I finally saw “Good Hair” last weekend (I know I’m super late), and thought Chris Rock did a good job presenting an overview of Black America’s obsession with hair and attaining what has been called “good hair” meaning straight, Anglo-Saxon hair. “RealitySurfer” left a comment on my post “Chris Rock’s ‘Good Hair’ not exactly what black folks hoped for” pointing me to the Aron Ranen documentary “Black Hair.” So far I’ve only watched the the 10 minute clip below, but I’m already intrigued. This documentary is good for folks wanted the less “made for Hollywood” edition of what’s going on in the black hair industry. Chris Rock did reveal that black folks consume a lot of hair products and hair itself, but own a tiny percentage of the market share (using the visit to Dudley’s in North Carolina as an example). Rather, many of the black beauty supply stores are run by Koreans, and as we saw in “Good Hair” a lot of the human hair used in weaves is from India. This is just one of many examples where I, and many of you, are perplexed as to why we haven’t capitalized on a markets that are primarily for our community.
Take a look at the following “Black Hair” documentary, part 1 (1st 10 minutes) by Aron Ranen below…
I still haven’t seen Chris Rock’s “Good Hair,” but I’ve certainly blogged about it. Even the very words “good hair” inject divisiveness to the African-American community that dates back to slavery. To me, using those words came with high expectations. Maybe Chris Rock would finally set the records straight for black people, especially black women, as well as all of the world’s ethnicities out there that are forever curious about nappy hair. Besides, Chris Rock had his “boy” helping him out, none other than Nelson George.
While I laughed along during Chris Rock’s appearance on Oprah, I haven’t heard anyone with natural hair speak highly of the movie. I was reminded just now while reading the blog Shineharder (great tattoo blog for people of color or people who love tattoos) who posted basically the same sentiment. Check out the post “Good Hair” for more.
In the meantime, “Good Hair” will remain on my Netflix list, but I won’t be racing to bump it to the top of my list anytime soon. After all, I live my natural hair story every single day. Maybe I need to make my own “good hair” documentary from a black woman’s perspective infused with our history in the States. You never know…
I’ve been posting about the Chris Rock documentary “Good Hair” since I read about it at Sundance back in January of this year. In the past few months the film has been gaining more and more media attention as it opens in theaters. On October 9, 2009 “Good Hair” went out in theaters on a limited release (LA, NY, Chicago, Atlanta, and DC only) but today, October 23, 2009 it opens in more theaters across the country.
There’s a new Facebook application that has launched in celebration of the release of “Good Hair” that allows you to play with different hairstyles using an uploaded image of yourself. I’ve just added the application to my own Facebook page and it’s a lot of fun! To install it, go to http://apps.facebook.com/goodhair/.
Enjoy!
P.S. If you’re local to the Columbus, OH area, Columbus Black has planned an outing tonight at the Arena Grand Theater for interested people to see “Good Hair” at a discounted price. Go to their Facebook Event Page for more details.
Movie Trailer and Summary
When Chris Rocks daughter, Lola, came up to him crying and asked, Daddy, how come I dont have good hair? the bewildered comic committed himself to search the ends of the earth and the depths of black culture to find out who had put that question into his little girl’s head! Director Jeff Stilsons camera followed the funnyman, and the result is Good Hair, a wonderfully insightful and entertaining, yet remarkably serious, documentary about African American hair culture. An exposé of comic proportions that only Chris Rock could pull off, Good Hair visits hair salons and styling battles, scientific laboratories, and Indian temples to explore the way black hairstyles impact the activities, pocketbooks, sexual relationships, and self-esteem of black people. Celebrities such as Ice-T, Kerry Washington, Nia Long, Paul Mooney, Raven Symoné, Maya Angelou, and Reverend Al Sharpton all candidly offer their stories and observations to Rock while he struggles with the task of figuring out how to respond to his daughters question. What he discovers is that black hair is a big business that doesnt always benefit the black community and little Lolas question might well be bigger than his ability to convince her that the stuff on top of her head is nowhere near as important as what is inside.
I was overjoyed to run across an article on BlackNews.com about this new website SunkissedGirlz.com. Just launched on October 14, 2009 by founders Yanique Redwood, PhD, MPH; Alana Jones, and Aisha Penson who not only realized the lack of positive imagery for young African-Americans but took matters into their own hands by launching Sunkissed Girlz. African-Americans are so diverse and unfortunately sometimes divided when it comes to matters of skin tone, body shape, and hair texture.
We created Sunkissed Girlz because we realized that there were very few Websites (and magazines, books, television shows, etc.) for Black girls. We wanted to create a cool, safe place for girls to play, learn, blog, and just have fun! We also want girls to learn how to analyze the media messages that they get from commercials, music videos, and other forms of media, so at times we will use clips from popular media sources to generate discussion and critical analysis.
We designed sunkissedgirlz.com for girls ages 11-14. We hope to develop Websites for younger and older girls in the near future. (source: SunkissedGirlz.com)
I’ll be adding them to my blogroll and wanted to help spread the word.
I found it! YouTube is the best thing ever! This is exactly what motivated me to start this blog and this topic. I know this is a little old, but it’s worth another viewing, or for those of you who haven’t seen it, definitely check it out. There are 2 clips below from high schooler Kiri Davis who did a remake of the 1940s and 50s study called “The Doll Test.” The test was originally conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark and his wife Dr. Mamie Clark to demonstrate the affects of segregation in the time of Brown vs. the Board of Education. You may read more details on this site: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-brown.html
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I was overjoyed to run across an article on BlackNews.com about this new website SunkissedGirlz.com. Just launched on October 14, 2009 by founders Yanique Redwood, PhD, MPH; Alana Jones, and Aisha Penson who not only realized the lack of positive imagery for young African-Americans but took matters into their own hands by launching Sunkissed Girlz. African-Americans are so diverse and unfortunately sometimes divided when it comes to matters of skin tone, body shape, and hair texture.
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