Dear Becky, please don't touch my hair!
A few months ago while at a dance party in Red Hook, a (white) girl asked to touch my hair and grew incensed when I told her that she could not. Since then, it seems that I am constantly having conversations with strangers about physical boundaries. Apparently no one got the memo about keeping their hands to themselves. This is my reminder.
Dear Becky,
No, you cannot touch my hair! I understand that you walked all the way across this crowded dance floor just to tell how much you love my crowning afro - and I thank you for that, but now that I see your little fingers inching towards my head, twitching with desire to touch my tight curls, I'm going to have to stop you.
Why? Well, first off all (though hardly the most important reason here), you're going to mess it up. Rule number one of curly hair care is that once it's styled, you cannot touch it without risking major frizz. And just like you, I came to the club tonight to be seen, so I'd rather not look a mess.
But it's not about being disheveled. I can always compensate for that with my other assets. The real reason you can't touch my hair (and I can't believe I have to say this) is because I'm not chattel standing on an auction block. If I were, we'd be having a very different conversation - or more realistically no conversation at all. Under those circumstances, you would have free reign to poke and prod my body, feeling my supple breasts, muscular thighs and firm buttocks the same way you would inspect any livestock before purchase. And of course, under those circumstances, you would have all the freedom in the world to touch my wooly hair as you please. But thankfully after many painful, hard-fought decades, we have evolved past these times, so please don't try to bring me back with your ridiculous request.
Oh yes, I went there. But Becky, you started. You may not think it's a race thing when you ogle my hair and ask to pet me like an animal, but let me tell you, it most certainly is. I would never walk up to you and ask to touch your stringy hair just because it is different from mine. Not only do I not want to, I know that it is wrong. But unfortunately when it comes to black women, we have been objectified, "festishized" and "exoticized" for so long that few people know where their curiosity should politely end.
Now Becky don't feel bad. I have this problem with my friends too - the very people with whom I should be comfortable letting my hair down. A few years ago, at a pool party in Connecticut, conversation nearly stopped when I jumped in the pool and emerged with a wet afro, the likes of which none of these white girls had ever seen. Not only did everyone ask to touch my hair, I was subject to a few insisting on resting their heads on top of mine since it was so much like a pillow in its new state.
Since going natural (that is, since I stopped poisoning my body with chemical hair straighteners to get "white girl hair"), I seem to have a conversation about my hair almost every day. People ask how often I wash it, whether I can use a regular comb, what would happen if I used an afro pick, whether or not I use a tiny curling iron for my spirals, what I do when I go to sleep, how long it is when I pull a spiral straight... The questions are endless, but the conversation is always the same - one of being different. And while there is nothing wrong with a little variety to spice up our lives, my being different does not give you the right to lay your hands on me. I mean, if that were the case, you might as well call over your father, brother and uncle to rape me in a tool shed.
I never thought I was making a political or even a fashion statement when I decided to wear m hair like this. I'm just another girl trying to look my best rocking what God and Mother Nature gave me. I don't always love my hair (I, too, have bad hair days) and sometimes I get caught up thinking about the fact that I haven't had a boyfriend since I stopped straightening my hair. That may be a coincidence, but it's probably not. Most of us (and in this case I mean all women) in our natural states are considered a little less beautiful, a little less put together. But the liberation of not having to spend my Saturday mornings in a beauty salon getting a "wash and set" is worth sometimes feeling like a second class beauty. At the very least I am free to walk in the rain without an umbrella or jump in the ocean without a second thought about messing up my 'do. But on nights like this when you protest my not letting you touch my hair, you are taking away that freedom.
So, unless you're my hairdresser or a man with whom I am sharing an intimate moment (because who doesn't like a little hair pulling?), please get your motherf*cking fingers out of my hair...okay?
Thank you, Rebecca.