Black people have been having the distraction of the hair conversation for far too long: good hair vs. bad hair, natural afrocentric vs. process & trying to look like a White Girl-LOL-SMH! Hair is just as much an expression of personal style as much as the clothes we choose to wear, but for some reason it has a lot more power over us as a community. You wouldn’t feel like death was at your door just by being caught outside without your designer accessories or fashion forward clothes, but God forbid you get caught out there without your weave or hair freshly done. It’s an absolutely “hell to the no” , my life is over moment! Work, play & life can be put on hold by our obsession with hair. Whether one chooses to wear traditional African pride & elegance or European haute couture, does not get as much attention & heated debate in Black communities nationally as much as the topic of hair. It’s all a personal preference & just about the look that makes you feel the most fabulous, the most comfortable in your skin & expression of you!

Right as I was leaving New York to go to Ghana, West Africa, the never ending point of contention in the Black community resurfaced in full force again with the release of the promos from Chris Rock’s upcoming documentary film, “Good Hair”! There were much to do about nothing protests & calls for boycotts on the film even before its release because some Black people questioned why Chris Rock made this movie, why he’s putting “so called” negative images of Black people out in an industry bombarded with negative images of black people with very little positive, why he’s trying to put Black people’s personal business out on the street & trying to make us look bad when his wife wears a weave, & the usual often ridiculous, sometimes serious & always hilarious debate on hair in the Black community. This is exactly what I think Chris Rock set to capture with his up coming documentary film. I am one of the people looking forward to seeing it & having a good laugh while praying that we get over this hair obsession & unnecessary pressures we put on ourselves!

When I got to Ghana, I found it refreshing when I quickly realized that hair wasn’t a topic for debate or contention at all amongst Ghanaians. Everyone wore their hair in many styles with just as much reverence for those who wore their hair natural as those who didn’t. One’s hair had very little to do with class, one’s sense of cultural pride, or one’s desire to have more reverence for the European ideal of beauty while forsaking their own. It was just not that serious in Ghana! I got home, took my wig off, let my natural hair/head breath & left with the longest braids ever- with absolute freedom in my ability & pride in changing styles & still being beautifully me! I left behind an American fashion industry that couldn’t celebrate all my many styles & even had my long time clients of over 10 years tell me that putting Black faces in their Ad. Campaigns did not reflect their target market. I guess I wasn’t their market even though my Black African face had been the one defining their brands, as the company who handled their Public Relations, Marketing & Advertising. I came to Ghana & found the place that welcomed my many styles & had the desire to celebrate & showcase them in every aspect that defined Black, African & just simply Style!

I think it is brilliant how Ghanaians have taken this topic out of contention by starting young females off as young as possible, knowing that their hair does not define them & that it is just an accessory covering over what will truly define them in their society & the world , their level of intelligence! In Ghana, the public elementary, junior high & high schools make it mandatory for all girls to wear uniforms along with shaving their head or cutting it down to a no hassle low – AKA a down cut. In the classroom everyone is equal, undistracted & focused on their education & the task at hand. There is no coming to school late or faking sick to stay at home because you’re having a bad hair day & couldn’t find anything to wear. The hilarious & ironic part is that in Ghana there seems to be more beauty salons than schools, more trash from synthetic hair laying around the streets than food or garbage cans, that is if you can even find any garbage cans (see side bar).

In Ghana, hair is not at all a point of contention & debate, but rather a great recession proof business for the spirit & empowerment of the entrepreneur because no matter how rich or poor, women will always want to get their hair coiffed & fabulously them + there always will be evolving creativity in hair styling! It seems from birth every Ghanaian has the innate skill to braid. Hair has always been our thing as Black people from one side of the Atlantic to the other, an ever evolving expression of the style & culture of Black people. As we reached the American side of the Atlantic, it seems the topic of hair became a never ending distraction & point of contention in our fear of completely being stripped of all of our culture & becoming completely Europeanized, which I feel is a real fear for Black Americans even today! Europeanizing a nation of Black people will never happen because we are purveyors of culture & style, & we know hair! We just have to take some time to look back & reflect on our history & its global progress & process to see that! Our culture is innate, under the relaxers & weaves is our natural root & even under the weave is the the root of our innate technique of the braid; just another evolution of our culture into the many styles which we spread & share with the world as the keepers of unique styles!

If the topic of hair is really that serious & contentious for you, then maybe you need to take a lesson from the Ghanaian school system & start from the root of your down cut, so the education, self knowledge & awareness can become the focus with an easier route to the brain. A mind is a terrible thing to waste –let’s not waste it on the debate of hair! Let’s give our young girls a head start by taking this debate out of contentiousness & out of the complete definition of who we are as people, girls & women.

side bar-
Not seeing any garbage cans on the streets of Ghana was really odd to me when a company called Zoomlion based in China (the new great liberator/reconstructionist/colonizer of Africa), which defines itself as a waste management company on the environmental landscape of Ghana, didn’t have the basics in place of trash collecting & protecting Ghana’s environment. Zoomlion entered the Ghanaian market in 2006 & spent millions in advertising/marketing/PR on the fact that they were going to get Ghana clean with the help of the community, but somehow overlooked or never thought about putting out garbage cans on the streets so that the gutters wouldn’t be the ultimate collector of Ghana’s waste. Zoomlion boast being innovative & constantly looking for quality & affordable solutions in waste management. Aren’t garbage cans the most in quality & affordability in the collection of trash? Maybe I am not that innovative, but I would prefer going back to the basics of garbage cans on the streets while they waste a lot of time & money trying to find new innovative solutions to waste management as everyday people suffocate & die from the trash that is thrown in the gutters that enter their drinking water.

http://zoomlionghana.com