White Girl Hair Envy: Dissecting the Disorder

I remember being a young girl and loving blond hair. Not just loving it, being obsessed with it. Despite having a Black Barbie, my favorite one—the one who drove the Pink Corvette, was head of the dream house, got the guy and all the prettiest outfits—was my blonde Barbie. Her name was Jennifer and she embodied everything I wanted to be—everything society told me I should be. In my young mind, the grass would not only be greener on the other side as a White girl, the air would be cleaner, the people nicer, the cars fancier and the houses grander. Life would be perfect.

Yes, Lisa Turtle was a babe, but what young girl
didn't want to be Kelly Kapowski?

It’s no coincidence that many Black girls exposed to Western society grow up having “White girl hair envy.” While the 90s was a great period of diversity (oh hey, Power Rangers), the most desirable characters and the main protagonists of our favorite shows were pretty White girls. Their hair would swing every time they turned their heads, they could twist it around their fingers for days and boys could run their hands through it without getting snagged. The commercials depicted (and still do) beautiful White women as the final product: what you should look like if you use the proper shampoos, eat the right foods, drive the right cars and shop at the right places.

As a young girl, I couldn’t fathom what these images were subconsciously doing to my ripening psyche. I couldn’t have reconciled that the reason I was Team Monica instead of Team Brandy was because Monica looked closer to the White standard that I had been brainwashed to put on a pedestal. Growing up, I thought my hair was the absolute worst. My mom would put my hair in these stiff African braids that I was too embarrassed to show at school and so it was with agonizing elation that I accepted my first relaxer. Even getting braids was a thrill for me as I got to swing my head when I walked so that my hair would sway from side to side like a White girl’s.

Me with my baby curls.

But if you would have told me then that I’d finally come to embrace my natural hair texture, Jennifer and I would have laughed in your face. This acceptance is sadly very recent. Just a couple of months ago I learned to accept—nay, love—my hair the way it looks even after I’ve sweated out the effects of the flatiron. Because now, I’m not alone when I walk out of my house and face the world with my mini-fro. I see other girls proudly sporting their natural hairstyles, so much so that Black hairstyles have even become a trend among the White community.

“Traditionally women would think of braids as a kind of thoughtless hairstyle,” hairstylist Ted Gibson was quoted saying in a recent piece by the New York Times. “Now they’ve crossed over to the fashion space.”

Last week, the Times ran a piece about braids and the recent spike in the popularity of this hairstyle among all women. While braids have been popular in the Black community for centuries, the article (written by a Black woman) attributed the recent mainstreaming of braids to its appearance on the runways of hit designers like Alexander Wang and Viktor & Rolfe. It also recognized the “history” of braids as being synonymous with a “bohemian flair,” citing examples like Bo Derek and Willie Nelson. What they failed to acknowledge, however, was that the history of braids dates back centuries, the earliest occurrence being in Africa, according to Refinery29.

Me with my protective-hairstyle braids
…and post-workout sweat.

This isn’t to say that White people are appropriating our hairstyles, but that we, too, have hair that other races like to emulate. While we spend so much time, money and effort into getting our hair bone straight, plenty of White, Hispanic and Asian girls (and guys) have spent the same amount of effort trying to get their hair curly and voluminous via methods like perms.

“I think there’s more of an acceptance [of natural hair] outside of Black America than there is within Black America,” says educator Kierra Bussey. Having recently cut off almost all of her hair, Bussey’s new hairstyle has been embraced more from her White counterparts than even members of the Black community. After a lifetime of searing hot combs and scorching relaxers trying to achieve a more European look, she recently decided enough was enough and chopped it all off.

 “I come from the perspective of my mother being biracial and having straighter hair than me,” says Bussey. “When it got wet, it didn’t kink up like mine, and when it dried, it didn’t turn into a fro like mine. If I want my hair straight like hers, it more than likely means I have to damage it.”

Although her mother never wanted her to get relaxers, she’d take her to get hair straightened frequently, not knowing herself how to care for her daughter’s hair texture. After years of putting herself through the torture many of us Black girls know all too well, she decided she wanted to know what it was like to be comfortable in her own skin and describes the process of embracing her natural hair as an emotional one (in a positive way).

Beautiful photo courtesy of the regal
Kierra Bussey.

“I think we’ve become so attached to our physical appearance,” says Bussey. “Imagining ourselves outside of that realm frightens us. It’s important to remember that straight hair is not oppressed hair, it’s just your preference. But not loving your natural hair is what bothers me.”

I got rid of my Barbies a long time ago, but the caste system I created in that world still haunted me for a long time to come and, to be honest, it still creeps up on me occasionally. Just the other day, I spent 10 hours in the salon trying to figure out how to style my new natural hair and all I could think was, man, if I were a White girl, I’d just be in and out. But my hairdresser refused to let me carry on those thoughts. She reminded me that our hair incites just as much envy from others as anyone else’s. We have just as much to be proud of as any other race. Woven into our hair are history, culture, struggle, beauty and perseverance. Think about that the next time someone tries to convince you that the grass is greener on the other side.

kNOw Justice, kNOw Peace

Oh, I was going to get to this sooner or later. I held my tongue when Lupe came out with "Bitch Bad," a song that was supposed to hold a mirror up to Black society and preach about the abomination it's turning into, but was instead met with "Oh, shut up, Lupe." I didn't say a damn thing about the ignorant backlash regarding "Hunger Games" star Amandla Stenberg (a mulatta) playing the part of Rue, who readers had (mistakenly) thought was a precious White girl. Enough is quite enough.

Amandla Stenberg

Before you proceed, please heed this caveat and abstain from getting the idea that I am lumping any race into one category. When I say Whites, I am speaking of a very specific group of White people: those who perpetuate intolerance and/or ignorance. Back to your scheduled program.

On Sunday, Jamie Foxx was presented with the 2013 Generation Award at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards (which I don't go out of my way to catch anymore). As he walked onstage, he gave the cameras, and the world, a clear shot of his t-shirt: an homage to Trayvon Martin and the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. Above a big portrait of Martin were the words "kNOw Justice" and below the photo the words "kNOw Peace." Surrounding Martin's massive portrait were smaller photos of the children who perished at Sandy Hook. 

The backlash was immediate and unfiltered. People (specifically, White people) on Twitter were pissed. How dare he wear a controversial Black face so proudly near his heart? What nerve he had to make Martin's face bigger than the innocent (mostly White) children. The audacity that he can't just let it go, that he's standing in solidarity with an important face of the Black struggle, the Black injustice, the Black truth.

Jamie Foxx at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards

Because that's always been a problem, right? It's seen as unity and comradeship when Asians help their fellow Asians, when Hispanics look out for their fellow Hispanics and when Whites support their White brothers and sisters. But when Blacks have each other's backs, we're being exclusive. We're racist. It's a problem. It's scary. That's why we've always been divided, isn't it? They love seeing us fight each other. They bring out their popcorn and enjoy the show, the gaping fissure they've created that causes tension, even hatred, among Blacks. The second we start getting along and banding together, we must be stopped. Stopped before we become too powerful. Before our voices are heard and the truth rings free, out in the open.

Some of the tweets that were publicized in reaction to Foxx's statement t-shirt were just ignorant and others were downright hateful and meant to be degrading. It doesn't surprise me that racial tensions are at an all-time high. In fact, according to a Huffington Post article I read a while back, the percentage of White racists today is higher than it was right before Obama was elected into office. Now, don't get me wrong, we've come a long way. And I have tons of White friends who couldn't care less about race. But in this day and age, we should be a little further along than we are collectively.

Then again, we are in the age of the Internet. Where people are free to say as they please. I believe what these people do is put out this vitriol under the cloak of anonymity just to ruffle feathers, just because they can. But they spend so much time doing so, they really begin to get sucked into the contempt they put out; they become the hate they create. Perhaps so much so, that they begin to live the atrocity that they had previously preached only for a reaction.

Most of the tweets that were highlighted in the article referred to Martin as a "thug," a "nigger" and a "criminal" who got what he deserved and was rightfully wasted from this world so that he could no longer carry out crimes that CLEARLY all Black men exclusively are bound to commit. They even called Foxx a racist who "wouldn't be wearing that shirt if Trayvon Martin were white." Again, standing up for each other is "racist." Would Jamie Foxx have worn that shirt if Trayvon Martin had been White? Honestly, probably not. Not because he's a racist, but because of the cultural significance the Trayvon Martin case had in America.

Just some of the Twitter backlash in response to
Foxx's shirt (Photo courtesy of Public Shaming Tumblr)

Black culture is riddled with adages made popular by 90s hip-hop like "fuck the police" and "the White man's always trying to keep the brothers down." Of course, many people have chosen to turn a blind eye to the injustices done to African Americans both through individual racism and systematic racism. These ideas have been brushed off as conspiracy theories and excuses made by the Black community to justify their servile standing in society. Imagine the guilt that would befall White people if they had to admit that the system was really designed so that Black people have to work ten times harder just to have a remote chance at the American dream. It's comfortable to live in ignorance. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss. 

If we didn't flip the channel every time a poor child in tattered clothing in a third world country showed up on the TV screen, we'd be forced to think about the things we take for granted everyday. We'd have no choice but to rot inside at the thought of living our hedonistic, gluttonous, ostentatious lifestyles. So it's comfortable not to know. Because there's a certain discomfort that arises, a guilt, if you will, when our actions don't match our beliefs. This feeling of unease is cognitive dissonance. In order to alleviate this vexation, we pretend we don't know so that we don't have to readjust the way we live to match what we actually do know to be the right thing. 

Trayvon Martin wasn't harming anyone. Nor did he have any intent to harm anyone. What he may or may not have done at any point before that night had nothing to do with the fact that he was merely walking down the street minding his own business. What happened could have been avoided had George Zimmerman followed police instructions and stayed put. The consequences of his actions exposed on a national scale what Black people had been saying all along: we're targeted simply for being Black and in the wrong place. In a place we are not welcome.

Yet still, while most of America conceded that his murder was undeniably wrong, certain people sought any reason to demonize Martin. They dug up any dirt they could to assuage the guilt of witnessing the slaughter of a teenage boy who was armed with nothing but a few snacks. Rather than calling him a "guy," "young man" or a "person," they refer to him as "thug," "nigger," "criminal." Anything that takes away his humanity and replaces it with bestiality. And they wonder why Black people get so riled up about this.

One of my favorite books is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, about a Black man trying to find his way in a society that consistently degrades him until he is forced to become a recluse and live outside the law. From that book comes one of my favorite lines: "To whom can I  be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?" A perfect example of what sociologists refer to as the labeling theory. If you tell someone they are something enough, eventually, they will believe it and become the very thing you've labeled them as. You tell a woman she's ugly enough, no matter how scientifically beautiful she actually is, she will begin to see ugly every time she looks at herself. 

This is what Black people have succumbed to. So long have we been told we're not good enough, we're not worthy, we're not beautiful, we can't make it, being brutish is in our nature, that we actually start to believe it. Many of us either stop trying, dumb ourselves down, act out violently or start trying to live up to White standards of perfection. For example, Nicki Minaj, who fancies herself a "Barbie" and models her look after a European aesthetic (blond hair, blue contacts, light make-up, etc.). So essentially, White people paint a picture of who they think we are, we subconsciously live up to it, and they're provided with more ammunition to say "I told you so." It's like asking someone repeatedly to slap you in the face and then getting upset when they actually do it.

Great quote from a very wise man (Photo courtesy of
Interracial Dating Facebook)

When is it going to be okay for us to stick up for each other? We've been pitted against one another for so long because they fear that when we stand together, we will become a force. We will be powerful beyond measure. But we've bought into it. Light skin vs. dark skin, Black Americans vs. Africans vs. Haitians, upper class vs. lower class. We divide ourselves up into any category we can squeeze ourselves into. It has to be okay for us to come together. It's not a matter of gathering an army so that we can take over, but so that we can merely stand next to our brothers and sisters of all races and ethnicities in equality without any struggles for power and superiority.

I wish I could relay that message to these Internet gangsters. These people who feel so safe behind the veil of a computer screen that they can so easily spit quick, reckless, spontaneous bits of venom that spread like wildfire and become immortalized in the vast abyss of the World Wide Web. But I know many of them are far too proud, too resistant, too set in their ways to listen to reason. But I want them to know anyway, that we will continue to wear these bold displays of support for all of our brethren who have been wronged, be they Black, White, Asian, Green, Red or Blue. If there is no justice, there will be no peace. And until we know justice, we cannot know peace.