It was a way to gain independence does it have to have our hair braide
It's the braids that come up right here stop
So all the breeze would be hanging like this that was like my favorite style if you add all of the hours
I spent getting my hair braided as a child it probably sums up to five years of my life
Straight-up stealing, that's not yours to take
The first memory of braids would be as a young girl sitting down in between my mother or a
Family member's legs for them to braid my hair, or I would get barrettes put all over my head
And we called it bubbles
Everything that I was exposing as a child my hair was always about locking and twisting and lifting hair and tying it up
Danny was twisted
Shampooing the locks put your hair in and it looked decent and you could roll around in the grass and still go to church on
Sunday you know I was just so determined to learn it would go to this girl
That was like the best braider in our town
You know she was nice and also teach me how to braid and I just kept on practicing on my friends
And I would take the stuff to school and braids in school and braid after classes
And I would say like braiding the teachers and stuff like that your homegirl braided your hair
Sometimes they would you know adhere four-lane during lunch time my friends would be taking my braids out?
And I'd wear like the crinkly hair and rock that all day
I did my first set of individuals on my own head and it took me three days three straight days like I only
Stopped to eat and use the restroom. That's it one of my homeboys you know he
Suggested a young lady to do my hair
I go look in the mirror to braid like it was uneven like this one was a little closer to this way and this
Was going a little back I was hurt, and you know when the lady had a nerve to say, do I need to fix anything
Getting our hair done
also becomes a
Celebration of who we are and a part of our identity outside of what you actually look like when you leave this a lot
There's so much that you can do it black hair whether it's straight, or twist it or braid it, it's so
Beautiful and it's so malleable
You might have someone who's doing a fishtail braid, which is just one big braid in the back?
You might have someone who's just doing two ways we call them french braids right and then when we think about
corner
or style technique it gets really complex for rowing as we know it is a very African thing since it more along the
Parting and a design of where the braid is going more so than the braid itself
We found a statue from 500 BC Nigeria where the hair was cornrowed
And we found this whole world of weaves that were not called that using all these materials and different societies throughout, West Africa
It's almost like your social security number
Meaning you could look at someone's hairstyle
and you could determine where they're from what their status is in the society if
They're married
if they're single if they're widowed if they're a warrior if they used to be a soldier the richer someone was in the society the
More fanciful their hair was and if we look throughout the Diaspora
That's been a way in which African women have expressed their own kind of beauty politics Senegalese hair braider might have a very different
braiding technique than a Nigerian hair braider might have versus a
Brazilian hair braider on slave ships one of the first things that was done was that someone's hair was shaved
If hair was thought of as a social security number I can look at you and say all these things about you
Because of your hairstyle suddenly people have shaved heads
there's no visual way to say you're from this group and you were this person in this society and
When the enslaved people were here in the US
There had to be a completely new
hair culture that was born out of people from all of these different groups who did not have the
materials to actually take care of the hair
During slavery Sunday was the day that was set aside where you could actually do your hair
it was a time where actual grooming rituals were born and
Also a way to figure out how to care for hair that could last for an entire week
You weren't going to be able to do anything until the next
Sunday the two main hairstyles that came out of that were head rags and also cornrows because
Someone else can do your hair an X amount of time on a Sunday?
and then you're good for the rest of the week when we think about African American women during enslavement the
Covering of their hair was something that they had to do not until much later
Do we see African American women?
participating in a beauty culture from the United States affirming who they are
Whether it be pressing their hair or braiding their hair or locking their hair
There's a cultural kind of aspect where young girls or older women go to a place where they find a sense of community
And they also think about the ways in which they affirm to the world that they love who they are
They love the color of their skin that they love the beauty products that they use and so people like madam CJ Walker and others
Created a way for African American women to what be business women for some of them to get out of the realms of
Domestic labor and so that's the economic part of black woman's beauty if you go all up along the East Coast you'll see
populations of African women from Senegal from Ivory Coast from Nigeria in many cases it's out of
default that we have these businesses open because they
Unfortunately are having difficulty breaking into other areas because a lot of the women might be very well educated in their home countries
But when you come here often the opportunities are limited and so this skill
Is one way to create income?
When I moved here, I probably had like $3,000 and like five months that was done, I was so broke
I was like sleeping on the floor and a friend's apartment, so that was the point that I was like oh my god
I would really have to go back and I had nothing and then I just started running into
Clients that were my old clients from the island and they were like oh, I know this shop that needs a freighter Dominicans
They show me so much love out here. It was arrived like I was flooded every day
I
Kept practicing like this doing different family members heads and by the time. I got to like the seventh grade. I was charging $25
And you could come to my house on Friday and have your braids done by Saturday
So it still took a day, but it was okay, and it was only $25, so he can't beat that right
No, we charge like $10
$15 was like a crazy design and
Everybody was just coming to my house
I've had clients since I was 11 or 12 because my mother couldn't do my hair
So it was like do your own hair go to your aunt's that they're not available you look crazy
Or you figure it out sunday afternoons my mom was braiding my hair, and it was torture
I didn't enjoy the experience and I said to the polite version
That I didn't like what she didn't she said glad I could go and do it yourself. I was like of course
I'm gonna go and do it myself so I did my own request and started learning how to lock and twist on the mop heads
On the tassels that fringing on the carpet
And I learned how to blow dry with a broken
Hairdryer and a fork and that's how I started to get the texture and work it for you
I did have a lot of times where
Braids was like the last resort like the only thing that I had to fall back on
I would have had to have caught a client in in order to pay a bill or things of that
So I'm so grateful for the talent
It's got my family out of a lot of tough tough tough
Situations the freedom of being able to say this is my business
This is my culture and not have to kind of assimilate to American
norms for black women in particular
however
We look we are not going to look like we're white which is always going to be what the ideal is in pop culture
in the media in
political debates and political conversations and everywhere you turn the ideal is based on something that we do not look like
Historically we had this whole
Melting pot idea that people were going to come here and preserve their own cultures and function and be active citizens in the US
but part of that was the
requirement or the
undertone of you're going to assimilate to work in our particular environment during the great migration
As a lot of black people were leaving the south and moving to northern cities braided hair on adults was seen as this
Country old fashioned way of styling hair and the idea is that if you're moving to the city if you want it --hair that looked
cosmopolitan and sophisticated and for women that meant straight hair so there was a
moving away of braided hair because you didn't look citified a lot of that has to do with in our
contemporary context of why we see there being kind of real consequences for
african-american women
who wear their hair and braids or whether their hair locks or decide to do any other style that does not conform to a
Eurocentric standard of beauty the first time
Braids or cornrows in particular were seen and popularized by a non black person was with bo Derek in
1979 she was a not very well known actress who got cast in the movie 10
It's a 10-minute part her husband who was also her manager
Wanted to make sure that it could be used as a springboard for her getting famous, so she was a young blonde woman
coming out of the water with these long blonde cornrows and
the style took off so much that if you start looking at magazines from
1979 like Newsweek they start calling them go braids that was suddenly when they started being called beautiful and
Acceptable there were also salons setting up just to do bow braids on white women in
1979 charging anywhere from three to five hundred dollars and letting the women know that it would
Probably only lasts a few days because of the texture of white hair compared to the texture of most black
people's hair a black woman getting cornrows
That's her style for way more than three days and in
1979 it was absolutely not costing a black woman three to five hundred dollars to get her hair cornrowed
They were also seen as being really exotic
There's nothing exotic about the hair style being worn by scores of other non exotic
American black people in the 50s especially by the 60s there were always currents of black women particularly on college
campuses and on both coasts who cornrowed their hair and
By the late 60s and early 70s the style had really caught on
It was on television if you think of Kim fields on facts of life and Janet Jackson on good times
They often wore their hair in
Two braids for me was so important to see someone who looked like me on television and braids were the things that
Connected us outside of just being black girls on TV Brandi and Moishe who added justice I remember seeing
Patra Alicia Keys started the backwards raids which was so cool everybody had a breeze
It was like the thing in hip-hop in general. You know what I mean even in in basketball
I ever sing came out with the braids the Iverson is like everybody wanted to add worsens
Everybody when I wanted I ever since your mother wanted to I ever said anybody wanted. I ever said you know
What you see is there's this kind of glorification for
african-american women's beauty something that's raving across but for
african-american women who wear cornrows there are
Significant consequences for wearing just that style soon after both Derrick popularized
cornrows there was a court case in 1981 a
discrimination suit filed by a black woman named Renee Rodgers
She'd worked for American Airlines
And she wore her hair in cornrows her legal argument was that her
Hairstyle was a part of her cultural heritage the judge
ruled against her in federal court because he said she got her hair done soon after the movie ten came out and
Therefore there was no legal basis for saying it was cultural heritage because she was doing something that essentially was
imitating how Bo Derek's out her hair there are many cases where women went with braids or
with natural hair and that wasn't seen as professional because they were expected to
Socialize and assimilate to white American cultural norms, I came into the restaurant
I had black braids with like this color
And you know restaurant spec is you have your hair in a ponytail
Pulled back out of your face whatever so I had it all back in like alone. Just regular Dutch braids hanging
I saw like the management's I I to me like throughout my shift throughout the day they sat me down
And he's like you know I want to talk to you about your hair, and I'm like what about it
I'm thinking it might be a little too
Too too ethnic for the restaurant is there a way we can tone it down
tone it down
Like how do you want me to tone down my braids you know?
I said you know what I'm sorry, but I won't be taking my hair down you have any other suggestions. He goes well
I'm gonna have to contact corporate and see how we can handle this because I just don't think his restaurants thick okay
Then next day he told me I didn't have to come in for my shift
it's because there's this general understanding that if you want a black person to appear scary or
Not like fitting in with quote unquote American values is to show us with natural textured hair the running joke now at that restaurant
Since I've opened the braid bar
Over half of his staff gets their hair braided here all the white girls there even white girls their info locks people
Tell me like oh I gotta get my hair braided
But I got to take it off Monday because it's not corporate you know
For work or the kids gotta come fight because they got a party on Saturday
But I gotta take the braids off for school. How do breeze affect?
education or my
productivity at work decades after Bo Derek was responsible for
completely whitewashing the cultural heritage of cornrows via the Kardashians today doing the same thing with
Cornrows and other braided styles, I'm offended it offended me like tremendous that you're straight-up stealing. I give credit where it's due
It's an outrage like you're calling these boxer braids. No these are corn rolls. It's not a no trend
They've been killing it innovating it in Africa for years boxer braids
Whatever the fuck those are they're actually really shitty braids to
Anybody that knows anything about braids will tell you that those were bad braids I know I've been in braids all my life I can
Tell you at least thirty years of it ain't new I've never known a day a time without braids
It's the audacity to confidently name something that you did not create that has existed for years
That's something that's problematic correct
They just say like you know what we didn't come up with that, but it's cool like we like it
But this is not ours. You know we didn't come up with this. I was so bitter
I was telling people if you call me to book an appointment for box of rape good luck on your appointment
Thank you, and I get it
It's deeply offensive that people who have made so much money off of taking these parts of black culture and appropriating them
Would not even get the correct terminology
Behind them to just describe what they've appropriated when things are coming into a high fashion realm, and they are
Magically something really cool and people that are upper-class can wear them, and you know be cool and edgy
it's just kind of like a slap in the face to the people who were told they ghetto and
Nasty looks when they were wearing it
I do get offended when you see box braids been labeled as X Y Zed in a fashion
That is not in its most authentic self because it's suppressing my culture which too often gets suppressed so at least when you are
Trying to globalize it come correct
That's all because cultural appropriation is more of an open conversation
I think that people have kind of chilled and a lot of people are trying to really correct
Themselves so I think that that's good and it gives me hope for the future
Although you may have you know Jack something that you may not have known that much about
Once you've learned that it's tied to a culture and you may have kind of overstepped your bounds a little bit
And you want to correct that then that's fine. You know everybody makes mistakes. I'm an artist I'm a hairdresser
I believe any kind that walks into my space
I should be able to give them anything that they ask for so I often will get those women with Asian hair
European hair ask him for braids
I take that with great pride because they're coming to someone like myself knowing that I am from a culture that understands braids
And they've had braids myself so therefore you you take the lead and you guide them in the most appropriate way to get the best
Of the lot better looking for I think one of the greatest things. That's happened in the last
few years around
Cornrows and braids is how?
It's become the style that we're seeing played with by so many black female celebrities the number of black women that are just so into
braids and natural hair right now is
So great a number that it kind of outweighs that kind of feeble trendy quick gimmick type deal. I love that
It's just taken its place to show that it's just another way to express really beautiful
You