If I’m being honest, I have been putting off writing about this. Because it is so near and dear to my heart, and I am exhausted with the ways that we as Black people continue to discard our own care, our own bodily autonomy, and it shows up very clearly and most, obviously in the movies.
They toss us pitiful breadcrumbs and we eat it up every time.
It is wildly absurd to me specifically in the time that we are living in to see people screaming and ranting and raving about liberation and community. The belief that somehow, we will arrive at liberation, without you first learning to care for yourself without exclusion, allowing your Afrikan wildness to exist, not always containing and capturing to assimilate.
Black bodies are still only allowed to exist specifically on screen within the very limited imagination that the dominant culture has set up for them. This has now become our imagination for ourselves. We have none.
We do not see Afro hair as craft. We see it as inconvenient.
Of all the movies and films that I have seen and engaged around Blackness, I still can only name a handful of movies where and I can see the importance of Afro hair and its inclusion into the Black story; where I can actually engage lived in hair as it is connected to our lived in experiences.
This brings me to Wicked. A story that I love, I read the books first. You should read The Wicked Series if you’re into fantasy/sci fi reading.
There’s a depth of description within the book that’s lost with the musical all together. Not to mention, that the first cast of Wicked was premium supremacy musical theatre, with Kristen Chenowith and Idina Menzel.
Whitewashed as all get out.
No, I have not seen the movie and I am in no rush. I am not impressed by Cynthia Ervio. She is no different in some ways than Lupita and others who have still been chosen because they meet the standards according to the dominant culture. Hyper Petite Pocket Black Femmes.
Everyone is raving about her micro braid wig and I am confused in the same way that everyone was so gagged over Michael Burnham’s box braided wig on Star Trek Discovery.
A queer Black femme and the basis of your imagination for an Afro hair witch, is micro braids?
Chile, PLEASE Stop with the performance.
Braids are a huge part of the afro hair experience. Let’s talk about why.
Braids have been used as tool of communication, design and transport. They could communicate status, they transported seeds to the new world, they are basis of our adornment connected to pomp and circumstance. They are the basis of our beauty, an outward framing of innate eccentricity and creativity.
They are mathematical code. Spirals that can be weaved, knotted, twisted, sculpted to magnificence.
Braids are technology. They protect the scalp. Our hair also cooperates best when it’s in a state where it can we tightly woven together in order to preserve moisture which helps to maintain length.
Afro hair likes to be in community with one another in the same way that we are a communal people.
But the foundation of our braids are no longer our current future.
Braids have become the culture, something for the dominant culture to obsess over and appropriate.
We believe our braiders should live like paupers, and get mad when they braid your thoughts, edges all but detached.
But you wanted a bargain. Snatched edges came with your lack of respect for the person doing the work.
The care of our hair is energetic exchange and yet we now braid to ignore our hair, to put it away. To hide from it and it from us.
We purchase pack and packs of poison plastic hair from stores that still post our pictures when you dare to steal something from a people who have monopolized profit on Black bodies and hair all while failing to humanize us.
People who now build mines on the continent because they believe what’s ours is also theirs. Who exploit our bodies for mere pennies in exchange.
But we are impressed by a micro braids wig that is literally still styled according to european beauty standards.
Ya’ll please be serious.
We are more likely to get braids to mimic the length, flow and pattern of european hair, not as an embodiment of our ancestral lineage.
That ain’t 6 women on your scalp to get your micros done in less than six hours in a small shop in southeast dc. It doesn’t translate in the same way.
Cynthia Ervio is bald. Their expression of hair isn’t one. When you are bald as I have been for the last 10 years it’s an alchemizing of scalp and afro hair in a different way. And yet none of her queerness is even brought to the role via expression of hair.
All of the hair options that should be on the table for Elphaba as a Black afro haired woman should be on a massive scale of craft, and yet we get another braided wig.
That isn’t impressive it’s proof of how much a yt thumb is still very much in over who we are.
Let’s talk braids and Afro hair that actually tell a story. There is no other film ever that has managed to make the connection with Black hair being a role in the story right alongside the characters like Daughter’s of the Dust.
Pamela Ferrell in collaboration with Julie Dash tells a story with afro hair alone. You can understand each character's journey further by looking to their scalp.
From Nana Peazant’s rooted and wild locs, to Eula’s long fat braids that mimic her sad and kept longing. To Yellow Mary’s loosely waved tresses as an assimilated woman of the city.
Every head down to the children tells a story that compliments and enhances the story line.
The same can be said for early Spike Lee. I know he is plenty problematic. But we talkin about hair. Focus.
But movies like Crooklyn, She’s Gotta Have it, and Mo Betta Blues, the afro hair on those Black femmes spoke miles to me.
Their hair was an outward expression of the characters they embodied. Angular and smart sculpted short fros, the rainbow micro braided beads on Alfre. The cornrows on Troy. These stories were seared to my scalp because I saw my scalp reflected cosmically.
T
he hair in Nikayatu Jusu’s Nanny spoke to the characters, the landscape, hair enhanced the storyline.
Five on the Black Hand Side is another example of hair the blends well into the story of Blackness as it unfolds.
Fast forward to now and we have piss poor hair in movies like Black Panther, Coming to America 2, Woman King was a joke, Insecure did us no service either because hyper tight overly styled highly respectable afro hair becomes the standard. That or pop on lace front and lay some performative baby hairs.
I refuse to continue watching Kindred because the way in which they failed to understand the importance of afro hair in connection to the story line is disgusting. They did Octavia a disservice and the lead actor a disservice.
All I see is Tyler Perry and the disappearance of any sort of Afro hair craft because those who still make the rules are removing any and every aspect of Blackness that doesn’t align with proximity to, assimilation, and appropriation.
Meaning braids signify a Black body kept in line. That is the translation via the movie screen. Can’t be seen as too wild because you are already Black.
We look like fools on the silver screen greedy for any little piece of representation even if it is a poor one and it lets me know just how far we have removed our own embodiment from within to without.
Our storytelling has been shortcut because we believe the story itself is more important than actually honoring our every part of our bodies, inherent to our stories, which are still being used as commodity, and allowing the production process to extend craft and artistry to Afro hair as a priority.
A director and actor who think that a micro-braided wig is some miraculous homage to afro hair and being a Black femme is laughable and I am tired of our hair being the last line in an ongoing joke instead of the of a shift in how we will no longer allow others to shallowly form our beauty standards and then sell it back to us as some sort of inclusive change.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. If there are Black movies where the hair has moved, you or not. Share them with me and why?
If you are mad I am not interested in your warrior typing keys that you use to evade accountability.
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