Quantum Geek: To weave or not to weave..?

Hair forms a very integral and important part of our culture and self-image, more so for women than men.
A big healthy mane of hair is an essential ingredient of beauty (unless if you are Grace Jones) who doesn't need a lot of hair to look beautiful.

Men often get judged by women based on their hair and some men can pull off the bald look pretty well but honestly speaking hair counts, period no questions asked.

Now lets add politics and race on the topic of weaves specifically and it becomes a hot button issue.

I wrote this blog to illustrate my own point of view on African or African-American women who choose to wear weaves.

Nowadays if you are a black woman who happens to be wearing a weave you get judged, and put into this horrible box of negative stereotypes. Similarly to blonde women who are inaccurately labelled as stupid & frivolous. A weave gets you a bad rep socially whereas five to ten years ago it was viewed as a sign of success and wealth.

Why?!

Lets go back about 132 years ago, when colonialism was rife in Africa in a time called the 'Scramble or Race for Africa' . A time characterised by the invasion , occupation ,colonization and annexation of African territories by European powers during the New Imperialism period between 1881 and 1914.

Or even further back 494 years ago when African people were kidnapped and taken to America to be enslaved. They were separated from their families, their names were lost and every part of their identity was eventually reduced down to a slave, not a labourer because labourers get paid but a slave.

They were introduced to new social norms of the European culture that didn't adhere with theirs,
taught to hate their features that uniquely identify them as African. This form 'brainwashing' happened so frequently that they learnt to hide or polish away that which made them beautifully unique.

I won't go into too much history because that's not what this blog is about but before we have any idea where we are going in the future we need to know where we come from.

Woolly hair was demonized and seen as dirty or unkempt. Americans call it 'nappy'. As a non-American citizen hearing the word 'nappy' brings up images of something dirty and undesirable.

Garret Augustus Morgan Senior invented hair relaxer which is one of most painful things you will ever have the unfortunate experience of going through should you ever choose to.

Its made of a substance called 'lye' aka sodium hydroxide(NaOH) which in its more milder forms is used to cure foods and in the more extreme forms is used in the manufacture of soaps and household cleaning detergents.

The long-term effects of putting a caustic substance onto the delicate scalp caused people lose their hair & permanent damage to the scalp.

Hair relaxers straighten woolly hair but they cannot give the desired length so African-American women wore hair pieces and wigs which eventually gave way to the weave, invented by Christina Jenkins in the 1950s. The natural hair would be braided underneath and then human or synthetic hair would be woven on top of braided hair.

A wonderful respite from the harsh burning chemicals.

The popularity of weaves gradually increased to the point where women of other ethnicities began wearing them as extensions. The more popular and fashionable weaves became the more expensive they got. The popularity of weaves dipped in the 'Black Consciousness Movement' in the 60s and 70s and the Afro became popular.

Wearing an afro was seen as political statement that you were openly resisting the Euro-America standards of beauty by not chemically damaging your hair,

but the 'villainous weave' made its way back into popular culture and today its a billion dollar industry.

However, those billions of dollars are not going back to the black communities who happen to be the number 01 consumers of this product but to the Chinese and Korean manufacturers.

African-American celebrities and every woman of colour working in front a camera spends close to $1000.00 to $10000.00 dollars for a packet of hair alone!!!

Chris Rock did a great job in covering the specifics in his award-winning documentary 'Good Hair'.

The important point it illustrated was that although slavery was abolished, some aspect of the white hedgemonistic culture still remains strongly imprinted on the psyche of both Africans and African-Americans.

So that's why a Black woman wearing a weave is seen as someone who is racially confused or ashamed of her uniquely African features.

Strangely enough, a Caucasian, Indian, Latino or East-Asian woman sporting braids or even dreadlocks is not seen as racially confused but they are seen as progressive and forward thinking. Although occasionally they might still get judged or labelled as trashy or dodgy.

That for me deals a great blow, because who is to say that every black woman who wears a weave is ashamed,confused ,fake and superficial?

I wear weaves of every kind from the long and straight- 'Emily the Strange' -fringe to a curly weave and even my natural fro (I don't relax my hair by the way).

Me with an Indian hair weave.

Me with a curly-weave

Me with a Fro

Should I restrict myself to 'African Hairstyles' just to prove to everyone else that I have a cultural identity?

NO!!!

It's the 21st century where human beings on earth are beginning to identify themselves as part of a human family rather than a separate race, culture, nationality or creed.

That is why women of other ethnicities wear hairdos that stem from other cultures, this is not restricted to women alone, men too have embraced other aspects of other cultures and ethnicities.(tattoos and piercings)

Chester Bennington with ear-stretch piercing

Eurasian man with ear stretch piercing

I think its a natural part of social evolution and that's what we humans are moving towards.

So to the Black woman out there who has been shamed into removing her weave, I say weave it back on.

To the Caucasian, Asian, Indian ,Persian and East-Asian women who like to sport hairdos that stem from other cultures and have also endured some form of denigration because you chose to embrace certain aspect of another culture or ethnicity I say, pouf, braid and dreadlock it.

Angelina Jolie

Bjork

Life is just too short to live it according to other people's standards, do what makes you happy as long as no harm comes to others from doing so.

I'm willing to speculate that in the future, buying hair packets, wigs or hair pieces from the shops or salon will likely cease in the near future.

Due to Moore's law and the exponential rise of the computational power of silicone chips, Human genomes will get mapped more frequently.