Beautiful hair

I recently watched the movie "Good Hair" about African-American women's hair.  I had no idea how much trouble and expense were involved in relaxed hair and weaves.  I like reading about women who go "natural".   The variety of textures and colors African-American hair is fascinating.  The before and after photos are sort of magical, like the flowering of a hidden and  unpredicted aspect of their physical identity.  I was asking myself why I am so drawn to this, besides the political implications.  And then I remembered that my first hair envy was natural African hair.  In Liberia, where we lived until I was almost 8, the girls would wear intricate and artistic hairstyles.  The hair seems in memory almost a sculptural artistic medium.  You don't have to put a rubber band at the end of a braid to make it stay and you don't end up with that little tuft of unbraided hair sticking out at the bottom of your braid.  But when I asked to have my hair corn rowed, the mamas and aunties might try a little bit, but they would always say that they couldn't do it with my hair, which is straight and slippery.  How I longed to have the right hair for cornrows!  (I finally got an approximation of cornrows, i.e. five parallel French braids, years later when I was in high school in California.  The kind big brother of my playmates and many sisters did them for me and I wore them as long as I could.)

As for the political side of it, I feel that individuals should be free to choose to do their hair however they want.  People have different ideas about what is beautiful, thank goodness.  What disturbs me, in this context as in others, are norms about what is or is not presentable.  In the film, there is a short clip with a group of high school seniors, all but one of whom have relaxed hair or weaves.  One of them expresses the opinion that natural hair will be perceived as unprofessional, that she herself might see it that way.  I hate the idea that someone should have to live with the idea that there is something wrong with the way their hair grows out of their head.  I know the feeling in small ways, maybe we all do in one way or another.  But the movie made it clear to me that this hair thing is a bigger deal than I realized.