"Good Hair"

In class, we talked about race and how our society effects our preferences. We tend to lean more towards European traits than African. I remember watching the Tyra show and she had Chris Rock come on. The topic of that episode was about "Good Hair" which Chris Rock did documentary on. Good hair is supposed to be flowing, shiny, smooth,  and soft. The race that tends to have this type of hair  are Asians, Latinos, and Caucasians. African Americans seem to have more course hair which is a rougher texture. Tyra talked about how society molds today's black women into thinking that their hair isn't beautiful. There was a panel of black children on the show whose parents had talked to them about "good" hair. The kids were asked to choose between an afro type hairstyle and a straight smooth hairstyle, and most of the kids chose the smooth style. This is similar to the kids choosing the white baby doll over the black one. Some of these kids had mothers who relaxed (chemically straightened) their hair. There was a girl as young as three who had her hair relaxed on a regular basis. It's because of these kids' social construction that caused them to choose as they did. Our society has always complimented white features. If a person of ethnic background demonstrated such features, then they were considered beautiful. The root definition of "good hair" comes from the time of slavery. When slaves resembled white traits, they were considered better than the slaves who didn't. This caused many blacks to desire white features, which obviously carried on to our society today. Today, we have black women purchasing weaves, which is fake hair, that appears to be as a white woman's hair texture. This causes a form of insecurity in African Americans in our society.


There seems to be a lot more to this subject than I can talk about. To understand it a little more, you can watch the Tyra Show episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeXUm8OOUA8  part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DgVijM7Z8&feature=related part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBoBR20n8S4&feature=related part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g13u0w2oP4&feature=related part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxQGXmEVw-4&feature=related part 5