Frizzy hair: why Meghan Markle's straightening pisses me off
Celebrities of African descent who straighten their hair perpetuate the idea that a black or mixed race woman must bow to white beauty standards to be accepted.
Last weekend, like many people, I moaned about the suffocating media ubiquity of the princely wedding. And then, like many people, I still rushed to the article Here, which revealed the white dress finally chosen by the lucky chosen of Prince Harry. It is true that she is beautiful, Meghan Markle. Besides, for once, she looks a little bit like me (okay, I said "a little bit") since I have mixed skin and so does she. The arrival of an Afro-descendant in the British royal family did not fail to feed the pages of the newspapers by giving a progressive flavor to the aristocratic ceremony. Still, with her superbly aligned white teeth and impeccably sleek American actress hair, I can see that there is an aesthetic divide between Meghan and me.
What was my surprise, suddenly, to discover in yet another catch-click Facebook post more or less correlated to marriage a video of ten-year-old Meghan Markle, denouncing the sexism of advertising on a Nickelodeon program. Her angelic face is the same but her hair is frizzy and tied back. Here she looks a lot more like the millions of little black and mixed-race girls who, in the playground, dream of having the same soft, shiny locks as their blue-eyed blonde girlfriends.
In colonial times, mocking African hair was used to demean slaves
Meghan Markle is of course not the only one to take over the straight-haired injunction from Western society. Even artists who define themselves as feminists and committed to the black cause, such as Beyoncé or Rihanna, have long worn only peroxidized Brazilian wigs or straightening (hello baby RiRi in Unfaithful). So many models who push black and mixed-race women to transform their hair using methods that are often harmful to the scalp such as chemical relaxers or straighteners.
It must be said that the stigma of frizzy or curly hair stems from a distant heritage. In colonial times, mocking African hair was used to demean slaves. Much more recently, in the 1970s, during apartheid in South Africa, the “pencil test” involved putting a pencil in people's hair to determine their race. If the stick fell, the candidates were considered "Métis" and gained privileges that the "blacks", whose frizzy hair held the pencil, did not have. Even today, it is not uncommon to hear that natural hair is not "professional" and that it is best to straighten it before a job interview.
In this context, how to interpret Michelle Obama's decision not to reveal her frizzy hair until after her husband's term in the White House has ended? In her book Hair Story, untangling the roots of black hair in America (“Hair story, disentangling the roots of black hair in America”) journalist Lori L. Tharps believes that Americans were certainly ready to welcome a black first lady, but all the same, not wearing an afro. During Barack Obama's first campaign, a New Yorker cartoon showed the Democratic candidate disguised as bin Laden and Michelle Obama in military attire and natural hair. For Lori Tharps, this front page illustrates the prejudice that associates Afro haircuts with aggressive pro-black activism.
Hair is a highly political subject
On the side of hair separatists, the Nappy movement - a contraction of the English words “natural” and “happy” which is also a pejorative term meaning “frizzy” in American English - has been very successful in the United States since the 2000s. advocates a return of natural hair, in all its forms: afros, vanilla, braids or even dreadlocks. But no more straighteners and other torture tools that alter the nature of the hair.
This year, in France, Aude Livoreil-Djampou, a doctor in chemical engineering with L'Oréal, fought for the creation of a national hairdressing diploma specializing in frizzy, frizzy and curly hair. Textures largely ignored by the formations of hexagonal hairdressers. “In Europe, people from diverse backgrounds are stricken with social invisibility, because they are not represented in prestigious trades, state functions, the media or the arts,” explains the engineer to me, “but he There is also a physical invisibility in the realm of beauty. For the creator of a salon dedicated to all types of hair (the Ana’e studio in Paris), these two invisibilities go hand in hand and make hair an eminently political subject. "This is particularly impactful for children who, failing to see themselves in representations of beauty, may find themselves" less beautiful "or" less accepted ". Without role models to project themselves, professionally and personally, their aspirations and dreams are less ambitious. "
But for the professional, there is no question of stigmatizing a woman for her individual choices, Princess of England or not. “In general I find it quite annoying that I always tell women how to style their hair or dress. We do not spend as much time commenting on what men do, ”slice Aude Livoreil-Djampou. While there is no question of blaming her for her hair preferences - everyone does their hair or dress as they please - the Duchess of Sussex despite herself symbolizes, with her new status, the weight of the dominant model.
The "Nappy" and the English prince
Fortunately, in popular culture things are changing and black stars are deciding on their own to show off their natural hair. Like Twelve Years a Slave actress Lupita Nyong'o who recently challenged Grazia magazine for touching up her hair on the front page of its British edition, singer Alicia Keys who has been claiming a 100% natural look since 2016 or Queen B who has finally brandished her frizzy locks in the face of the world. In cinema, the release of the blockbuster Black Panther took on the air of a revolution. The vast majority of Marvel movie heroes are black, and women have ditched wigs there, when they aren't literally throwing them at the heads of their enemies.
In our country, although the representation of black women on the big screen is still largely insufficient, sixteen actresses, including Aïssa Maïga and Sonia Roland, have just published the book Noire is not my job (Seuil, 2018). They denounce their confinement to stereotypical roles and the racism inherent in the French seventh art. In Cannes, their climb of the stairs with raised fists and natural hair had a hell of a face. For my part, no matter how royally I don't care about the traditions of the British monarchy, I would have liked the little black and mixed-race girls of 2018 to see a "Nappy" and an English prince marry over and over on BFM TV.
