Who Taught You To Hate Your Hair?: Black Women Discuss The Pain And Pleasure Of Black Hair

Hey y'all, how are you doing I'm great? Thank you so much for asking it's me Kim and I'm back for another video today, I'm here with Queen and J, we are going to talk about black women in our relationship to hair, thanks for sitting down to talk to me, y'all thanks. First of all, I wanted to talk to y'all, because I listened to your podcast telling Queen earlier. Sometimes I listen to a podcast alright, so the first thing I wanted to talk about was, I think the natural hair movement has been so important and it's so interesting. How even women, who aren't even on the internet like that, have been affected by it and feel good and embracing their natural texture. But sometimes I get concerns because I feel like the threes. You know that three categories still get elevated above the kinky, coily or textures, and I worried that we are just replacing one harmful Beauty standard with another harmful beauties yeah. I don't think it's as being replaced per se. I think the same values that were highlighted in the past when we were aiming to assimilate, got accepted in this country by straightening our hair and things like that. I think a lot of those same values have carried over into the movement so in the colonized world. Whiteness and that look is value, and that has seeped into our bones and [ __ ], and so in many of the things we do even in revolutionary spaces and movements that white supremacy is still there. So the job of those of us participating in any kind of resistance, or or whatever, is to constantly check our own white supremacy and check. What are we doing with in this space and are we harming one another, because I think, what's most important to a lot of us as black women who are often you know, things are happening to us from the outside that we're reacting to, but I think that Most, the most important piece of that is: what are we doing to each other? How are we treating each other? How are we healing and loving each other or how we hurting each other, and so that piece of this movement right now is something that should constantly be challenged in analyze yeah. I think, in addition to that, like when you have these conversations about like texture, ISM and things like that is a lot of the language that is tied to the three see here is very different from the language that's tied to like four see here. So you see words like dry hair is not damaged. My hair is four see right. There absorbs oil and water, and all these things differ so my GU, if we also examine that and examine the language, that's attached to four see here versus like s3 see here person and all of that mhm. I think that's another way to tackle the white supremacy that they were just talking about like. Why would you even your endless natural hair movement and you're talking about the tighter hair and the title pony yeah, whatever language you're use, and this way that's like very, like wow you're, like sucks and toxic to people who have that hair so that you're even love? It you're still you're still telling me something is wrong with my hair. That'S my preparedness like this or the way that my hair absorbs water absorbs water is like this, and it's just like get that forty athlete when you're out of here they gathered of that. I feel bad sometimes because I do feel like that 4c hair and I do feel like it is harder to manage my 4c hair there. It is to manage straight hair and I think that there is so much baggage attached to like manageability and like ease, and sometimes it's like it's that white supremacy or am I allowed to say it is harder to style, yeah, they're part of the forcing game yeah. So the things you're saying we've lived, I live still, then I'm still like damn, you know yeah, but I think it's because we haven't spent the time to like figure out the ways that I'm here can be managed or no space, because we spent so much time. Straightening in doing all these things, to assimilate and doing these things to appease white supremacy that we haven't even examined the other things that we could do to our hair to first. First, it's like what is manageable yeah. You know like what are those things cuz. Those standards are also based on white supremacy, but they know no other end is just like. Can I just go outside my hair? I'M home, you know and that's something I cannot do you know be serious about it. That'S something I can't do, but that's because of still this white supremacy, it's something you can't do because you're not comfortable or because of the this boat, but it's both so I'm not comfortable and then, on the other hand, it's like. I know the world is gon na perceive me and on the way like my hair is not done like, let's just think about like new idea, how even myself is like whoa and then one day it was just like wait a minute, and I mention in another Video we associate especially the little black girls, their hair, being tied up in the the little Bobo's and all that, but we associated we care right like well. It cares about you, that's why it's not chop your edges like that, because meat, when it comes to black girl, hair, neat and done and Kent is associated with it being labeled, taut and straight so like, even if you have kinky hair a lot of, if you Think about some of the beginnings of the natural hair movement. When girls were wearing their afro yeah, they would still have a band member so that you can pull that front edges top, and then you have your afro in the back that I call it like uh. It'S like a [ __ ] with afro, there's nothing wrong with the no shape to it, but it's still one of those things where it's like. Okay, this front is laid a dusty okay, so yeah see little black girls and or even ourselves in our obsession with engines and the store pharmacy surrounded with edges them is I'm 4c and my crochet is going out right now. Yeah I have a 4c afro yeah under my natural school, but in my house, okay, let me, ladies down, I got my that, should we use edge booster, it doesn't matter cuz meet at me. I don't mind that my you know crochets growing out, but nice looks laid down and pulled taut, but to your point about what we're used to, I think that a lot of us were not taught how to take care of our natural yeah. Like is, there are hundreds of years in terms of what we were allowed to see right of white girl, hair care, so in advertisements in hair salon and education, and all the TV and media that we've consumed has all been dedicated to taking care of white hair. There'S or straight here we know that there are other groups of people who have straight hair or even Karl's had curls meant 3c curls net loose and you can still put you're getting underway. Those are girls, and so it's not. I think that the guilt that some of us have about feeling like oh my 4c hair, is not as manageable is. We were not taught how to manage you, so it feels far because all a lot of the skills that we have, we learned in our grown, but so my doing our hair and [ __ ] like that so yeah. So I think that we were always taught how to care for our hair, but in what state right you know, a lot of us have are well-educated and what to do with the perm right. Well, now that that's not what we're doing - and we know that, like our parents were afros and things like that, but that was very different than the versatility of I have an afro 24/7 and that's not where it in different styles in different ways, because that's just How it grows out of my head is you're. Not always, it is by default, a political statement because we're not allowed to this, but it's not the legs. It'S not the intent, but I'm just woke up and my hair is this way and I'm just gon na. Let it be we're just not that's. It'S still not an acceptable accepted thing for everybody yeah, and it's so interesting that the baby hair look has now been appropriated, yeah yeah. Well to me it has been away from the Bronx right, so there were white Puerto Ricans rocking baby. Here, that's not a new thing, but I will say because that that was. I would count that among the urban cultural markers yeah, if you're from an urban neighborhood even like in LA I don't want the word a lot of the cholo girls. That'S something that different urban groups of girls throughout the US have been doing, but I agree with you: a [ __ ], car yeah, but other members not gon na day, but even then it was like. Even then he talked about like for lack of a better word excuse us. We got along. I like to look girls. I look like that. Even then that was like Concha culture, like oh yeah, exactly I was saying I'm a trap in the days when JLo was for pet first come out with when she was doing like her fashion line or whatever MTV did that whole behind the scenes. There'S this moment, where she's like telling the makeup people like the hair people, you know baby, here's like. Can you give them my baby hair? So there's this moment where she got, she has a white damn near white, presenting or TV and I'm just like people of color, but a white executive would be like. Oh, she could play Italian yeah, so we're watching this TV Italian explained to like a whole anglo-saxon. How to make like babies and see a point of it being like counterculture like these are things that were transported now into the mainstream and, like you said, the Kardashians and [ __ ] on runways, yeah with the baby and [ __ ] like that was ours. General Lopez is so interesting to me, okay, that if you are a black woman, especially before you know the there was a broad embrace of natural hair and you have a certain kind of hair texture there's a little Sherman there, and so I'm just wondering if you Have had if you have childhood trauma - and maybe I should assume and if you have did have some childhood trauma, how do you navigate that work through it? So you can come to a place of loving your hair as an adult. Yes, a lot any trauma. Having that we all know if you grew up with forcing here, you know what some of that trauma could be a little bit like, but a lot of that has to do for me with you know you get to be a teenager and doing your hair yourself And it's, how do I make it look in the way that is cute, yeah and cute is not for see, even if you had a perm and the cute was not like your 4c edges, you are now like growing out and if you are of, if you're, A certain type of black girl you're, not in the salon, as often as maybe you should be - and I'm not a hairdo, but I wasn't in here doing [ __ ], so it wasn't like I was there touching my [ __ ] up or whatever. So there was those feelings of it not working. There was when I was a kid and my hair not being before I got come on, not being the easiest to manage. Okay, you get one hairstyle. I remember there was this girl and people from around from know. Like this girl, whatever it was, this girl and she had like zigzag parts mom was a single mom with three kids she's, not giving me Emma. It was just that natural hair 4c hair took this extra level of care that, like you, had to be a certain type of person to have like. I could see that Oh some of those parents, like that's next level, care what she had an older sister. That was like yeah earlier today, of the classism that intersects with the type of hair that you have like we, like you mentioned earlier. You know we we prized late hair done hair like not only does it take a certain amount of time to be able to have laid here and done here, but if you get a perm, you can do those that's stuff yourself. You got to go to the salon, so that's only accessible if you have a certain amount of money or your parents have a certain amount of money and we are never comparing like the judgments that we pass on people who don't have all kinds of other stuff. That affects their ability to achieve a look. It'S not just that, maybe that it not they just don't want to do it is that, do you even have the ability to acquire that look, that we are obsessed and what certain type of hair means to different peoples, but I live in a certain community. For me, as a kid kid it was my oldest exacted poppin young as a teenager was like okay, certain type of we was like. Oh that's yeah or if you had-even, for certain groups of us, if your hair was stiff right, but you had mad gel in it and it was perfect and it's the color. It'S the perfect. You have all that stuff, that's cool, but once that hits maybe the internet wants wants. Other black communities perhaps are looking at my community is saying: oh, that's, not an imbalance in that. So like the way that even we look at each other's individual, like communities of what is west fly hair in this community and that shifted a bit with like the internet and back in the day, which is how he was wrapping. A hair. In this. Like little Jamaican corner of the Bronx would be different than how girls in Brooklyn, maybe we're. Looking at a lot of my hair trauma. Isn'T until I like become a teenager and I'm going out like not meaning the places where my parents told me. I could be one of places with my parents brought me to it so, like I grew up in a house a lot of sisters. I am I like a doing nice, hair [, __ ] thank, might be wanted. Like that's, that's the house I was in my mother could braid so like we always kind of like had our hair done by also being a 4c girl. My mother kind of like doing here in my house is like a weekend event because I have like five sisters and it's like okay, you know like that type of thing, so here never was like something that was daunting to me. It'S when you learn high school and [ __ ], you know where it was like hair was also tied to beauty in a different way, yeah more so than like. Oh, like you know, a little girl, I'm cute. Everyone thinks I'm cute, but now I'm like a becoming a woman right and I'm supposed to be attracting people like only these things, so there's other things that I'm thinking about now yeah when I do my hair, when I think about my hair. That way. So that's when I first started so kind of like get hair trauma. I just play sports a lot, so I have braids all the time so because I have braids, people would always go out and have in here, because my hair is always in extensions and it's like I actually do have hair. The assumption is always you don't have hair so, as always assume that I didn't have in here, because my hair was always an extension and stuff. That'S for that played sports so there, when I would wear my hair out, it's like. Oh, my god, you do have hair and it's just like what the [ __ ] is wrong with some people. Whatever you think I was attaching a brace to know like what makes no sense, and I still kind of get that now cuz. My hair is mostly kept away and we actually had episodes on our podcast and we're talking about how it's just easier for us to just kind of just have protective styles all the time, because just just that conversation, I'm like how I upkeep my hair and I Well, it's just easier, but they just like happy techno style totally, but I even questioned like the obsession with. Do you have hair like yeah, but what? If I don't like the like Beyonce every once in a while, I hate that I'm on scene, we'll post it a minute latter bald-headed scums 20 la get Beyonce's hair up under those wings. And it's like what is the? What? What is the obsession? Yeah there's a? There is a, I don't know which part of white supremacy or slavery just came from, but that we can't grow because our hair is kinky. According to the white gays, we must not be able to grow hair, which is also why there's an obsession obsession with shrinkage shrinkage right, so you have washed it and now on the ground, we're gon na put a nice video, be stretching it out wait. The word shrink its that's just how your hair yeah, when it bounces back to its core padded right. It'S healthy here, yeah. That way of like look it's wrong because again the value is white, supremacy and like white beauty, no length is important to show like look. You know that that even some of the ways that that length check is framed is like look. We could grow hair. Look. We know that who are you talking to? Who is this for, and so that to me has always been an exercise in white supremacy? Is this demonstrating that one I'm a person who can grow hair and that matters and to look at how long it can get and look at how? If I take it out of this shrinkage thing, which makes me so sad, there's a whole thing about all shrinkage? Is such a problem yeah, if I can take it out of that, then you'll see how valuable and how what I've been doing matters and it's? Okay, that I went natural, but the other piece of that is. There are a lot of people - black women in particular, who deal with fibroids and supposed to have alopecia shares all kinds of thing. I'Ve been putting all of this social currency in. Do you have here? How much hair you have? How thick is your hair? How close are your parts together like all of that stuff, and I think it plays into the way that we engage a little bit with baldness as well like it's a lot of for women and men, but a lot of our brothers will be seen with the Spray-Paint hair lines, which is also not a problem, but there are people shaming them for. Oh, why you painting your hairline and why you? If that's, what makes you comfortable paint your hair? Well, I don't know where this white here you paint your hairline everybody rock out, but the way that we shame people who are balding or like that's just another thing. I think back to the interesting, like you, ain't got no engines like I used to be one of those people who was very like Schiano edges like she, you know like whatever, and it's just like everybody has these different hands. It'S a natural learning that everybody has. These different hair stories - everybody has these different things, and it's not that we are reinforcing all of this stuff really working insecurities in ourselves and in each other, my reproducing some of those scripts about where you said why your hair so thin and all of that kind Of stuff, let's talk about femininity, I think one of the reasons why there is such an preoccupation, and that sounds negative. But one of the reasons why black women spend so much time on our hair and talking about hair is because of the association between hair and femininity and because, historically, we have been masculinized in a way like stripped of femininity. You know way we clean for hair. You know people say your hair, is your crowning glory and laugh and all that stuff? So I wonder, how can we decouple what your hair looks like from your worth as a person, a femme, a woman, a non-binary person like how could we just be like this? Is not what a a BSA? I am NOT my hair. How do we get to that point? I think that a lot of it has to do with like gender norms and how none of that [ __ ] matters and how problematic a lot of that stuff is, and so, I think to me. That'S such like a loaded question that it's so embedded into. Like what makes somebody feminine why this feminine those things are very it's just intertwined in so much yeah. I think that the harder we work to dismantle like white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism in a patriarchy economies, because the patriarchy is heavily steeped in that [ __ ]. As we break that down, we break down some of those gender norms, but also like gender traditions. What things are feeling like? Oh it's important that you don't be a ball head. It'S Delaware and some people are so. I think that there has to be a dedication to dismantling that system to separate yourself from some of that, because I really believe that femininity is not always tired or should not be tied to like your woman is it's just. We all express that in so many different ways, and we should really be allowed to do that. I have a very deep voice. Well, maybe not very got a deep voice and deep voices are often associated with masculinity um I'm tall, and I sometimes feel sometimes I feel too big right. Just like you know. I have a deep voice. Sometimes I feel too grand, and so I, like maybe a man to be bigger, so that I feel a certain way. That'S we have a huge feet, there's nothing wrong with those things, and I am a woman person and like that's just who I am and who identify as and so it shouldn't be. There shouldn't be all of these physical markers that we are so tied to. There are people who look like me who identify as men, and that is okay. You know in a media Norman - and I just feel like once we like get rid of like a lot of that, should be able to separate ourselves from all these things that actually burden us right. My people think they're fun. Traditions like like there will be someone watching this who thinks that we don't want them to delight in getting their hair done or looking cute, like all that's cool, but we shouldn't be oppressing most upon one another. That'S when it gets to be those things you might be happening to appease a system. So that's that's for me, like the piece where it's like, because for myself I did come to a point was like okay, like. Why do I have a protected style so much or why do I feel this way about here? We'Re not realizing is because things that I like light for myself and I enjoyed for myself and if I wasn't doing these things, tweet appease what the norm said. I'M supposed to look like, or things like that is when I got more comfortable with myself and my relationship with my own hair. You know what I mean so much like once I figured that out or, like I guess, came around realize like no me wearing a wig or my natural hair or whatever it's not about self hate. It'S not about all these other [ __ ], that other people trying to say it is it's like this is what I like to do like I like to change. I changed my hairstyle literally every month, yeah. I cannot do that by the way. Yeah cannot do that without extensions. I would my hair would fall out if I was to like tree money every plate, my hair, that often - but this is something that I like. So it's like. This is something I'm doing to appease me, mm-hmm and not appease the system that says how I'm supposed to look my stuff like that. I think I've brought up a really important point. Is I want to make it clear that I don't have a desire to judge people for their choices? I understand that we are all navigating this really horrible, [ __ ] up system and that there are consequences for opting out you yeah. Yes, I understand that you, we are making choices to try to get some modicum of safety to feel safe, to try to to elevate ourselves in these systems, whether wherever you work, whether you work in the corporate world or you work for yourself or maybe so. If you feel like a certain hairstyle is more attractive to the kinds of people that you partner, you might be worried that you not gon na be able to to find a partner if you're hearing stuff look. It is more than just our individual choices yeah. It is structural, and so I did just want to underscore like I'm addressing you. It look like this like when it comes to like this our lives and the choices that the career path that I've chosen and things like that are also decision. I'Ve made because of how I want to look yeah and how I want to control, how I look and we know, we've taken pay cuts, and we know we've know that those things are clearly offended. Our lives that you don't [ __ ]. What other people think we're too much you mean, but I know that this is how I want to look, and this is how I feel happy looking also, I have to make those choices because I opted end, so you know it's like a it's kind of like A termination treat thank you, buddy bop, a lop and there's no sacrifices. You are making. People have commented on the work we've been in on our work and said, oh about me, she would be such a pretty girl, I'm sure she's, a pretty girl under that. I don't know why did she do that or why us there was a hole on one YouTube, video just a whole section of like hundreds of comments about how that served. They were work, and these are. These are other black people for the most part, and for me I don't want a good joke about my hair like be funny: okay, [ __, ], fine, it was one. I don't read them anymore, but it was one. I was like. That'S yeah, that's! Oh, you guys are really just like commiserating and celebrating your disgust with my parents and that this has the way that i do black girl has nothing to do with. You has nothing to do with you, and I know I think that there's of course, this feeling for a lot of us people of color that you represent your race when you walk out the door, I am comfortable represented. There are black girls. Like me, I'm comfortable representing them, you know no place so funny that even in black spaces yeah that you are supposed to show up a certain way and represent a certain way, instead of being one type of person we come in on. Why do you not want all of that representative? I always wonder because people are constantly thinking about. How do we look to white people at the end of the day as the final once you beat all the bosses when you get to the big bad boss at the top yeah who's, keeping you from whatever whether it be your next million or billion? Someone is thinking, oh, so my person is going to deny me because of either me or my association with a certain type of blackness, and a lot of us are disturbed by the freedom that we see in others. I know this person doesn't hate me, but they're. So disturbed what you have something that people might not like or they haven't seen before and because I think sometimes it's shocking to me because we live in New York and because we have been living. This type of. I want to look how I look like at work and everywhere we've been dedicated to that for a while. Sometimes it's shocking to me, i watch you know we stay watching like haircare, video, yeah and I'll watch, somebody who just tried a new style and like yeah. I was really nervous to try this color and it'll be like light brown, okay, so it's like so now, I'm thinking so that's the type of person. Perhaps that sees me in my white hair and is taken aback and disgusted and offended by this way. Okay, girl. I see you yeah, I understand you, you may be trying. I see I got some 33 braids and I was like no like feedback was really good and I was like. Why am I so? What is the fear? Well, like I'm just trying to I'm trying to work through my club, and it's so funny, I I talk to so other, like public people in, like you, know, professional feminists, about this stuff. All the time of, like I read all the books, I sit down and have these conversations. I know in my mind what is working. I have to myself it's okay, it's okay! Just just us being here. Look at these two different ways: yeah, that's black women. We are pushing against something, so it's always want to feel that way like. Even when I change me all the time something I've changed, my hair, it's always something like different and I'm like it's just look. You know about it. Just like this. It'S kind of just like a natural and you mention when you're pushing against things, so I that's fine, that's normally and in our own spaces you know we are pushing it on something, but we've also created our own norms right so also there is uh. I went to college black look, there is a, I am an academic revolutionary look. There is a I'm a hood revolutionary look. There is I'm a hood [ __ ]. Look. There are all these different looks that we see in each other, and we judge one another based on those looks. I was thinking about recently yeah, I'm gon na starting type of black girl, but there are all different types of black girls that I haven't seen. Even in the spaces that I'm a VP okay, I'm on this, I'm on this platform, I haven't seen a girl who's got. Maybe a thicker eyelash situation that I have won this, because we look at that a certain way like it's all these different things that we judge and, like I mean we talk about like there's brunch boots in like well who's the you know flabby brunch crowd. Well that [ __ ], like there are all these different ways in which we judge one another that [ __ ]. To me, it's not even more important in examining and breaking down those things and our comfort amongst one another to me more so sometimes than the way which white people engage with us, because they're gon na hate me regardless yeah. It doesn't matter what you want to do. They don't hate you, but like far as like inter-community, how we treat each other, what these things should kiss each other. We should be yeah and I and I find myself even like in the community that I've created being like on the last video, the last video I sat down and recorded. I was wearing a long straight week and somebody commented this is the most attractive. You'Ve ever looked, oh and I commented it was an older woman and I commented back and I said, and the comment was really long and she said lots and lots of nice things, but it started with. This is the most attractive. You'Ve ever looked, and I said thank you so much. I appreciate the love, but I just want to let you know the politics of telling a black woman yeah that she looks most attractive with long straight hair when I've had all kinds of hairstyle, brave, kinky. Hair short hair, what it's it looks bad and also for me, it reinforces stuff that I'm trying to undo yeah so like, let's just be cognizant of the stuff. I know meanwhile you're trying to give me a compliment, but let's just be cognizant of the stuff that we are saying to each other, even when you mean well we're like. Oh, I like to hear like this yeah and it's like [ __ ]. I didn't do this, for you yeah just say you liked it more like this is not for you yeah, so I'm not going to like, because you like this, you know continue doing this yeah. That'S that's! That'S the most annoying backhanded compliment. Excuse me everywhere never speaks to me we're in this one stage. My hair was finally in a manner. I guess that they were comfortable with. It was the way I had this like this, like it was like your. I don't know if that was why they were speaking to me or what, but it was it was like now, I'm comfortable with you now you're acceptable. Now like this, I know it's still like white color with this I can handle it and that it's like so do y'all still have to kind of navigate feeling better when your hair is a certain way like if your hair is done, Birsa, Munda yeah, I think Yeah, I do, but it in a sense of I think, my definition of done. It has changed, I'm crying anymore, so it's like just like. Do I like what I see not so much like? Is this done yeah in a sense of like kept or put away there and stuff like that, like I did like a little Instagram video a while ago, really short, but it was just like I don't do my edges like that, like I don't every day like No, I'm not like that. I just feel like that's too much stuff on me every day, so I don't but like my to me my hair, so duh yeah, I like the way I look. My hair is still done. There are times where I don't like what my guess look the way my hair looks and that's what my hair is not done right, if doesn't mean you're pleasing yourself yeah. That'S I changed that definition of what done was yeah versus what I thought before yeah I'm. So constantly challenging like ourselves, yes ly challenging. Okay, I don't feel comfortable with this look. Why is it because I just don't like my hair this way versus that way, or is it because of some type of white supremacy? You know something is curled like there are. I feel like certain markers of white supremacy or alignments with whiteness that we can find in ourselves, and so I really just try to analyze. If there's something about me that I'm uncomfortable with, is it because it falls outside of some norm? Yeah I was taught. Is the norm, or maybe it's just like? No, I don't like wearing that color or wary yeah. You know accessory or whatever you know. I noticed for myself. So I'm gon na come see here that I prefer my hair when it's like. I guess the Messier you're not good for my hair a few days after and I can forget braids or whatever I always like it a few days later. I never like it when it's just like. I never I've never liked my hair that way, so that could be why it's a little easier for me to kind of detach from those things or what my idea of what done is. I girl, who, like me, did my hair to be me away. Yeah. I was never that type of girl I've haven't wanted to be that kind of woman. So it's probably easier for me to see done as this different thing. Even my transform now work done into something I was tough, that's not ever how I kind of flow it with that anyway, you know yeah okay, so I also wanted to talk about weaves and wigs mm-hmm and there. How is there still stigma attached to weave in wigs it's so funny that, despite the fact that it's everywhere, including on every white, celebrity imaginable, including on every black, celebrity imaginable, I still feel like. I see comments about people, the the ball. Do you have hair comments in riping me and on Twitter? Being like, ladies, we don't we don't like the wig leave or that raggedy holding those same beliefs that we're sharing those things or not checking their friends, yeah, okay and unfortunately, even in queerness. There are I'm speaking of somebody who's, not queer, but I have noticed that um just a general thing with masculinity like it, doesn't have to be they're trying to be attractive to a man you're trying to be attractive to somebody who is masculine or perceives femininity. A certain way it's like femininity is this one thing and it is often not being a ball head. Scallywag and you know, can you stretch your hair and all that stuff that we talked about earlier length all that aligning with whiteness in a certain way? And there are even amongst, I would say, womanist or black, feminists, Twitter or social media there. A lot of us don't want to be perceived as unlikable right. So we will let our popular social media man friend, say whack [, __ ] and get away with that. [ __ ], like it's okay, and we know that these [ __ ] only like women who are a certain type of black yeah. It'S all about what everybody know and it's still behold. Black women, with black feminists in their whole bio, you know, are co-signing unknown person he's assembling recently as an adult, a click in order to make up for the stuff that we're lacking, yeah baby not been afforded as job, and it comes out every time. Somebody that's the ranking minute like I want to just jump back to that, but a lot of them don't understand women's when we care yeah that when I, when I, when I date, men who get it they usually like have seen their moms waking up, you know Is just like they've seen what it is, so there's an ain't, no thing these other. These aren't these raggedy men, don't like [, __, ], no yeah anything about us, but just that they want to put their penis, and I usually those [ __ ] and then there's such a freedom as somebody who dates men. There'S such a freedom in like being myself, there's such a freedom and and let's, let's be the same thing with the way that we engage with whiteness. There are losses right there, white people who don't [, __ ] with me or hire me, because I there are men who won't [, __, ] me or date young, because I look a certain way and I'm okay with yes, yes, the the real thing becomes. Why would you want those people in your speech right anyway? Why why our wives, masculinity? Why is madness, Wiseman elements so valuable to you as a woman or as a person who is dating men, that you're willing to sacrifice yourself yeah and that's what I won't do so there was a long time when I was wearing wigs and if I was spending The night in the men's house or whatever I would have that [ __ ] pinned down. You know I guess the way at this point. We know this is a wig, it's not, but whatever we know this is a way. Am i hanging on the doorknob and we gon na go to bed in my room notice? That'S why I got lolly washed up and widely spread big blood sheets and I'm gon na be like I'm freaking out about my way. Mm-Hmm so friend, I had a similar kind of conversation with Sonja Renee Taylor, and it is about being comfortable, maybe being comfortable being alone for a little bit, maybe maybe not forever. I believe there's somebody out there for all of us, but it would require not only saying no to somebody who you think would uphold a certain kind of narrow standard. Who holds these ideas that what about what beauty is and what femininity is and we'll project that onto you, but also being comfortable being, maybe not picked? First, maybe has that like me and that's hard, especially when we are socialized to view our value as being in connection to a partner with the most the most celebrated and supported thing. A cisgender straight woman can do is partner man. It is hard to say it's. Okay, which is it is so don't get in like we make me think of a conversation her mother. Recently, it's my mom's divorce or whatever and grumbles, don't despair. My firm use my mother started, went to the mosque again, just because she just want to be around other Muslims, and everyone is like. Did you get remarried like that's the funny thing my mother's like? Why would I? Why would I do that and then have my kids? I got it like. Why would I need to do that again, yeah, and but it was just like they. They just couldn't imagine that this woman was like living without a partner just like, and my mother's, like an old like what it just was way, Jim, that that was the first question. They asked after not seeing her for. Like, yes, are you and it goes back to something earlier, it's like how do we dismantle all of this and when you talk about our partnering with men or becoming partner this there's this big, like I always talk about how I don't like wedding culture right and A lot of it has to do with online stuff, and that doesn't mean don't celebrate your love and do all those things, but a lot of it is. Are we taking the perfect engagement pictures? Really? I really do value partner celebrating each other and you get the biggest ring. That'S what you want to do - that's cool, but so much if it has to do not even the proposal videos. So much of it has to do with like sharing this moment with the world and like what somebody did for me or what I did, because I am such a man through my partner. This might ends up being all about those things and not really about whatever people say. Love is yeah and I really think that it's harmful for us. Even even then, we know that, like men, don't like to talk about like their clock and like dinner, you know getting married, but you know [ __, ] man. We know that they are thinking about getting married yeah, I'm thinking about well that [ __ ], and so even for them just that that performance online, I think, is really damaging to us as people. It'S very classes that doesn't again that doesn't mean that if you can afford to have a lavish wedding, not to have it any the ways in which we share those things and the ways in which expectations I say are just really just really. It can be really negative and I think all of these things yes tie it. It is burdensome and, like you said, I love a wedding. I think I value weddings now as a place. We can come together with your friends and family and celebrate celebrate. You celebrate golf's partnerships together, celebrate the coming together of families. However, there is all that other [ __ ] and then there's the father, giving you away yeah I wanted to talk about was over the past year, or so I've been reading more and more articles about some of the ethical concerns of wearing weaves and where that Hair comes from and goes and where it goes, how much the women who give the hair are paid or not paid, and I'm just trying to think through some of the. How can i epicly, where we are epically, we're weeds or much gon na have to like compartmentalize weight and just put that in the box over here? This makes me think of something that I say often or now our shoulders just like how at the cocoanut marginalized person be mhm, how much yep, basically just that, like how ethical can you be as a marginalized person, because the way capitalism works? It'S just really really really hard. It'S like 100 percent completely remove yourself prevention and I think that a lot of times the focus is on the consumer, or we put it on, though the person and it's like that's something to me - that we should look at that system yeah of how they pay People you know, like all of that stuff, that's generally how I interact with that, because I don't know how to recycle in here, though I don't know like I don't I don't have the tools to make these things at the core. For me to make me feel more involved in the ethical exchange of these goods, and I don't know how to do that. So I'm not there yet either. I I don't. I typically wear synthetic hair yeah, but I do worry about which has come up as a concern like what happens to our hair, how we recite what I try and do is even with synthetic hair blood wash it and reuse it. So, like there ways you can like yeah, I can take this out and like soak it in like fabric [, __ ] like that and reuse it, which I often like, wear my hair over again but yeah. Finding solutions for like recycling that the other piece of that is because we are considered like don't matter, yeah who's working with that working on figuring out how to recycle. They won't even make the recycling machines tiny enough to fit destroy it's great, all plastic bags. Again, it could be done to tell me not have a done rather than I agree that those are things that we should be thinking about, but I do feel like which is actually something that clean and I have discussed in private before clean mentioned. It look that um, because black women are often so demonize the things that we do for pleasure, the things that we find yeah, it's a promise, oh, if they would just stop spending their money on hair if they would stop anything that we delight in right, is Considered frivolous and like some [ __ ] that we shouldn't be doing yeah, so you, if you always stop that everything is always supposed to do, is labor like we're all these guys. Are they positive you? It'S not supposed to do anything else that is like for us right so anytime. We do it's like a problem, so if, if black women just stop doing this, so even our interaction with the beauty, the beauty industry in America, industry is just like. If you will just be natural, then you know those statistics of like black movements been 9 billion dollars on their hair every month. Imagine if you we all bought house, it's ridiculous, because the beauty industry period. Yes, it's a it's a market that makes all these billions of dollars even excluding the black woman from that numbers like shut the [ __ ] up it's an extension of the welfare queens yeah. Looking into that house, we stopped and the framing of that hasn't stopped. Our friends, brunch and budget, who do like financial management and have those conversations they were talking about the ways in which people look at data and when we look at data about finances. So, instead of looking at data and doing further research, you can discover the reason why our money looks like it's going to these different things. Look at that data and ascribe personality to it and ascribe well it's because of this, and it's because of that. When those things are often not even the case, you know yeah. Unfortunately, it does just feel like these. The reason why black women so often are poor, and then we see all of these. These data points about the average black woman has a $ 5 net worth. You know that stuff, it's not because we know it's not as America and instead of addressing the real reasons for why we are structurally disadvantaged in financial market. Y'All want to talk about me. The ones of the beauties, not everything I save all the money that I spent on here, goodbye cool - I will still be the same: [ __ ]. All those same things would still exist. None of that would change, but if we explored those things, if we explored the actual reasons, then people would actually have to talk about white supremacy right your capitalism and nobody wants to do that because how can you maintain the system if we're actually talking about the System yeah, nobody ever wants to talk about systems, always what you can send additional individual ships, a very Republican and white supremacist concept that that's that [ __ ]. So this is your fault, not mine at me all right, so I do want to make sure I mean we're talking about all the traumas that are associated with our hair and there are many many many but there's also a real joy and celebration in the culture That black woman hammers are there, and I did just want to make sure to talk about that a little bit, because I love one of my favorite things. Now that I've been experimenting for the past almost seven eight months and like there is a real pleasure being like what kind of my hair it feels great. He was great. There was this period, I think, maybe at the eye of Ferguson or a little bit afterward. We were more like industries and protesting and [ __ ] like that, and that heaviness was such like a ever-present thing where we would be like okay. Well, let's go to the hair store, but we have a place. We meet there. We get lost in there. The wig looks too kind and again yeah. Maybe we buy something, maybe we just window-shopping yeah but yeah. I think that people underestimate when, while they are judging all the ridiculous or not ridiculous, like fun things that black girls do, they are not taken into account. All of the [ __ ] that we deal with that's your average default white person is not engaging with that's not the same. Why people don't have problems that we have those problems and black girl problems and girl girl problems? And you know it's require or disabled or whatever at our intersection? Is mental health, stuff or whatever? And so it's important that we have outlets for those things and I think sometimes it's important that we have outlets for those things that are our own, but I think that the safety of a beauty salon or the safety of being at janmani growth, we green, is Done my hair, like being at your homegirls house, getting your hair talked about it. I don't know if they've had beauty, salons cuz, that's usually where I would a lot of my hair care was in my home. So then, when I did start watching 3d salons that were I don't know, it's a lot of waste a lot of women getting here and then there is like the black men and beauty salons without telling you my hairs to think what it's you know. Things are happening, so it's not so my mother found like one person who did out here. She did I hear from maybe like junior high and so like until I maybe I was like 24 or 25 yeah, my hair. That was a person I feel received, but she wasn't a black person who was in here politics in that way, so I haven't really outside of that yeah felt safe in salons. I don't have those stories that most black women have when it comes to like about this anyway, that people who have to get barked their hair barber, the the barbershop, can be yeah yeah. I understand that even within my credits friend, so just like just hearing like 1 million - i guess just like put min center on that Wendy's going something I was just like. That'S not yeah did it like and asking I'm young, I'm not realizing what that is like. I don't quite fit, and in this speech you're the eyes of a woman, I know what that was yes, but for me like never thought about how so much of beauty salon banter is when I guess there is an element of like nostalgia. Yeah because I haven't been in a beauty salon in a long time, but the things that it's like Church because they're that small storefront that I grew up in on my family. So there is there's culture yeah, even if not safety, there is culture, but I will say I find safety in my home. Is I mean there are so many like iconic images of black women in beauty? Salons I mean, I don't know if everybody considers this to be iconic, but I think of like the Destiny's Child Bills, Bills, Bills, video, where it's like it's a celebration of miss Tina salon, they gossip into each other, and all of that I mean I did not. I never thought like this until you just brought it up, but for some of us it is different. You know I feel, like the older. A lot of us get the less we like people, you know they're, like honestly, when you brought that up. I can't imagine sitting in a beauty salon and listening to every dress. Yeah, I didn't know what it was as a kid and I wasn't nosy little child and one's business like this. I'M sitting here. Do I now have to challenge you know, aren't so much those or miss solo, but anyway it is important, as people who obviously engage with a lot of trauma. Trauma is specifically due to our blackness and other intersections. It'S important that we delight in our Joy's our that we indulge in those things and don't don't fall victim to. Oh. I don't want people to see me doing this, so I don't want. Thank you know there is like when I was going to the hair. So a lot of there are, there is a lot of like [ __ ] surrounding that just walking up and down 125th Street and men asked - and you know this is the men Bender's on the street. Oh that's a hair! That'S right, somebody said to me, are in the store yesterday: 125th um, since you do your hands by yourself and I was walking I was I have held, but I was walking yeah PR. I wasn't engaging with him or thinking this is going to turn to a things like it looks alright, oh my god, yeah ask you anything, but just yeah ignoring that, yes down in July. What makes me feel good what's fun? What'S you know I go up there. I knew I was gon na meet you up on more hair jewelry, like what that made me feel good. I like that. So just I think, as we are constantly challenging white supremacy in ourselves and other isms within ourselves, we also have to allow ourselves to find joy and indulge in whatever joy is and looks like for us. Allow it to be a joyful experience, because there is a situation where you're here it comes a burden in the road. That'S what are they gon na think what color you know but like tapping into this is fine. I could sit play. I get to experiment with ancestors by the stuff that I'm choosing to do to my hair, like it really can be genuinely yeah it. I know for myself changing my hair, so much is a part of my hair joy yeah. That is, and then I, when I first started to like play and start making wigs and stuff my mom is like you know what you know the grandmothers make way. You know, just like all of these things that I just see kind of like me performing myself and ways that I didn't attached to my hair before about that that I do now, you know yeah all right guys. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. Like I said I love it, your podcast, it's fine! You all have great chemistry. You choose good things to talk about. Y'All, don't have crazy policy all right. So where can we go to listen, we're on all? Wherever you listen to podcast, oh hi, wherever you listen to podcast, we are there. We have a podcast on Spotify Google Play SoundCloud wherever you listen to your favorite podcast TV object. Is there just search team with Queen and J?