The first time comedian Chris Rock saw his then 5-year-old daughter Lola enviously gush about a white friend’s long blond hair, it felt like a punch to the gut.
“You ever see a kid fall down, and the parent screams, and the kid wasn’t even thinking about crying, but now the kid is compelled to cry? It was the same thing,” says Rock. “I was like, ‘Ooo!’ I kind of flinched. But I knew at that moment to play it low, like, ‘Your hair is great. Wanna get some ice cream?’ ”
Watching the inferiority that black women have traditionally felt about their hair creep into his daughter at such a young age, Rock channeled his concern into a two-year cinematic journey, examining and documenting black women’s feelings about their hair and the $9 billion hair-care business it supports.
The result is the documentary “Good Hair,” opening Friday. It’s a candid and hilarious look at the often-
bizarre aspects of an industry that’s far more pervasive than many realize.
Much of the film, which includes interviews with everyday people at hair salons and celebrities such as Al Sharpton, Raven-Symoné and Maya Angelou, focuses on two aspects of black hair care: relaxers and weaves.
Hair relaxer, made from sodium hydroxide and commonly referred to as “creamy crack” for the way hair gets hooked on it, is the chemical that many black women (and some men, like Sharpton) use to straighten their hair to give them “good hair.”
“The whiter, the brighter, the better,” actress Nia Long says in the film. “There’s always this pressure in the black community that if you have good hair, you’re prettier than the brown-skinned girl with the afro or the dreads or the natural hairstyle.”
Rock shows how good hair demands a price, both monetary and physical. Relaxer can cause an excruciating burning sensation on your scalp.
Sandra “Pepa” Denton from Salt-N-Pepa admits in the film that her unique, one-side-shaved hairstyle in the group’s early years came about because the hair on that side of her head burned off when her relaxer was left on too long.
And when Rock asks a scientist — who’s unfamiliar with relaxer — about sodium hydroxide, the man is shocked and dismayed to learn that people put it on their scalps. He shows how the chemical burns directly through chicken skin, and how when a soda can is soaked in it for four hours, the can evaporates. Ouch.
But people are willing to endure the pain that Ice-T refers to as a “torture session” for the chance to rid themselves of “nappy” hair, including actress Tracie Thoms, who recalls in the film how after using the chemical hair straightener for the first time, she thought, “Now, I’m pretty.”
While women are the primary users, men have dabbled as well, and Rock says that hearing the horror stories of the celebrities he interviewed gave him a small sense of relief.
“It’s comforting to know that all their scalps burnt just like mine as a kid,” says Rock, whose hair experiments over the years have taken many forms.
“I had everything,” he says. “I had the Jheri curl, the S-curl and whatever that thing Malcolm X had. You gotta remember — before the Obamas, the Jacksons were the first black family, and they had a lot of chemicals in their hair. So whatever they had in their hair, that’s what we had in ours.”
“Good Hair” also addresses the weave, a shockingly expensive apparatus that uses actual human hair to give the wearer’s natural hair a fuller appearance. Black women give the style the same level of dedication Jon Gosselin shows Ed Hardy T-shirts.
Weaves, which can be attached to cornrows on the head or to a net that covers the user’s real hair, cost $1,000 and up, and require frequent costly maintenance.
One woman interviewed in the film already had her next weave on layaway, and another admitted to spending around $18,000 a year on them. The weave is so important that one salon patron had flown from Colorado to New York just to have her weave done by a stylist she trusts.
An interesting result of this fanaticism is that men can never put their hands through — or even touch — a black woman’s hair, since it would get caught in the weave. Rock has said that when he dated white, Puerto Rican or Asian women during his single days, he was so enraptured with touching their hair that it’s as if his hands were “thirsty.”
“I did date a few girls, when I was single, that I could put my hands through their hair. A couple,” he says. “I put my hands through Oprah’s hair on TV the other day, and I don’t think my hand had been through a woman’s hair in 20 years.”
The epicenter of black haircare activity is the Bronner Bros. Hair Show in Atlanta. A trade show with more than 100,000 attendees, the twice-annual event culminates in the Hair Battle, a series of elaborate production numbers during which stylists cut hair accompanied by scantily clad dancers, music, and sometimes even stunts, for the chance to win $20,000.
At the 2007 Hair Battle that Rock filmed for “Good Hair” one contestant styled someone’s hair while submerged under water, and another did so hanging upside-down.
“The first time I saw it, it was like, did you ever watch ESPN and see a new sport, like guys throwing barrels, or something,” says Rock. “It’s like, ‘Wow. I didn’t know there was a barrel-throwing sport.’ Well, this was the Super Bowl of hair cutting.”
While the film focuses on black women, since filming, Rock has realized how the obsession with hair extends to all women.
“Women are just into their hair,” he says. “I was all over the country, and beauty parlors all over the country, of all nationalities, are packed. Black women get weaves, and white women dye their hair blond. There are so many roots out there on any given day.”
Which means that the most important thing Rock learned in his travels is that making his young daughter feel at ease with her natural hair might just be impossible.
“It’s a journey she’s gonna have to take,” he says, “and hopefully she comes out of it feeling good about herself.”