Review: Good Hair

I spend a lot of money on my hair. I was going to say comparatively speaking, but I realised that that was a bare faced lie. I spend a lot of money on my hair period. I was then going to say “spent” because I no longer have a weave habit but to be honest- remaining napptastic still requires a lot of effort and a lot of cash. You would be amazed. The price of being a weava-diva used to be high. Getting good quality human hair for a weave required at least two packets of extensions at £30- £60 a pop. Installation ranged from £40 (my homie Fulana in Peckham) to £90 (From the Root, Lewisham). Then there would be hair sheen or curl spray (another £10) to take care of the shedding, the shine and the matting that happens when the hair on your head doesn’t really sprout from your scalp. I must admit that I loved the glamour of it all but I decided to give it up once I decided to give up the “creamy crack” otherwise known as hair relaxer aka sodium hydroxide aka lye that can disintegrate a can of Coke. Now that my hair is natural, it is probably as expensive- £50 for each retwist every four weeks and then £40 to £100 for a “full head unit” for work. Compare that to a haircut every three months for my European friends and a colour and blowdry probably every six months.

Chris Rock’s Good Hair is erudite and candid in throwing up all these facts and more. Did you know that black people comprise 20% of the population but purchase 80% of all hair and hair products? That the hair industry is worth more than 9 billion dollars? That in spite of this, black people are disenfranchised and that the black chemical straightening industry is owned mostly by super corporates such as Revlon and L’Oreal? And that the Koreans have a monopoly on the hair extension industry; that they refuse to sell to black distributors because the profit margin on hair is so high? That human hair from India is worth more than gold, kilo for kilo? Rock brings to light all of these interesting facts and polemic discussions, via interviews with a diverse range of black personalities who offer special insight on all aspects of the hair industry- from Reverend Al Sharpton, the civil rights campaigner (who perms his hair) to poet and writer Maya Angelou (who didn’t have a perm till she was 70), self confessed weave addict and hip hop video-ho Melissa Ford, singer Eve and actresses Raven Simone and Nia Long.

This film is a must-see for all races as a study about race, gender and the perception of beauty. It will be informative for people who are not of colour to see why we explain going back to natural hair as a “journey”, why hair seems like an “obsession” and why a black woman’s hair is such a complex and contentious issue (for those who let it be that way). It was disturbing to see human hair being scraped of the heads of babies for the sacred ceremony of tonsure in India and the deep convictions that this was a holy sacrifice to the gods, only for these locks to be bartered over on shop shelves only a few days later. Chris Rock’s hilarious commentary made me realise that it was actually not that funny that ordinary working class people were not purchasing property and investing in education and were instead on “lay away” plans for hair units that did not look even better than their natural hair or the ordinary hair in the beauty shops. What a tangled web we weave! The expense of hair extensions for the average black woman ($1000 upwards) could put a black child through private school. It broke my heart when young people in Harlem still thought that an afro was not “groomed” enough for work. In 2010. No one put it better than Al Sharpton: “we are attaching our economic exploitation on our heads”.

On some levels, I wish Chris Rock could have focussed more on the facts instead of paying what I felt was disproportionate attention to a largely entertaining- but not much else- hair show in Atlanta. I wanted him to speak to scientists and research analysts about the effects of sodium hydroxide on human scalp over a sustained period of time and to investigate whether there had been any substantive studies on the health effects (I found only such one study that related to breast cancer only, and none in the EU). The production budget seems to have been strained- I would have wished him to not only confine his study to Los Angeles but also to visit Africa and the UK and the Caribbean to obtain perspectives on hair and attitudes to it. Maybe he would have encountered the natural hair movement and presented a different side of the coin. In that way, the documentary would have come across as more balanced- there are a lot of black people who wear their hair as is and who do not spend thousands of dollars on weaves and hair relaxers and straightening products. Where Chris Rock equates black with “weave wearing” he makes an expensive generalisation that risks pissing people off as not all black women eschew intimacy and swimming in favour of hair (I don’t give a rat’s arse) and spend hundreds of dollars to maintain it, or expect their men to take care of bill. This risked perpetuating a very dangerous stereotype.

Similarly, the interviews with the members of the community seemed to be based in only a few hair shops and barber shops- it would have been useful to obtain the view of a few professionals and their perspectives on hair in corporate America. His attempt to be funny in selling black hair fell flat but I felt that this could have been tackled as a serious issue: if Afro type hair existed on the scale that we see Indian hair and Malaysian hair and Remy hair,  would there would be a market for it for those of us who wish to embellish/lengthen our own tresses? I would have also liked to see him source and question the distributorship networks and the managers of the companies manufacturing “kiddie perms”.

The documentary is amiable, funny and incisive but I think that Chris Rock had the capacity to make it even funnier and even more incisive. Hair after all, is no different from any other beauty industry- it is based on an unattainable standard. My spirit soared when actress Tracie Thoms said just what I explained to a friend over lunch yesterday; it is a shame that “to keep my hair the same texture as it grows out of my head is revolutionary”.