A 90's Throwback: Gucci Braids, Shirley Temple Curls and a Complicated Freedom

Editor's Note: I wrote this piece in the 1990's for the San Francisco Chronicle. It is a piece near and dear to my heart as it looks at the intersections between mine and my grandmother's lives with black hair. Enjoy!

"WHAT WOULD YOU like done today?" the receptionist asks me as I stand in a daze before her counter. 

It's been 10 years since I've set foot in a beauty college, and the question of what style to choose means more than the receptionist could know. 

I can't even contemplate the question without thinking of my grandmother. Before I was born, Louise Russell, a graduate of The Madame CJ Walker School of Beauty Culrure in Chicago, was famous for the hairstyles she'd fabricate in the back of her home in San Bernardino. I heard stories of women traveling the 60 miles from L.A. to have my grandmother make them glamorous. I'd sit in her back room and imagine the scene: The pressing comb in its tiny stove, Grandma swinging her Marcels (metal curling utensils) around like Bill Pickett while managing to maintain a slippery patch of pink pressing wax on the back of her hand. These women of the '40s and '50s would ride back toward Hollywood like poised divas - hair silked, curled or waved. 

By the time my baby-soft hair had grown into a thick, bushy mane, my grandmother was too old and tired to mess with so much hair. She preferred to take me downtown to the beauty college and let the "girls" deal with me. I'd sit while Grandma made arrangements with the receptionist for two 

"colored girls" - a sophomore for her and a senior for me. 

Heads would turn as my stylist and I crossed the room, and I'd grin back, not caring whether the women were marveling at my cuteness or at the discombobulated state of my woolly ponytails. 

"Are you tender-headed?" my stylist would ask, fingering through my hair, and I'd stoically contend that I wasn't. I'd suffer through minor tugging and pulling and leave the school with bright colored bands around my neatly twisted hair and the scent of cherry shampoo and coconut hair grease in my nose.

After Grandma died, I had to resort to home-relaxers and occasional visits to over-priced, overly made-up stylists. But 10 years later, it was memories of my grandmother that pulled me back to the beauty college - this time at Laney College in Oakland. I'm still sitting waiting for my stylist when it becomes clear that the beauty college wouldn't be quite the cherry-scented idyll I remembered from my childhood. 

One student with nearly 1,600 hours under her belt - almost enough to graduate - is calling out her sister-in-law for phoning in and asking if "someone at the college" could do her hair. 

"I was like, "I can do your hair,"" recounts the irate stylist. She's proud of her skills, as she should be: She's hooked herself up with the same wispy golden curls that hip-hop balladeer Mary J. Blige probably pays big money for. 

My student dresser, Yvette, is round and beautiful with long Gucci braids (thick twisted plaits), and reminds me of the young women dressers who used to look so old to me. 

"I always did my friends' hair," she tells me as she wraps a shiny metallic smock around me. "When I started this I just fell in love with it and started dreaming about having my own shop." 

Yvette takes my hair down from the loose bun I wrapped it up in this morning and fingers through it. "My hair is the same length as yours under my braids," she tells me. 

"Maybe a little shorter." I confess that I've been using Mane 'n Tail, a lengthening conditioner which is all the rage. The product was originally marketed for horses and I used to have to get it in pet stores until it caught on. Now I buy it at Walgreen's. Yvette tells me she uses it, too.

We move over to the sink and Yvette opens the five-gallon bottle of cherry shampoo. She works up a cool lather with her massage and that ambrosial scent emanates from it. I scan the room, watching young women indulging other women, and listening to the harmonic chatter that could easily be confused with gossip. Sometimes the students misinterpret the talk, Yvette tells me, and feuds begin. But for the most part they get along. 

Yvette tells me something else that makes me think about how much has changed since the days when Grandma did hair. Just two weeks ago, a student who was about to graduate was shot at a party. "Candy had 1,600 hours and was really good," Yvette tells me as she delicately towel blots my hair. Classes were suspended for two days. A couple of the students did her hair and make-up for the burial. 

Back at her station, Yvette gives me a generous dose of brown gel to cast the wet set of my choosing. I decide on fat Shirley curls all overflowing from my crown and into my face. But just as Yvette is emptying out the bag of plastic rollers, I spot a young hairdresser with large sculpted fingerwaves and become inspired. Yvette adds enough gel to hook up some fingerwaves in the front, leaving enough hair free at the crown to make my fat curls successful. 

I look in the mirror and my own face takes me back a generation or two. Back in the day, young black women's creativity might have been restricted on the job or in daily life, but they let loose with their hair, their one pliable appendage. Fingerwaves added to pincurls added to a slick roll at the back with fat curls falling from it. 

But the young women of Grandma's generation didn't face the conflicts today's young women do every time we straighten our hair. Rebelling against Eurocentric beauty standards, our mothers fought for and won the right to 'fro, braid and dread their daughters' hair to reassert our African heritage and beauty. The result for a lot of us daughters is that we question our consciousness every six weeks: Am I perming for my man, my boss or me? Can I love myself with my natural hair texture? 

Hair for Grandma had an entirely different meaning. She spent her childhood during the Depression caring for her six younger brothers and sisters, and her teens fighting courts and social workers to keep them. She kept them exceptionally groomed to avoid any false charges of neglect, and discovered her love for self-expression through hair in the process. By the time I came around she'd gotten quite modest about her own appearance, and went to the school not to get her hair whipped up but to be pampered. She went to be rubbed, massaged and cared for at her crown - to receive a little service for all she'd put in over the years. 

By the time I get out from under the beehive drier I'm one of the last clients in the shop. Yvette removes the last moldings of a 1930s hairstyle, one Grandma might have worn in her youth. I'd gone back to the beauty college out of nostalgia for my girlhood, but when I look in the mirror I'm surprised to see a grown woman - one who makes her own choices and manages her complicated freedom. I think Grandma might have recognized her.

Stacey Dash and Television's Sassy Band of Black Pundits

This past Thanksgiving Fox News cable anchor Brian Kilmeade asked black host Harris Faulkner whether she planned to make Kool-Aid for the holidays. The collective mouth of black America dropped. Faulkner was incredulous (as black audiences were) and swiftly stated no and moved on with her hosting segment. Nonetheless, she was clearly embarrassed as she should be. What business does she have on anti-black Fox News anyway? Faulkner is just one of many black women trying to make a name for themselves on compromising television shows. Stacey Dash is one of the most high profile black pundits today compromising her blackness for dollars. 

Stacey Dash recently stunned a good half of America with her crude attack on President Barack Obama, saying he could give a shit about the safety of the American people in the wake of the San Bernadino terrorist attack. Her co-panelist went so far as to call Obama a pussy. They've both been censured by Fox for now but she, no doubt, will be back sooner than later as she serves a key purpose of the network-- to create a false sense of inclusion of blacks in GOP politics. However, I found Dash's attack on the president more offensive than white dude's simply because it came out of a black mouth. 

Dash, 48, was an actress known best from her role in the juggernaut '90s hit film Clueless and, boy is she ever without a clue. Costar Alicia Silverstone exhibited more soul than Dash ever has in her role in Queen Latifah's beauty shop comedy, Beauty Shop, portraying a white woman in love with black culture as well as with a black man. Dash has no love for the black man, black women or black culture. Now a frequent Fox News contributor, Dash has a lot to say as a newfound pundit with very conservative ideas. She seems to subscribe to the notion that blacks are pathological and therefore can be contained best under Republican rule.

Dash does not fall far from the Disney-to-discussion-panel pipeline that Raven Symone stepped out of most recently with her gig on ABC's The View. Symone has said some off-the-wall things that have even led her own parents to distance themselves from her rhetoric. This past October, Symone created a firestorm when she suggested she would not hire people with black sounding names. Not only was this hypocritical, as Raven Symone is not exactly what you call a biblical name, but discriminating against someone on the basis of their presumed race is also illegal. Her father penned an open letter to the public asking for understanding, stating that his daughter Symone "sometimes says stupid shit." Pops ain't never lied. 

Symone was the recent subject of a petition circulated on social media that demanded she be fired from The View received over 100,000 signatures. However, her bosses at ABC wrote a letter defending the starlet, suggesting that she is an important part of their team. Or their house. Cooning, the act of demeaning and discrediting your own race of black people through words and action in an effort to entertain, amuse and appease the dominant culture, is as good as wearing Teflon garb on television. A black pundit can gaurantee a spot in daytime or prime time (just pick a time slot) for as long as she sprews self-hating perspectives.

For some reason, television executives think coons make for great television. Tamar Braxton and Lonie Love of The Real, Sheryl Underwood and even Aisha Tyler of The Tallk have been accused of cooning on TV from time to time in recent years. Perhaps it is because the coon or the so called Uncle Tom delivers the confusion and pathology people seek to find in the black community. It is the disconnect between the pundit and the community she is an undesired member of to create controversy where there should be none. One may argue that this clan of sassy talking heads offers fresh perspectives on the black experience. However, what I find is that they regurgitate old stereotypes and myths about the black community and suppress our liberation through cowtowing to white audiences who are comfortable seeing blacks as pathological. These women think the box is the prize when in fact it's everything outside of the box that is the real gift in life. They don't offer fresh perspectives, they offer old hat.

Symone is a millennial, and as such is of a generation of young people who believe there are no boundaries. She believes she does not have to adhere to an identity carved out for her. A part of me wants to applaud her forward thinking while another wants to condemn her for being such a stone cold idiot. In Ancient Greek, an idiot was someone with no friends. I would say this girl has no friends. I would imagine the people she calls friends are no smarter than she. If she does have friends smarter than she is, they need to educate her. If she doesn't wish to go to college, the girl certainly could pick up a book here and there. I doubt she has ever cracked open a non-fiction book written by a black person. You can always tell those who have no black writers in their libraries. It's written all over their worldview.

Then there are those Sisters who surprise you. I was horrified to see that The Apprentice contestant Omarosa is supporting Donald Trump for president. This is the height of coonery. At the core, coonery is opportunism at its worst. These are the type of folks Harriet Tubman wouldn't even be able to save. She was famously quoted as saying, "I freed a thousand slaves. I could've freed a thousand more if they knew they were slaves."  

There seems there will always be a class of black people who are easily seduced by the white confidence game that allows them to believe they can be a part of the dominant culture when in fact these people serve to be tokens of the dominant culture. They are tauted out to us as if to say, "You too could be a part of The American Dream," however, the dominant culture has no intention of embracing black America as part of the dominant culture. This is evident in the large number of unemployed, underemployed, undereducated and incarcerated blacks in America. American cities and schools are as segregated as they ever were and that's the way they want it.

One of my homeboys though, he could give a damn about Stacy Dash's politics. According to him, she's smoking hot fine. And that's all that matters. There in lies the rub. No matter how ugly she is on the inside, the heifer is drop dead gorgeous by all physical metrics. Black just don't crack, you know what I mean? Plus, she's rich, Bitch. Wealth comes with power and both, without vigilance, corrupts those it's bestowed upon. I get it, she's a bit long in the tooth for modeling and leading ladiehood, so why not use her self hate to make mo' money? Sure, she could buy me twice over. However, I am not for sale and I'm not buying what Stacey Dash and the band of sassy black pundits put down. Whether you realize it or not, we are in a race war with the dominant culture. As the war gets warmer, the more coons will come to the surface. We must find a cure for coonery before it's participants eradicate the few gains made by the black community left, just 150 years out of slavery and into the frying pan of a so called Post-Racial Era that gave rise to Stacey Dash and the like.

Forever Punany, With Love: The Myth of Men

Sometime, do you ever just sit back and think, "Man, I've been through some shit?" Going through cheating fits right into that "some shit" category. Cheating is a hell of an obstacle to overcome in a relationship. Especially when you have no eyewitness evidence. I recently dealt with a cheater. To this day, I'm convinced the guy is part con man, part Svengali. For I was under a spell that took me 4 years to break. I'll tell you about a time I nearly broke free, the time I stumbled on his Forever Pussy.

Forever Pussy is a term I coined to describe a woman who has created a lustful contract with a man to be perpetually sexually available to a man who doesn't claim her in any sense of the word outside of any occasion the two aren't naked together. She feels her pussy power will retain his affections for the remainder of their sexual lives, perhaps even longer. 

                          

Karrine Stephens, the original "Video Vixen" and author is celebrity Forever Pussy. She's been interviewed stating that any man who messes with her must understand that when Wayne calls, Lil Wayne, that is, when he calls, she will go to him so he can, as Celie said in The Color Purple, "do his business on" her. She made the statement publicly while Lil Wayne had famously been dating Christina Milian, causing a rift in the couple's relationship. No never mind though. What forever pussy wants forever pussy thinks she can get. Stephens also expects a decent man to allow her to be another man's Forever Pussy.

I think it's kind of funny the way men and women relate to one another once the idea of sex between the two comes into play. Titalating animal energy is tempered by coy, coquettishness. The Ying and yang of masculine/feminine desire go 'round and 'round in a dance which casts a spell on them both.

By the time "it" goes down, if they've been able to put doing the deed off for some time, the passion can be explosive. I'm talking, break out the fire extinguisher because the heat might erupt into full on combustion. And, don't be a talker. Men fall in love with what they see, while women, we fall for what we hear. There is a popular meme circulating social media that states this fact and goes on to state that this explains why women wear makeup and men, well, they lie.

When presented with the opportunity to have carnal knowledge of a woman, I've been told by a very reliable, worldly man, that men will say anything to gain it. They'll whisper sweet nothings you take to mean everything. He'll wrap you in a bubble of "You are mines-This is mines." And if you are just fool hardy enough, you'll start to believe him.

So, I told this chick she was an idiot for sticking around to be Forever Pussy. I known about her being a part of his past, but I never knew she was part of his life until I found her number. I texted her and she texted me back. And so ensued a plethora of messages back-and-forth. She insisted they had a transcendental kind of love. She thought she had love but she really had was low self esteem. Her standards were way below mine. The only solace I could find was in knowing that I had higher standards than her. Sometimes when dealing with a cheater that's the only comfort you'll ever get.

                       

I could never be Forever Pussy. It's degrading to allow anyone to believe they have the power to control your mind and body perpetually without giving you anything more than googly eyes. Once I get married so goes all my former suitors. I'll leave a trail of broken hearts behind because when I get married it's going to be ride or die love and my man will be the only single, straight man in my life. Single male friends for what? What good could come out of being friends with men who are attracted to you? When you're an attractive female, most all your male friends are attracted to you. That's just a given. I don't desire that type of energy or attention when I get married because I'm investing in my husband not my potential side action.

It's been months, but I still keep those texts. Being Latina, she went so far as to mock my blackness She sent a text to him ("So, you're with a black woman? Ew.") which proves a long standing theory I have that many Latinas think they are superior to black women because black men allow them to believe this. I've got some news for you-- limp hair and pale skin doesn't make for superior genes and most certainly not for a superior human being. She didn't know what I looked like, how many degrees I might have or languages I spoke. The mere fact that I was a Sister made her feel better than me. Brothers act like they got their Yoko Ono in exotic girls, but more often than not they've got a closet racist on their hands.

But, at the end of the day, I couldn't be more mad at her than I was at him. He hurt me to the core. He violated the sacred trust I believe we shared. After catching him in several more lies I decide to call it quits. And boy am I glad I did. I met a wonderful man. We exchanged numbers months ago and spent some time together before I decided I could not go any further with him while still attached the old dude. Lucky for me, he was interested in rekindling our friendship and it has blossomed into a new relationship. You know why? Because he's serious. He's a serious man. They say you can't turn a hoe into a housewife. Well, try turning an international playboy into a husband. It's damn near impossible. I know because I tried. Won't be making that mistake again.