tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post5659474988203353900..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: In honor of the weather, a post on frizzy hairPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-35519666417574695222009-03-12T18:34:00.000-04:002009-03-12T18:34:00.000-04:00See the Detailer Shower Tool, at home daily shower...See the <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0017TZD7S?ie=UTF8&tag=halfthesinsof-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B0017TZD7S" REL="nofollow">Detailer Shower Tool</A>, at home daily shower exfoliation for men as <A HREF="http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/beauty-call-feeling-the-full-axe-effect/" REL="nofollow">marketed</A> by Axe in red and black for $5 each (long after many men had started using their girlfriends' $1 Duane Reade versions of same).PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-90605939068989156312009-03-12T17:43:00.000-04:002009-03-12T17:43:00.000-04:00I'm not even quite sure what exfoliation entails, ...I'm not even quite sure what exfoliation entails, but unless very tired, I'm decent at using a hair iron. What does it all mean?<BR/><BR/>As for hetero men and the gym/eating right, I have not met as many of these men as are allegedly out there. But maybe the issue isn't just about adding to one's self versus not, but also about endeavors that one could claim to be about 'health' versus ones clearly just about looks. A guy can claim his trips to the gym are about avoiding a heart attack later in life. But moisturizer? Not really. ('Healthy' hair shampoos being, of course, loads of BS. Hair can be shinier or less shiny, but it's not about to get up and do a little dance. It's... hair.)Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-78287532818948646272009-03-12T17:38:00.000-04:002009-03-12T17:38:00.000-04:00And you're also right to note the role of sexism i...<I>And you're also right to note the role of sexism in all this--wanting to look good (hair included) is considered silly in part because this tends to be a concern primarily of women (and gay men).</I><BR/><BR/>Yes, although even that has its own natural/artifice divide that may itself be false. For example, I think daily shower exfoliaters (loofahs/scrubs/etc) are easily adopted by men because it seems like you're just getting cleaner, and getting down to the real skin under the accumulated grime and dead cells. Every guy whom I've dated seriously, I've gotten hooked on exfoliation (often just by example). Getting these guys to put stuff in their hair, or even to use nail clippers carefully to make a nice shape instead of just whacking the nail down until it bleeds? Impossible. Hetero men go to the gym regularly or watch what they eat in order to look good, but they're more resistant to something that requires their exercise of aesthetic judgment or that requires adding to oneself in some way (e.g. using moisturizer).PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-32805927660474154922009-03-12T17:21:00.000-04:002009-03-12T17:21:00.000-04:00"I think the preference for straight hair is somew..."I think the preference for straight hair is somewhat softer than it was 60 years ago."<BR/><BR/>Not much.<BR/><BR/>"Your word verification for this post is "expring"; this has a morbid ring to it."<BR/><BR/>I have word verification? I don't even think I knew this.<BR/><BR/>PG,<BR/><BR/>I can see dividing beauty routines into that which hurts physically/psychologically/financially and that which does not. But is a hairdryer or iron more 'natural' than a chemical straightener? I mean, you're right that there's a dividing line, but I don't see it as falling between 'natural' and 'artificial', but as one setting apart various forms of artifice. And you're also right to note the role of sexism in all this--wanting to look good (hair included) is considered silly in part because this tends to be a concern primarily of women (and gay men).Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-8139673653402864182009-03-12T15:06:00.000-04:002009-03-12T15:06:00.000-04:00What we're looking at is a wide range of artifice,...<I>What we're looking at is a wide range of artifice, done by different people for different reasons.</I><BR/><BR/>I might have a distorted view on this because so many of my friends and myself do have our hair relatively "natural," in the sense that very few of us do anything that involves seriously abrasive chemicals on the scalp. (The first commenter on the racialicious post mentions her hair falling out due to use of such chemicals.*) Of my dozen closest non-black female friends (about half of whom are white and the other half East or South Asian), two get dark blond highlights in their light brown hair; one blow-dries her hair straight most days and occasionally gets it professionally straightened; one used to get her tight curls relaxed. The rest, like me, tend toward the wash-n-go with a blow-dry on cold days (where going outside with wet hair courts illness) and an occasional detour into "wouldn't it be cool to have one white stripe in my hair? Maybe I'll wait until I've had my new job for a month before I try that, though."<BR/><BR/>In a really sexist way, I suppose I measure this by what men do: if I'm putting in a lot more effort than my husband, then it feels more like "artifice," because it seems like something I'm doing because I'm female rather than because I want to be cleanly and look tidy. But he's also low maintenance, so I'd probably have more work without its feeling like artifice if I were married to a guy who gels and pomades and highlights. (Although I can't really imagine myself with that type -- like to like and all that; guys who groom intensively don't seem to end up with women who don't.)<BR/><BR/>* I think where one is on a range in terms of what it does to your body is important. For example, we all ought to think about what we eat and ought to get some exercise, but there's also the possibility of becoming so concerned about diet and exercise that it becomes both psychologically and physically unhealthy. I'm more concerned about the artifice of someone who keeps getting her legs waxed even if causes her to get a rash for two days afterward than the artifice of someone who can get the same treatment with no negative effects. Perhaps it's not so much the level of artifice as the willingness to bear pain or damage for "beauty" that worries me.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-27606347645527597792009-03-12T14:07:00.000-04:002009-03-12T14:07:00.000-04:00Re plebeian = large breasts: somewhere on FLG's bl...Re plebeian = large breasts: somewhere on FLG's blog. And I was more self-confident in my contention than I should have been; the connotation may only be a century old, not two millennia old, and may be less universal than I said.<BR/><BR/>My mom has occasionally mourned that when she was young, straight hair was the only fashion, while nowadays curly hair is more acceptable, and sometimes ladies even perm their straight hair into curls. And all those 1950s movies do seem to show universal straight hair in the young ladies. I think the preference for straight hair is somewhat softer than it was 60 years ago.<BR/><BR/>Your word verification for this post is "expring"; this has a morbid ring to it.Withywindlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11465319711207992232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-48236103512329318082009-03-12T01:10:00.000-04:002009-03-12T01:10:00.000-04:00"There are black women who go from natural to curl..."There are black women who go from natural to curlier-than-natural?"<BR/><BR/>Doubt it. But there are many black women who go from natural to ringlets, tight curls, loose curls, curly extensions, etc., which is to say, to hairstyles other than straight. (I can provide an extensive survey of the hair of women of all backgrounds, with a minor in European tourists. This is thanks to zoning out on the subway and knowing full well that, when zoned out, it's better to be zoned out in the direction of a woman than a man, because men think a woman looking at them is <I>looking</I> at them, which is bad news.)<BR/><BR/>The passage you quote is interesting. But the problem I was hoping to highlight in my post was that, if just about no one wears their hair in its 'natural' state (are dreadlocks 'natural'? use of conditioner? shampoo rather than liquid soap?), we need a different language for the politics of hair than that of natural versus artificial. What we're looking at is a wide range of artifice, done by different people for different reasons. <BR/><BR/>See: the drugstore 'ethnic' and 'regular' hair aisles-- according to the shampoo companies, everyone has hair in need of 'correction.' In Europe I've heard there's even shampoo for hair that gets greasy quickly, something perhaps too rarely sought in ethnic NYC to exist anywhere. Does a European trying to de-grease her hair suffer the way a black girl does in a class full of preppy wash-and-go blondes? Clearly not, but that's a different question.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-19177792076826387732009-03-12T00:51:00.000-04:002009-03-12T00:51:00.000-04:00There are black women who go from natural to curli...There are black women who go from natural to curlier-than-natural? What is the process? I didn't realize there was a meaning for "perm" like the curly or frizzy haired meaning in white culture.<BR/><BR/>(Incidentally, all of this reminds me of Gerald Early's first footnote in his essay "Life with Daughters," where he recounts Richard Wright's experience when a white woman at a conference knocked on his door to ask him to explain what her black female roommate was doing. "Her roommate walks around in the middle of the night and the white woman often covertly spies her in 'a dark corner of the room ... bent over a tiny blue light, a very low and a very blue flame ... It seemed like she was combing her hair, but I wasn't sure. Her right arm was moving and now and then she would look over her shoulder toward my bed.' The white woman thinks that the black woman is practicing voodoo. But Wright soon explains that the black woman is simply straightening her hair. [...] The conversation continues with an account of the black woman's secretive skin lightening treatments. What is revealing in this dialogue which takes on both political and psychoanalytic proportions is the utter absence of the black woman's voice, her presence. She is simply the dark neurotic ghost that flits in the other room while the black male and the white female, both in the same room, one with dispassionate curtness and the other with sentimentalized guilt, consider the illness that is enacted before them as a kind of bad theater. Once again, the psychopathology of the black American is symbolized by the black woman's straightened hair, by her beauty culture."PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-59421497409396561642009-03-11T21:03:00.000-04:002009-03-11T21:03:00.000-04:00"Salon people definitely treat curly hair as somet..."Salon people definitely treat curly hair as something to be blown straight, but I never got that at home, which was more what I had in mind."<BR/><BR/>I'd thought you might mean home or salon, since you referred to special-occasion hair. (One of the three manicures I've ever gotten, ever, was, I believe, for my bat mitzvah, and if photos are to be believed, it looks like my hair was professionally blown dry, too. Of course, though I was a child, this was about me becoming a woman!)<BR/><BR/>"there are times when curly hair on non-black women is something one is trying to achieve."<BR/><BR/>This goes for black women, too, although the curls are typically looser than in a 'natural' style.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-55091480296319774292009-03-11T19:14:00.000-04:002009-03-11T19:14:00.000-04:00Salon people definitely treat curly hair as someth...Salon people definitely treat curly hair as something to be blown straight, but I never got that at home, which was more what I had in mind. My thinking on this is sort of biased because I got my first professional haircut at 11; before that, all homemade. Even my sisters, who have regarded me as a home improvement project my whole life, didn't try to straighten my hair until I was in middle school. (It was as futile as trying to curl my little sister's very thick, straight hair. Which is another thing: there are times when curly hair on non-black women is something one is trying to achieve.)PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-83952104007365422692009-03-11T15:59:00.000-04:002009-03-11T15:59:00.000-04:00"Admittedly, the example I have in mind is of a wh..."Admittedly, the example I have in mind is of a white man so unobservant of what women do to look the way they do that he didn't notice his black coworker also was of short stature until he saw her step out of her heels one day."<BR/><BR/>Ha. I had a classmate in college I'd always thought was really tall, until one day she wore sneakers rather than heels, and I learned that she was, like me, 5'2". It's not just men making these mistakes.<BR/><BR/>As for the question of childhood hair straightening, I've known this to happen with poufy-haired non-black children (my child self included)... sometimes. Every haircut I can remember, as in, from a very young age, ended with my hair being blown straight, and I remember curly-haired non-black classmates sometimes arriving at school with straightened hair. But you're right that the hair-flattening impetus usually comes from the adolescent or young woman, when it comes to non-blacks, and the parents of small children when it comes to blacks.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-75741519912049028542009-03-11T15:18:00.000-04:002009-03-11T15:18:00.000-04:00What this means is that what we understand as a so...<I>What this means is that what we understand as a society to be 'white hair' - and what men ignorant of female grooming habits imagine is white or Asian women's wash-and-go hair - is far from the natural hair texture of many white and some Asian women. </I><BR/><BR/>Heck, some white men don't realize that straight hair even on black women isn't wash-and-go; they assume there's just variety among black people such that somehow nearly all black men have a certain kind of hair that only some black women have. Admittedly, the example I have in mind is of a white man so unobservant of what women do to look the way they do that he didn't notice his black coworker also was of short stature until he saw her step out of her heels one day.<BR/><BR/>Re: your post as a whole, I'd also point out that straightening is something that seems to start among black females at quite a young age, imposed by mothers, grandmother and aunts; whereas while I know many curly/frizzy haired non-black women (including myself), none of us had straightening done until we were old enough to have a preference (and most of us not until we were old enough either to operate the at-home iron or to go into a salon and pay for it ourselves). I don't know any non-black women who as children had an older female relative straighten her hair to "look nice" for a special occasion like a wedding or religious holiday, whereas my black female friends would have their hair-straightened as part of the Easter ritual (new dress and shoes included here). Non-black women straighten hair to improve their attractiveness (presumably sexual attractiveness); many black females have their hair straightened long before an age where attracting sexual attention is desirable.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com