I "escaped The Matrix" 30 years ago. I just don't carry "a shitload of cultural, social and political freight attached to the issue of hair and hair care for Black woman." Its my hair, I wear it the way I want, period. A very short natural, saves time, saves money, looks good.
The only person who ever complained was Barbara Bush. She thought it was too short, and said so to "The Washington Post" (they were doing the obligatory staffer profile) when I was her press sec. in the White House. Even Mrs. Bush was at least half joking, not least because by then it was clear that I would ignore her hair styling advice. We worked together, quite happily, for four years and no, she never touched or asked to touch my hair. But she did love my then young daughter's cornrows.
Unless they start shouting "fire" when there is none, I really won't care who happens into the movie theater when I go see "Good Hair."
TNC: I swear, Candace and I do not synchronize our comments. This is kinda weirding both of us out.
The asking a black person about weed thing seems curiously dated to me, as if it's like, "you know those negro hep-cats--always smoking their funny reefers and what not!" I mean marijuana's been a staple of white youth culture for well over four decades now.
Unfortunately, all too many white people just assume that most blacks smoke crack, or would at least know how to get some.
That reminds me of "Back to the Future"!
It still happens.
I work in a library in a large urban state university, and this completely clueless freshman from one of the outer-ring suburbs asked one of my student workers where he could "score some good weed" because he wanted to be "cool" like she was.
So awkward on so many levels.
Hah! Posted this on my Twitter last night. One of the best SNL commercials ever made.
I think my favorite "interacting with white people moment" was when a client asked me what my first name was (which is painfully WASP), paused, and then said "Oh, I thought it would be something exotic." I shit you not.
Puts me in mind about studies in how subtle racism seems to affect black people differently than white people.
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20070921/subtle-racism-harasses-brain?src=RSS_PUBLIC was the one I googled up fastest, but there was another one that talked about it in more detail over other subjects.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/10/16/more-hair-meets-eye-panelists-say
A report on a panel on hair at Barnard College.
I remember touching a black friend's hair -- in the second grade. I was fascinated by how her braids went to a point at the end and sometimes had beads on them, when mine always ended in a paintbrush sort of thing. After making a huge mess with my mother's styling gel, I determined that I couldn't get the interesting effect that her hair had. I didn't really connect it to race until later, although of course I knew about skin color differences by then. I thought it was an individual thing.
Like most white females, I experimented with tiny braids in my early teenage years. They get messy fast with white hair textures, though, so it isn't a style I would adopt for daily wear.
As an adult, the only black hair encounter I remember was with a colleague who was just starting dreadlocks. I didn't ask to touch, but I did ask what she did to start them off. I had seen the style before, but never the transition into it. And this time I knew without experimenting that my hair wouldn't do that.
Oh, and I was once in a wedding party overseas, where a black hairdresser gave me and the other white bridesmaids fancy styles that I have often seen on black women with straightened hair. They barely made it through the ceremony on us. They just gave up in the humidity.
So I guess I'm one white woman who envies what black women can do with their hair. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
As a white woman whose hair loses any hint of body at the slightest breath of humidity--and I live in the northeast where we have rather noticeable humidity--Yeah.
On this front, the arid Southwest can be white hairstyling's best friend. Rare are the days with any risk of humidity, so if you want to go all out on a special-event hairstyle, book your event in Vegas or El Paso or Burning Man (however, take care with Phoenix ... the Valley of the Sun is severely over-watered, -irrigated, -misted, and -humidified to the point of distorting the humidity severely upward unless you're in exurbia).
On the flipside, be ready to experience the power of all moisture being almost-audibly ripped from your pores. And if your hairstyle depends on moisture, you'll bankrupt yourself trying to maintain it.
It makes me very sad that I'm on the West Coast and I always seem to miss the black hair threads!
I work at a beauty company, and I'm the only black person on my floor, so I get A LOT of questions. Usually it's just for personal edification - we do spend a lot of time talking about beauty, after all, so it doesn't bother me much, and I'm happy to answer.
My hair is relaxed, so nobody has asked to really touch it in years (which is part of the reason I have it relaxed,) but they do ask how often I wash it, and what I put in it, and how I sleep.
But no, don't touch my hair. There will be a fight.
It's been raining all week here, and the other night my (white) roomate went out for drinks with our (black) downstairs neighbor.
She headed out the door without an umbrella; he immediately offered her his so her hair wouldn't get wet. She said thanks but I'm fine, he said-- wait. Your hair stays like that even if it gets wet? She said, yeah, I don't really do anything with it, why do you ask-- ohhhhh.
The thing is, there are plenty of white women (or at least women who are, these days, considered white) whose hair doesn't really correspond to what white hair is "supposed" to be like. I'm Jewish, and have super-thick hair that dissolves into frizz at the slightest hint of humidity; my other roomate is half Hispanic and can't use regular hair elastics-- they snap after a week or so of use.
I'm going to have to try the silk scarf thing mentioned upthread-- I've been learning to pin-curl my hair, and that might help get the curls to set with less frizz.