'Glamour' Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate "Don't" - Jezebel
1. does that even look like latifah on the cover??
2. i thought a secret memo went out to everyone - don't tell a black woman what she should/shouldn't do with her hair. period.*
and 3. really, Glamour, really??
[*since i'm always telling folks to pick up a frakking book before asking really stupid questions, here's a selected bibliography on the politics of black hair, taken from Kitchen Tales: Black Hair and the Tension between Individual Subjectivity and Collective Identity, Shawan M. Wade:
Ashe, Bertram D. “Why Don't He Like My Hair?: Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.” African American Review 29.4 (1995): 579-592.
Banks, Ingrid. Hair Matters: Beauty, Power and Black Women's Consciousness. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Benthall, Jonathan, and Ted Polhemus, eds. The Body as a Medium of Expression. London: Allen Lane Penguin Books, 1975.
Bundles, A' Lelia. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. New York: Scribner, 2001.
Byrd, Ayana, and Lori Tharps. Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001.
Cade-Bambara, Toni. The Black Woman: An Anthology. New York: Penguin Books, 1970.
Chinzera, Ayoka. Hairpiece: A Film for Nappy-Headed People. 1982.
Clarke, Cheryl. Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women. Second ed. New York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1983.
Cleage, Pearl. “Hairpeace.” African American Review 27.1 (Spring 1993): 37-42.
Cobbs, William H. and Price M Grier. Black Rage. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968.
Craig, Maxine. “The Decline and the Fall of the Conk; or, How to Read a Process.” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 1.4 (December 1997): 3999-419.
Davis, Angela Y. “Afro Images: Politics, Fashion and Nostalgia.” Critical Inquiry 21 (Autumn 1994): 37-45.
Dent, Gina, ed. Black Popular Culture. Seattle: Bay Press, 1992.
Driskell, Murray and James E Webster. “Beauty as Status.” American Journal of Sociology 89.1 (July 1983): 140-165.
Gates, Henry Louis. “The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black.” Representations 0.24 (Autumn 1988): 129-155.
Gayle, Addison, ed. The Black Aesthetic. Garden City: Double Day and Company, Inc., 1971.
Harris, Juliette, ed. Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories. New York: Pocket Books, 2001.
hooks, bell. “Appearance Obsession: Is the Price too High?” Essence August 1995: 69-73.
hooks, bell. “Back to Black: Ending Internalized Racism.” Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge, 1994. 173-182.
Kelley, Robin D.G. “Nap Time: Historicizing the Afro.” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 1.4 (December 1997): 339-351.
Mercer, Kobena. “Black Hair/Style Politics.” Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Eds. Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Cornel West. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990.
O'Neill, John. Sociology as a Skin Trade. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1972.
Piess, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture. New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company, 1998.
Riggs, Marlon. Black Is, Black Ain't. 1995.
Rooks, Noliwe M. Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
Rushing, Andrea Benton. “Hair-Raising.” Feminist Studies 14.2 (Summer 1988): 325-336.
Sagay, Esi. African Hairstyles: Styles of Yesterday and Today. London: Heinemann, 1983.
Smith, Feilpe. American Body Politics: Race, Gender, and Black Literary Renaissance. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998.
Ture, Kwame and Charles Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Random House, 1967.
Tyler, Bruce M. “Black Hairstyles: Cultural and Socio-political Implications.” The Western Journal of Black Studies 14.4 (1990): 235-250.
Wade-Gayles, Gloria. “The Making of a Permanent Afro.” Pushed Back to Strength: A Black Woman's Journey Home. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Walker, Alice. “Oppressed Hair Puts A Ceiling on the Brain.” Living by the Word. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1988. 69-74.
Ward, Margo Okazawa-Rey and Tracie Robinson and Janie Victoria. “Black Women and the Politics of Skin Color and Hair.” Women Studies Quarterly 14.1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 1986): 13-14.
Welsh-Asante, Kariamu, ed. The African Aesthetic: Keeper of the Traditions. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1993.
White, Shane and Graham White. Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Willis, Susan. “I Shop Therefore I Am: Is there a Place for Afro-American Culture in Commodity Culture?” Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women. Ed. Cheryl A. Wall. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989. 173-195.
Wolfe, George C. “The Hairpiece.” The Colored Museum. New York: Grove Press, 1988. 19-23.
or you can just search 'black hair politics' in google scholar and see for yourself.]
5 comments:
I was looking for the link at Jezebel to the picture with Queen Latifah in it--and then eventually realized that was Queen Latifah in the picture they showed. Holy crap!
I have totally straight, fine, thin hair, and I need not use any chemicals or tools to get it that way. Now, if I want my hair to have body, wave, curl, or height, I'm gonna have to spend time and money and get a perm and use mousse and hairspray but...no. I'll pass.
I once had a coworker, an older woman, who told me that with a perm, "you could really be a looker." Yeah, right, lady.
My sister has the same (lack of) hair texture I have. She has to blow-dry it before it air-dries too much, or it's All Wrong. And then she pulls out a curling iron--a curling iron! Does her hair look better than mine? Do I give a shit?
Plus: Is it deemed acceptable for a black woman to wear her hair shortish and natural as a lawyer? Because that's a sleek, professional, no-nonsense, spending-my-time-writing-briefs-for-your-case hairdo, isn't it? Or does the Glamour editor think that's an Afro no-no?
i think the problem with the Glamour seminar (though why were they even there??) is the black=dreds/afros=political=Other=inappropriate.
when i first started working for a strategic communications firm, our orientation included a presentation on the 5 A's of office attire; i'm sure that i've forgotten some, but they included Accessible, Available, Appropriate and two other A-words that were supposed to ride a fine line between being hired and being fired.
(the presentation even covered what color to paint your toenails during the summer.)
but what the presentation didn't do was call out different ethnic groups for their grooming habits and make them into a signifier for Not White.
dude. whoever this Glamour editor was, they needed to shut up.
Back in my office-bound days, one of my colleagues hired an editorial assistant who was Filipino-American. The young woman's first name was Maria, but she had always gone by the nickname Lulu, short for her middle name. Her boss, a slightly less young white woman, instructed Lulu to sign her business correspondence "Maria L." because the name she was using was "too ethnic." I'm wishing two things: (1) that I had told my colleague or our boss how inappropriate and/or illegal that was, and (2) that I had encouraged Lulu to stand her ground, with support. It blew over within several weeks and she was back to using her preferred name, but I don't know that her boss got a clear message about why her demand was wrong.
After Don Imus’ notorious remark and Glamour Magazine’s editor’s statement that afros are a no-no, nappy hair is about to make new headlines in 2008. This time in an unprecedented positive way: an I-Pageant for unexplored beauty. Miss Nappturality is the first pageant ever to accentuate and explore the beauty of natural African hair. Check going-natural.com
Post a Comment