Chris Rock’s hairy question

Good Hair, a new documentary from comedian Chris Rock, explores the nature of black hair care while also challenging its audience to determine “good” hair from “bad.”

The film, which discusses relaxers, pieces and weaves, addresses a long-lasting and unresolved issue in the black community: Do the pressures for black women to attain straight, cascading hair originate from practicality and preference, or does the trend just represent a whitewashed and deep-seated bed of racially charged insecurities and envy?

Rock’s initial motivation for this film was to offer solace and self-worth to his daughter, who asked him why she didn’t have “good hair.” But Rock’s ultimate goal was to turn people away from their dependency on false hair to feel beautiful, which he attempts through a series of interviews with a diverse range of people, from actresses to a chemist, who demonstrated how the same chemical used in relaxers can also disintegrate an aluminum soda can in just a couple of hours.

But hardly any of his interviewees saw error in their ways.

Nia Long and Raven Simone, two of the most referenced interviewees in the picture, both proudly wear weaves — Simone is even considering starting a weave line of her own. Both actresses had a different opinion about the nature of false hair than the filmmaker’s.

Simone says that her primary goal as part of the film was to help erase stigmas about weaves.

“I want to show people that I’m comfortable with saying that I have a weave and am comfortable to put it out there because I know what I’m doing,” Simone said in an interview.

Long, however, was excited for the chance to candidly address a prevalent yet little-discussed issue among women in the black community.

“[I wanted women to] have dialogues about their hair, have dialogues about what they feel is beautiful, have dialogues about their innermost beauty secrets and their innermost beauty struggles,” Long said.

In Good Hair, Rock prys into the subconscious of his female interviewees to see how the reliance on weaves and relaxers affects self-esteem, but Long and Simone, like many of the others, denied that this reliance had a solid impact on the way they see themselves.

“My self-esteem isn’t changed because underneath my weave, I have very strong, good hair,” Simone explained. “I put [the weave] in so that it can stay strong and good.”

Likewise, Long rejects the idea that her use of false hair is motivated by envy of Caucasian hair, claiming that it’s more practical.

“I’m an actress. I’m a mom. I have to take him on meetings, I have to take him to school — you know there are so many different things that come into play in my world that … I have to be ready for action at any time,” Long said. “It’s just easier having extensions because my hair is not being damaged.”

But it seems that natural hair is just not an option for Hollywood celebrities when in the public eye — even when they feel comfortable with themselves.

“There are people who don’t understand it,” Simone said of being in public with her natural hair. “I got feedback as if ‘she looks like a poodle’ because it’s curly and short.”

Simone and Long seem to take a more lenient standpoint regarding which alterations are and aren’t acceptable for self-beautification.

“Its just, you know some people look in the mirror and they say, ‘You know, listen. I want to look like Beyoncé,’ and your hair might not be long like Beyoncé’s. That doesn’t mean you don’t have good hair,” Simone said. “It just means you have to put some stuff in it so you can look like Beyoncé.”

Although Long and Simone deny that changing their hair texture is any matter of race, actress and interviewee Tracie Thoms disagrees. In the film, Thoms states that “to keep my hair the same texture that grows out of my head is looked at as revolutionary. Why is that?”

For Simone and Long, empowerment comes not from the acceptance of your natural self, but in the acceptance of your altered self.

“If you don’t have a lot of hair and you feel like that’s a major issue in your life and you want a hair weave, by all means, if it makes you feel better about yourself, go get it,” Long said.

Simone believes that more than anything, the issue of “good hair” is one of style and not of race.

“I don’t look at people as if, ‘That’s a white person, that’s a black person…’” Simone said. “I just look at people and say, ‘Hey I like her style.’”

This reasoning, however, only leads to the more vague question of whose hair types make for attractive styles. While a white woman sporting an afro still remains a rare case, Long and Simone agrees that people of all races have hair issues, making the themes addressed in Good Hair all the more universal.

“It’s not a black or white thing. It really is a hair thing,” Long said.

Long also believes the use of false hair needs to be a conscious decision.

“My thing is, it shouldn’t just be about the outside. If you’re doing your work on the inside, then the outside becomes far less important because you do feel good about yourself,” she said. “The work really starts there.”

It appears that the movie Rock envisioned and the movie that resulted are two very different products. While Rock set out to make his daughter feel more comfortable in her own skin, the majority of the female celebrities involved pushed for acceptance of the artificial.

“It’s the way it is,” Simone said.

“Appreciate everything about us — whether your hair is yours, a weave, whatever — so that we can embrace who we are,” Long added.