Fathers and Their African American Daughters: Hair Pieces Creating Ties that Bind
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Abstract
Writing about the “mother-daughter dance over hair” in her article “For Black Girls, Hair and Self-Esteem Are Interwoven,” Karen M. Thomas (2006) asserts that hair is both “a mother’s way to pass judgment and a daughter’s way to rebel.” Thomas sees hair as “a sign of independence and self-identity [that] announces to the world who we are,” but for little African American girls, the hair “dance” is more complicated, often signaling “a daughter’s entry point into racial differences and America’s standard of beauty” (E3). Culturally and racially-specific hair stories represent nuanced intersections between adults’ choices about girls’ hair and young black girls’ ability to make their own informed hair and identity-forming choices in an adult world. Kim Green’s reflection in “The Pain of Living the Lye” underscores the effect of “good hair” on an African American child’s psyche: “I grew up mad at my hair because it wasn’t like the swinging manes of white children who surrounded me” (1993, 38). To achieve the “good hair” ideal, heated iron combs or lye-based chemicals become the tools of destruction and temporary construction. African American women routinely talk and testify about a loss of innocence by pinpointing the moment their hair journeys toward selfhood began, testimonials revealing an evolution from hair-straightening to eventual acceptance of self and hair. The beginnings of these self-defining moments in young black girlhood are clear and long-lasting, and ultimately shape the public and private images of black womanhood.
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