Hair Wars

As summer approaches, I know that I have to deal with it. I can’t put it off much longer. I can’t ignore it. Ignoring it only emphasizes my total lack of ability to deal with the issue.

It’s hair. The black woman’s Kryptonite.  More specifically, it’s my daughter’s hair.

I must confess that I threw in the towel regarding my own hair about five years ago, when I decided to stop “relaxing” my hair. (This was even before I watched the Chris Rock documentary Good Hair, which, honestly, would only have hastened my decision.)  I would twist my now natural, unprocessed hair using moisturizing lotion, leave it that way for a week in what I admit were adorable little curly- cues, then untwist them for a week, letting it volumize into it frothy Chaka Khan goodness. After a while, I just stopped untwisting it, shampooed it, and let it “loc.” With a little help from a friend (namely, dividing each loc into manageable, even portions), I committed to the whole loc experience and just let it grow. I no longer look like an extra from Roots, The Miniseries; I can now gather my hair back into an elegant, thick ponytail, professional enough for the courtroom.

One of my first thoughts when the doctor held my hand and gently told me about my cancer diagnosis was, I’ve spent four years growing my locs to shoulder-length – and I won’t look good bald. I don’t have a bald-head head. . . . Fortunately, this go-round with cancer didn’t require chemo, so I get to keep my hair at least until it recurs. I’ve become a little vain about it, I suppose, if only because I now don’t hate my hair so much.

It’s a curious detente between me and my hair, an uneasy alliance: if you agree not to make me look stupid, I promise not to shave you off into a paper bag. I even embrace my grays, having earned them.

But now I have a daughter, and she, too, has hair.  Scooby has inherited either her maternal grandmother’s Caucasion genes, or her maternal grandmother’s Chinese genes. At any rate, her hair is curly and long, thick as a briar patch, and it is her worst enemy.

This goes beyond the “good hair/bad hair” debate. No, this is about her identity as a girl. Given the choice, she’d go to the same barbershop as her brothers do – and get the same cut (buzzed to the scalp, so there’s only a faint shadow to suggest where the hair goes.) This is the girl who, at five years old, took the sharp scissors to her front curly cues and cut them off because they were flopping in her eyes. When reprimanded by her grandmother, her response was, “Well, maybe we can just cut the rest off, too.”

I send her off to school looking, in my mom’s words, like a ragamuffin, her hair inartfully pulled back in an uneven ponytail, wisps already escaping at the front. Consumed by guilt, I just don’t have the energy to contemplate struggling with her head for an hour every night, listening to her tortured, however exaggerated, cries. Long gone are the days of tiny braids held down by colorful barettes and plastic balls attached by elastic bands. Her full head of hair demands tight French braids or a pattern of corn-rows just to get through the school week.

I’ve had teachers send diplomatically worded notes home: I’d be happy to do Scooby’s hair during our rest period . . ., or Here’s my number if you want to bring her over on the weekend . . . . I read them as saying, You’re a terrible parent of a girl; let an expert take over. I’ve written notes myself, asking daycare teachers not to braid her hair in such tiny plaits; I just don’t have the six hours to spend to delicately pick out each and every pencil-thin braid.

I want her to look good; I really do. But I don’t want her to have the ridiculous obsession with hair that her six-year-old friends are already developing. I’ve heard conversations among her friends about the amount of time they’ve spent in the salon getting their weaves. You’re a smart girl, a  good girl, a pretty girl and a strong girl, I say to bolster her self-image. I don’t add, as my mom did – and still does on occasion – if you would just do something with your head.

She’s all of those things without conditions. She’s just not a girly-girl. She’s Calamity Jane; she’s Amelia Earhart – she couldn’t give a toss about pink and dresses and anything frou-frou. She refused to play with the Barbie she got for a gift until her brother pointed out that Barbie was just another action figure, like Max Steel. I love that about her. It’s just that sometimes she does look like a little brown Q-tip. And that’s my fault. My braiding is off-center; my schedule is too crammed; and I’m just too intimidated by the wild, ornery, gorgeous thickness that is my daughter’s crowning glory.

I think this is another one of those times when, as a mom, I’ll just have to swallow my pride, crush that long-held dream of being able to do all things wonderfully, and take her to the salon every six weeks. I’ll concede defeat as the stylist surveys the tangles (and lint) on top of Scooby’s head with a judgmental eye. I’ll bribe her with ice cream to sit still in the chair. And I’ll smile as she looks at me uncertainly when the chair swings around and tell her that she is even more handsome (she doesn’t like the word “beautiful”) than she was when she came in – and that was way hard to do.

Oh, I’m trying so hard not to be defined by my hairstyle, as I don’t want Scooby to be. I want her to navigate this world with her head held high. I guess I’ll just have to take the steps I need to make sure that head is well-coifed.

Or maybe I’ll just give in and let the barber shave her head.