Battle Royale: My Father, My Hair
- *Photo via The Anderson Cooper Show
I had an “interesting” conversation with my father yesterday. Since I left my job in October, he’s become the unofficial manager of my multi-hyphenated career, a self-appointed role he took on after he retired. I enjoy his insight and our light-hearted daily talks as I remember a time where there was a great chasm between us. But over the years, we settled into a very adult-like agreement to disagree, even if I’m honest, we’ve been walking on clichéd eggshells trying to avoid each other’s minefields.
We were doing so well until, an act of seeming betrayal to all we’d rebuilt, he re-declared our war. “It’s your hair that’s holding you back,” he told me yesterday. This was a fact, not an opinion. “You won’t go where you want to go with hair like that.”
Me: Blink. Blink. “What?!”
The “that” he refers to is the tangled fluffy faux-‘fro I weaved in last month. After three years with a perm, I confidently shaved my head (and dyed it platinum blonde) in September to start anew. I did it the weekend I made the final decision to resign from my job and strike out on my own and I lovingly referred to my new look as my “Freedom ‘Fro.” I loved it. He didn’t like it, of that I was sure. But he didn’t have anything nice to say, so he didn’t comment. I respected and appreciated his silence.
By February it had grown significantly and reached a length I found unflattering to my face. Straightening it wasn’t an option for me, neither was braiding it or cutting it. So I went online in search of a batch of hair close-enough to the texture that grows out of my head and added that, since it was the look I was eventually going for anyway. For me, it solved a dilemma. For him, it was the re-emergence of an old issue, one for which he could no longer hold his tongue.
In our most recent conversation, he referred to my high school graduation photo, the one he carries in his wallet, as my best look, the one I should return to. He seems to have selective amnesia about telling me how that cut broke his heart.
“Why would you cut off all your beautiful hair?” he asked then, near tears.
I didn’t get it. It’s hair. It grows back. And if it doesn’t, I could always weave it up.
You are not alone! After not perming my hair for three years, I completely understand your struggle. My family and the majority of my friends all have their opinions about natural hair and how it will negatively impact my ability to find a “job”. It my KILLS me!
If your dad believes in god, ask him if he thinks god made a mistake when he made your hair. Ask him what is so horrible about you wearing your hair as it grows out of your head – like non-black people do every damn day. As him if he thinks black features are inferior and/or less attractive than everyone else’s. And then ask him if he wants you to marry and procreate with a white man to ensure that your childrens’ hair is more acceptable to him.
If all else fails, that last question out to rattle his cage a little and make him have a seat for a good long while. Some black guys – regardless of personal aesthetic preference – have a strong tendency to viscerally oppose BW/WM unions.
Wow you hit the nail on the head!
+1000
go head girl! preach. you betta say that!
My battle with my hair has always been knowing what styles work for me best and a life long battle of other people TELLING ME how to style my hair based on what they find pleasing.
I had my first relaxer when I was only 11-years-old. I would just put my hair up in a pony tail, because that is all I knew what to do with it. I think some of the worst years of my school life were middle school because kids were always making MY hair the topic of conversation. Remarks that were made to me were, “Why is your hair so short!”, “Why don’t you just get braids!”, “You look like a boy!” and I even had one ‘friend’ tell me I looked like a cancer patient.
And then there was high school…
I mostly wore my relaxed hair in a pony tail then, too. People were just never satisfied. 10th grade year, I started wearing ‘tracks’ and I was pretty good at blending it into my own hair, so that it would be difficult to tell that it wasn’t mine, but I remember being in English class and one of my ‘friends’ remarked, “You’re hair grew overnight!”
My junior year I had gotten my hair in kinky twists for our senior portraits and in class, another student said to me in regards to my kinky twists, “Now I can finally say you look nice.”
Then, I remember one my ‘friends’ who I knew since 7th grade made a comment to me about having hair or getting my hair done (I can’t remember at this point specifically what she said) as I was walking up to the stage at our high school graduation.
Even now as an adult, some people are just not satisfied with what I do with my hair. Between my grandmother and mother occasionally making comments about my hair growth when I take my braids out and coworkers at whatever job questioning me about the length of my real hair, telling me to wear my hair down (because it’s what they like), questioning me about why I wear braids or giving me their opinion (that I didn’t ask for) about my style of braids.
When people state that “It’s just hair”, I have to disagree. As a woman, our hair plays a significant role in our physical appearance, because people make it that way.
Anyway.
In relation to the article, natural, kempt hair is on no way unprofessional. I think people have become so familiar with Black women straightening their hair, that for a woman to have natural hair, it’s considered as the abnormal.
Completely relate. People projecting their insecurities on other people is my biggest pet peeve. Just because you would be uncomfortable looking the way I look doesn’t mean I need to change.
Thank you! Its like, no it si not just hair when every tom, dick and harry got something to say about it.
Dag that sux.
I hear my dad throw alot shade at my sister.
It’s another reason why i don’t speak to my dad. And yes, my sister has stopped as well.