I thought long and hard before sitting down two weeks ago to write an article about the state of Zahara Jolie-Pitt's hair. I knew any discussion about hair and culture would spark an angry debate in the world of bloggers and beyond. Just ask Chris Rock. His new film, Good Hair, has brought him all kinds of criticism and drama, so at least I'm in good company. Days after my story hit the Web, the comments sections of our site was overrun with furious remarks, and blogs had a serious field day roasting me all that week.
Still, I'm undeterred by the venom shown to me on the Web. I continue to believe Angelina Jolie should take better care of Zahara's hair. Hey, if Maddox can get blond highlights and a Mohawk, Zahara can at least get a quick top knot and rubber band. Is that asking too much?
Yeah, actually, it is. Some fire from Latoya:
Postbourgie basically nods along:First of all, all of the Jolie-Pitt kids have some unique circumstances. In addition to the transracial adoption angle, the Jolie-Pitts are a nomadic family, settling in places for a while and then moving on. This means that they are all Third Culture Kids. They do not have a dominant society that they grew up in, which means that they may or may not absorb the cultural norms of any of the places they have lived. The children may grow up to feel allegiance to one particular place, or none at all. All this is to say that Zahara may not grow up identifying with the black American experience.
No doubt, Zahara Jolie-Pitt is black. But in the global sense of the word, not in the American way Samuels applies in her piece. As many commenters pointed out in our original post about this, Z is not African-American. She was adopted from Ethiopia, and if Ms. Samuels is ever in DC, I would be more than happy to take her down to the U Street Corridor so she can see how many women from Ethiopia wear their hair.
In addition to co-signing all of the above, I'd like to add: eff outta here.In addition to "eff outta here," (which I wholeheartedly co-sign) I'd say the following: There are many reasons why it's wrong to presume that your particular, specific, individual narrative of blackness is The Only Narrative Of Blackness Ever In All History.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
LaToya was on fire that day.
As a white person, I don't feel like I can really talk too much about black hair (although the girl's looks fine to me), but I can say that I wish more people would just leave celebrity kids alone. Don't they have enough problems? Is Angelina Jolie really going to start styling her girl's hair differently because of a Newsweek article?
I'm white and bald, and I can talk about black hair all day long. But kill me before I write more than two sentences about celebrity kids.
I'm working on a novel set in 19th century Ivory Coast, so I've been thinking about issues of dramatic imperialism lately. I'm pretty sure there's some hook for me here, with the whole global vs. American blackness issue, but I can't think of a way to get there.
Much less a four-year-old celebrity kid!
I'm white and male. Sure seems a lot less fraught that way. I mean, I envy my black (and West Indian) friends' having a whole 'nother experience and culture with its own stuff going on that I grew up totally ignorant about. But man, it's bad enough I get haircuts that look bad, at least no one thinks I'm betraying anyone/anything with them.
That's the definition of 'white privilege': when your haircuts are just haircuts.
Hell yes! Crappy haircuts for everybody! I will not rest until TNC can get a fauxhawk people say "douchebag" and not "oreo douchebag"
White *male* privilege at that - decisions about whether to grow my hair out or get a pixie cut have never been free from comments by others about whether I'm "looking like a lesbian" (as if that's a bad thing, whatever it means), or trying to look more traditionally feminine, etc. I know it's nowhere close to the level of ridiculous scrutiny dealt with by black women, but still! Oy vei! Enough!
Oh sure-- exactly, Guster. It's invisible to me, it's just hair. The fun of being in the majority that holds the power.
To quote the cartoon Frazz: "You'll notice no one has stolen the mullet from white culture."
Is it just me, or does the original poster, Samuels, seem to be saying "After the last time people know my name, I got a lot of page hits, and I hope to be thought of in the same breath with Chris Rock, so--I'm back"? Like Joe Lieberman threatening to filibuster stuff whenever he hasn't been receiving attention?
I really like LaToya's point(s). And I cosign on all the "keep out of other people's kids' hair" thought. While I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I know the names of all the wee Jolie-Pitts (hey, I first noticed Jolie for her UN work, being out of touch with films), I also need to note that Zahara's tabloid photos are always nothing short of adorable. And that Maddox is old enough to be expressing his own opinions about his hair. And Zahara probably is old enough now to ask for barettes and puffs if she wants them.
Actually that leads to another problem with Samuels' ideas--not just worrying about the hair of a kid who is not her own, but the idea that little girls' heads exist for their mother's fashion sense to be expressed on. If Zahara is around 4 or 5 (my guess) then she is old enough to be chiming in on her own hair, and I find it perfectly believable that she may prefer nothing pulling on it. The main utilitarian reason for stuff in little girls' hair is to keep it out of the face or eyes, so if you have natural short curls from whatever ancestry, why bother?
After reading the article I agree, the main angle on why Zahara's hair is wrong has absolutely nothing to do with little girls or Angelina Jolie's function as a parent, "Any self-respecting black mother knows that she must comb, oil, and brush her daughter’s hair every night. This prevents the hair from matting up, drying out, and breaking off. It also prevents any older relatives from asking them why you’re neglecting your child and letting her run around looking like a wild woman." Look at the people who are most centered in that example, older relatives and black moms, neither of which you're going to find in the Jolie-Pitt household, so why supposedly cater to their desires? I`m just glad Zahara doesn't look like she's going to have to learn to do her own hair because she's sick of her mom whacking her in the head with the brush because her hair is "difficult" like me and my sister.
The "difficult" route is what finally drove my wife to go with well-cared-for dreadlocks many years back, despite the social pressures you describe well.
Maybe I should clear things up-I`m white and just happen to have extremely thick curly hair that would get tangled and messed up from playing and my mom had very little patience in general and less for trying to get it all into a ponytail so yeah i got smacked in the head and ears with a wooden brush, this probably influenced my decision to get a really short haircut when i was 8 and I have grown out hair now and barely even see the need for a brush to style it most of the time, just good products. I think all races interpret brush beat downs as something to avoid.
I think all races interpret brush beat downs as something to avoid.
Indeed!
---Any self-respecting black mother knows that she must comb, oil, and brush her daughter’s hair every night. This prevents the hair from matting up, drying out, and breaking off. It also prevents any older relatives from asking them why you’re neglecting your child and letting her run around looking like a wild woman."---
And Samuels couldn't be any more wrong if she tried. Taking a brush every night to Zahara's hair would cause more breakage than anything. Oiling the hair every night? Mad buildup. Samuels forgets that not all black hair is the same, and what worked for her doesn't work for everyone else.
I think LaToya nailed it when she said that Samuels was attempting to pin a "black american" experience on a girl who ISN'T african-american. And Samuels exposes her own prejudices when she wigs out everytime the child wears her hair loose, because if it's not falling neatly down her back, it's unseemly. That's b.s.
My coworker knows all of their names too which I find remarkable. She also informed me that each child has their own nanny from their own culture. So Zahara has an Ethiopian nanny who presumably knows how to do her hair. Now I'm going to find out why my coworker has used her valuable time in life to know so much about people she's never going to meet.
Wow, a nanny from each culture - that's hilarious! I have forced myself not to click on anything about this family for a little over a year now ... kind of a half assed NY resolution I made to not pay as much attention to celebrity news. But it beckons ...
That little girl looks fine. "eff outta here" indeed.
Americans (black or otherwise) should also try avoid applying their definition of what is proper or what is racist when looking into other cultures, such as Brazil or Argentina, where (while race relations are not perfect) the range of discourse and the allowed vocabulary were shaped differently. Whenever somebody want to summon a non-blonde person, they will call "negro" without any issue.
"In addition to "eff outta here," (which I wholeheartedly co-sign) I'd say the following: There are many reasons why it's wrong to presume that your particular, specific, individual narrative of blackness is The Only Narrative Of Blackness Ever In All History." Thank you, TNC.
I'm getting more than a little salty with the "Black in America" and "the Black Experience" articles and documentaries popping up. Black people are NOT a monolith, and people--especially black folks--need to understand and accept that fact. Even the term "African-American" can mean an almost infinite number of things--from the folks like Michelle Obama, whose roots are deep in American soil, to recent immigrants from the Continent.
Further, prescribing a solution to a parent who *doesn't have a problem in the first place* isn't just presumptuous. It's rude and ignorant.
The name/title black people originally from the US use for ourselves is very problematic, and that's why we drift into these semantic debates about what Black or black or African-American means.
Unfortunately for African-Americans, we might be the only (large) group within the diaspora that feels queezy just calling ourselves by our rightful demonym (American) straight up. So we wound up using a word that *should* apply to everyone of recent African descent (recent meaning since the various slave-trades began). Now, we sort of own Black a little more than everyone else does, even though it logically shouldn't be that way.
Shorter Samuels: White girl needs to know how to plait; then I'll know she's serious about her black child.
Someone in PB comments made a great counterpoint to Samuels' assertion that hair care is a "bonding" experience between mother and child. They said that all those hours dealing with making hair neat is frought with angst: burned ears, smacks in the head with the comb, weeping, nappy kitchens, etc. What kind of sado-masochistic bonding is that? Gah. Having a nappy kitchen flashback.
Sundays always gave me the chills growing up.
Yeah this is great, gonna highlight it in a post. I had a cousin who I used to just positively fear for. My aunt use to pop the shit out of her with the comb.
There was nothing more terrifying than the hot comb my grandmother heated directly in the flame of her gas stove. My ears would look like overdone hot dogs by the time she was finished pressing my hair.
And then the "Just for Me" relaxers my mom used when I was a little older, that still stung the hell out of my scalp and sometimes left scabs. Why put yourself through pain just to live up to someone else's standards of beauty? More than that--why would you want to force your child into a standard of beauty when she hasn't developed her own self-image yet?
Full disclosure though. I should probably add that I started out right there with Samuels. Those first pix of Zahara with her hair looking like who shot John bugged me. And further, comments on Zahara posts around the tubez from white females about how cute she looked and "it's just hair" (which I read in a breathy coo) bugged me even more. They seemed painfully unaware of judgment I believed Zahara would encounter because of her wild-ass hair. No matter that the judgment, both of Zahara and the commenters, was coming from me.
Then I thought about how free I felt wearing my hair out when left to my own devices on those rare long weekends with white friends. No rubber bands. No tight braids. No Sundays. No worrying about nappy edges. No kitchens, room or neck. No caring about clucking aunts or Mrs. Delaney's hairy eyeball. No knees pinning me helpless and powerless - which I hated most of all.
Yeah, I felt as silly as Samuels reads today.
Seriously; this reminds me of my first-year college roommate who nearly burned down the dorm one day with her hot-comb...I got back from class and was presented with a wall o'heat in our room! I don't know how she got over the fear to actually use something that was white-hot on her head!
Meanwhile, I'm a white girl with coarse-but-thin, and wavy-to-curly hair and like LCrawly believe it is all about the product. Discovering the "ethnic hair" section at the drugstore was an epiphany!
(PS, I hate that "ethnic hair" label. it gives me the creeps)
I don't like the 'ethnic' label period. White people are blank, without ethnicity of any kind? This white girl I was friends with in HS once told me "you and Jason Ku are my best ethnic friends". I wasn't sure quite how to react, although she meant well.
I have some SERIOUS post-traumatic stress that flares up everytime a curling iron comes near me. And weekly washings back when I was a wee thing? Took at least five people to hold me down. So opposed was I to the idea of "getting mah hur done" that I once slapped my grandmother when she told me she was going to wash my hair and make me pretty for my first day of first grade. That was a LONG day.
As a little white girl, the only thing I had to fear was horribly, horribly crooked bangs.
Mamie Eisenhower bangs. So my mom wouldn't need to trim them as often.
This and sk's point do speak to hair issues (and appearance issues) with all sorts of moms. But the hair relaxers or hours of braiding seem to be a special category.
I'm a white woman with straight hair that's pretty easy to manage, and even I remember as traumatic my mother's involvement in my hair care when I was little. The combing wasn't a problem, but the washing was. My Mom used to scrub my head like she was trying to loosen months' of dirt. It hurt like hell, and I was so happy when I was old enough to be trusted to wash my own hair. Sado-masochistic bonding indeed.
Oh yes, little black girls were not the only ones traumatized by their mothers' attempts to control hair. My mother insisted on hot-rolling my hair into big curls because she thought my natural waves looked "messy"--a notion she inherited from my grandmother. This involved yanking my hair and overheating it and basically telling me that my natural hair was a natural mess. As an adult, I have no intention of passing along such a ritual and if my kids are happy with their wavy, messy hair, then I'm fine with it too.
That's why I love this blog and the commenters here. I read Samuels piece, and all I can think is "negro, please. shut the eff up." But I come here and read actual intelligent, well thought out responses to her foolishness.
My memories of Soul Train are forever bound with my memories of green Blue Magic hair grease, jars of Sulfur 8, and jumping every time the heat from the hot comb made the grease sizzle and pop as it approached the back of my neck. My excitement at watching New Edition or Debarge was always tempered by my fear that Mommy would burn my forehead or ears--again--or worse, drop that heavy comb down my back. While we did have time by ourselves to talk and bond, I would have preferred to have that same time with her playing jacks or jumping rope or any damn thing else. My memories of Chicago in August in that hot and humid kitchen while my brother and sister were either playing outside or watching cartoons in the air-conditioned living room are not laced with nostalgia at all.
This could give rise to a new theory why people do not take care of their own kids ... they are too busy watching the hair of other people's kids.
Perhaps it is because there is no other people's money any more ...
The whole article was embarassing. Partucularly one woman's comment in the article about Zahara possibly growing up to resent her mother because of her hair. I've had my hair fried, dyed and suffered countless Saturdays sitting in beauty salons listening to idle gossip. I only grew up resenting the unrealistic expectations people have placed on our hair. More power to anyone who refuses to suffer through that.
It often happens that when a writer thinks that he or she is writing about something out in the world, he or she is writing about him or herself. It just seems to me that this piece (and the one before) tells us much more about Alison Samuels than about anything else.
Not least that she feels free to talk about other people's parenting and other people's children in a public forum -- a thing which, before we even get into content, would make me step away from her at parties.
It just seems to me that this piece (and the one before) tells us much more about Alison Samuels than about anything else.
This right here gets to the heart of the matter. I don't know what issues Samuels is trying to work out, but doing it at the expense of a little girl is indefensible.
Also - bad photo choice.
Anyone can see her hair is styled, just naturally so.
Dawn Turner-Trice of the Chicago Tribune has had a blog called "Race Matters" since Obama began his run for office. The subject that gets the most postings by far is "black hair". And "by far", I mean double or triple the number of comments for any other topic. What is astonishing is the degree to which anyone in the "why doesn't she take care of that baby's hair" camp, is entirely buying into the "proximity to whiteness is good" mindset. Equally incomprehensible is their complete obliviousness to their embrace of the negative self image. The chains of slavery weigh us down still...
Which is really ironic considering Angelina is white.
Not that I follow the Jolie-Pitts all that often--or any celeb for that matter--but from the pics of Z I've seen I'd say that was one well-cared for kid, and her hair looks like...what a 4 y.o.'s hair looks like. It looks healthy. And it looks like she has a lot of fun.
As far as the comments go, a lot of black women who make them have no idea just how conditioned they really are. Most of us carry this "bad hair" baggage from childhood, and we never really get over it. We're taught that if it isn't plaited in neat little sections or tied up , it's unkempt. If it grows out and not down, it's ugly. Which is why a lot of us are walking around with scars from hot combs and curling irons.
From the comments on Latoya's piece:
I find it absolutely hilarious that Shiloh is missing a tooth and wearing a fedora/tie/skull combo with Crocs, and yet Zahara is the one drawing tsking sounds about her appearance. HA!
Yep, its really hard, for all of us, to escape The Matrix.
My good gracious. I thought mothers had enough judgment directed at them regarding such issues as homemaking, work, spending enough time with their kids, properly caring for their husbands (if present), being "irresponsible" single mothers if no husband present, breastfeeding, spanking, and whatever the hell else. Now they're going to be publicly judged, in print, because of how they styled their (happy, well-cared for) daughters' hair?
Woman, please.
I think that's a lot of the passion. Black hair issues may be abstract for me, but the Mommy Police are very identifiable.
I'm white, so I don't have any personal context for the "black hair" thing. It just strikes me that even though (apparently) all topics of real weight and importance have already been covered elsewhere, the only thing Alison Samuels could think of to write about was a critique of another woman's four-year-old's hair.
It worked too, she's gotten all kinds of attention for it, so much so that she's apparently written two articles on the topic. (So far! Stay tuned!)
And now I've joined the chorus and rewarded her further, and I even went back and read the article (yuck). If this is the best the "information age" has to offer, I want a time machine trip backwards for Christmas.
i was just rolling my eyes and going "boooooooring" when I read this part by Coates:
Man. That is the truth and can be extrapolated to so many other situations and (especially) diasporas as well. Well said.
The saddest part to me is that this woman has the platform of a major "news" magazine and she uses it to pick on a 4 year old.
Samuels and Latoya are equally off base. Who cares whether they're "third culture kids" or black "in the global sense" rather than the "American way". TNC is only slightly less off base for suggesting this has something to do with narratives of blackness. The issue is that how somebody chooses to let their kids wear their hair is none of our fucking business. Kids--even celebrity kids--aren't fucking props in our dumb ass political arguments.
Meh, I started the piece by noting the absurdity of fretting over someone else's kids hair. The issue is race because Samuels makes her argument based on race. She can be wrong for more than one reason.
Mmm. Welcome to my world. Couple of short thoughts:
1) The question of how white adoptive parents choose to do the hair of our children of color is...fraught. Angie is high profile so she gets to trigger the of Big Media version of this smackdown, but make no mistake--this attack on how-dare-you white mommies raising little girls wrong is just, well, common. Here, hair may be just a wedge that allows for an attack on transracial adoption--it's hard to speculate on whether this writer would use her platform as Blackness Authority to make the same criticism of Wanda Sykes' 4 year old, but it's worth exploring that angle.
2) The Jolie-Pitt kids are always in the public eye. Most of the time, Mad looks like a little gang kid, if you judged him by the same standard: What do Khmer people in America let their kids wear?
As Pax is close to his age, that leadership is followed by the little brother. Both of them are often seen wearing clothing and hairstyles that are unacceptable to SE Asians in their countries of origin, as well as the more conservative older generation in the US.
(I assume that he makes his own choices on attire and appearance. Zahara may be doing the same, in the form of running from the comb if nothing else.)
The sexism and racial thinking that causes Samuels to call out Z's hair, of all the fashion and style choices that particular couple makes for their brood of kids...wow. Just about all you can say is, wow. Guess if a Theravada Budhist monk gets a blog at Newsweek, he can rip out 500 words on how the boys dress, but...
Ms. Samuels has doubled down on dumb. i won't repeat my earlier comments on her original article except to note that her hair care "advice" to parents of children with kinky or ultra curly hair is simply wrong. Oil and grease do nothing except attract and trap dirt and temporarily glue spit ends together (the only way to get rid of split ends it to trim hair regularly, the same way filing your nails prevents breaks.) Brushing kinky or ultra curly hair causes breakage. Braids and/or rubber bands that are too tight pulls hair out at the roots, especially along the hair line.
I thought her first article was the stupidest thing I'd ever read about Black people's hair. I was wrong.
I don't know much about this subject obviously, I am a "mestiza" Chicana, with loose curly/wavy-ish hair. I was wondering this though: "what if Zahara likes it that way?" I don't know of many little 5 years old girls that like to to sit through laborious hair-care sessions, black, brown, white or whatever. I also had very specific requests at five years old for certain hairstyles, and my mother had the good sense to listen to me, rather than try to fight me over something that was so small. Oooh haircare can be painful though, literally and figuratively, especially for children because depending on how young, sitting through anything, let alone a hair sytle, can be excruciating on the attention span. My younger sister's hair is (and was) ultra-curly and she liked to keep it long, so brushing and/or combing through that without some type of de-tangler lead to tears when she was little. Ouch.
Can we get on to the serious issues: ashiness?
This has nothing to do with other people's kids or hair care, but I'd never heard the term "Third Culture Kid" before. Latoya's brief description of it resonated with me. I clicked on the link, and it turns out I am one, of a sort - frequently moving army brat who spent some time abroad. Can't believe the term is older than I am and I never heard of it. I was born and mainly grew up in the South but don't feel like a "real" Southerner. When people ask me where I'm from, I say "the South" but what I want to say is, "I'm from the Army." This idea of a Third Culture seems like a useful conceptual tool for me, personally. Anyway...just thinking out loud.
Latoya wrote:
"Instead of fighting each other when someone's hair doesn't conform to our specific ideals, wouldn't it make more sense to fight against a racist system that penalizes and politicizes certain hair styles?"
'Nuf said.
I don't read Samuels' articles as an attack against Zahara; she explicitly states that her argument--as misguided as it is--deals with Angelina (and Brad's) failure to properly groom the girl according to black American standards (whatever those might be). As much as I disagree with Samuels' appeal to have the Jolie-Pitt family force Zahara to conform to a convoluted, assimilative vision of a model black girl, I think that she does have one small valid point. Difference and resistance to assimilation isn't exactly prized among children; you got picked on because you were too tall, too short, too black or light skinned, too kinky-haired or too long-haired, because your name was Zahara and not Sarah. In that regard, the base of the article rings true for me.
Where I believe Samuels goes off base is attempting to scold Angelina Jolie and reinforce that same childhood aversion to difference under the guise of concern for the child's self-esteem. The appropriate way to generate a child's self-love is not to tell her "you need to look this or that way in order to be accepted" but "you are beautiful as you are or how you see yourself." Permitting Zahara to have loose, uncombed natural hair does not equate child neglect/ foster low self-esteem as would lack of bathing or nutrition; and the occasional dry and brittle head of hair isn't cause to raise any alarm. I'm disappointed that Samuels didn't point her article in a different direction.
Aw man, this post made my day.
I can't begin to enumerate all the ways Samuels' article went wrong, but the most egregious comment she made was that Zahara will grow up resenting her parents because they didn't tie/fry her hair into submission so she would look "presentable" (or whatever Samuels' idea of presentable is).
What Samuels seems to discount completely is that this little girl would almost certainly have died in infancy if Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had not taken her out of that orphanage where she was suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition, and nursed and loved her back to health and vitality. Zahara today is a beautiful, vibrant, joyous child who is totally loved and accepted for who she is and who has her loving and devoted adoptive parents wrapped around her little finger. I still can't believe that anyone can be as shallow and ignorant as Samuels to discount everything Pitt and Jolie have done for this child and to accuse Jolie of being a neglectful parent because she isn't "taking care of Zahara's hair properly", whatever that is supposed to mean.
Samuels is a hypocrite. She doesn't seem to have a problem with Liya Kibede's daughter, who wears her hair natural, or with Thandie Newton's little girl, whose Afro makes Z's hair look positively tame by comparison. Samuel's real problem is that this little black girl was adopted by two white parents. Samuels also claims she didn't attack Zahara. If calling out a little girl's hair on a public blog as a "hot mess" isn't an attack, I don't know what is.
When all is said and done, Samuels is a self-hating Aunt Jemima. She looks in the mirror and sees something ugly looking back at her. To judge from her photograph posted on the internet, she's got a lot of nerve calling anyone else's hair a hot mess. But the ugliness isn't the hot mess on top of Samuels' head; it's the f*cked-up mess inside her head.