Good Hair

When Angela Davis wore her hair in an Afro in the 1970s, she wasn't trying to be cute. She was making a political statement. She was black and proud.

For black folks, our hair has historical baggage, going from slavery to now. Many black women have struggled with the age-old question of whether to straighten their hair or keep it natural, to relax or not to relax.

As comedian Paul Mooney says, "If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, they're not happy."

Stories abound of black women not being accepted at their place of business because they chose to wear their hair natural. Straight hair is in; the natural is out, or so it seems.

Good hair. It is a phrase fraught with pain for many black folks who grew up in a world where the standard of beauty was Marilyn Monroe, white dress blowing around her with fluffy blond hair.

And when Chris Rock heard one of his daughters say she wanted to have good hair, he decided to make a movie about it, called appropriately enough, Good Hair.

Rock takes his camera inside beauty salons across the country and to a flamboyant hair show competition in Atlanta that's held every year. The documentary also includes interviews with famous black women such as the divine Nia Long (yes, divine is my word and Miss Nia is divinely fine, in my humble opinion, but I digress) discussing their hair issues.

One of the interesting facts one learns is that some black women pay $1,000 for a hair weave and that most of that hair comes from India, where women routinely cut their hair off in a religious ritual. And one theme Rock hits on repeatedly (almost a little too much, for my taste) is how you never, ever touch a black woman's hair, not even during sex, unless you're that good in bed and you better be good. And even then...well, you get the point.

This is Chris Rock so the laughs come frequent and hard. But behind the laughs, Rock manages to sneak in some thought-provoking messages. We see soda cans dissolve in sodium hydroxide, the main ingredient in hair relaxer, and then we see relaxer being smothered into a young girl's hair.

We see that black people spend billions of dollars on hair products even though we don't control the manufacturing or the distribution.

Heavy stuff, though he could have been a little heavier, as a writer friend of mine argues, doing a better job making the historical connections and pointing out that back in the day hair texture could mean more for a black person's social status than skin color. In other words, the kink in your hair could make or break you.

The strength of the film comes from Rock's travels to India and his interviews with black women, particularly actress Tracie Thoms who talks about her decision to wear her hair natural. There's laughter but Rock gets at the desire to feel beautiful, the innate confidence boost one gets when your hair is right and the pain you feel when society tells you that your hair is wrong.

A black woman's hair is her glory, Maya Angelou says in the movie. Indeed, it is.