Pink Hair Don’t Care
And Other Adventures in Cultural Appropriation
A long while ago, I told you all a story about Trena braiding my sister Steph’s hair into tight cornrows for a camping trip. Steph, at least according to some folks, doesn’t have the right complexion for the cornrow hairstyle. She’s a bit on the pale side. Some would consider it a cultural appropriation. You can find that story here.
You Should Never Touch a Black Woman's Hair
In the essay, I used this as an allegory for my habit of throwing F-bombs and other entry-level foul language around wherever I go.
I’d like to take this a step further and tell you about the time I took part in some hardcore cultural appropriation of my own. I’ve not brought this up before because there are photos. And I’m sure Trena will insist that if I talk about it, I’ve got to share them. They're not all that flattering, so you’ll understand why I don’t really want them out there in the world.
But there may be some lessons that can be gleaned from the story, and if there are, I can live with a little bit of embarrassment.
You see, a little more than ten years ago, I wore pink yarn braids in my hair for something like a month.
I’d all but buried the memory of that horrible time, but it came bubbling back to the surface like a long-forgotten trauma while standing in the grocery store checkout a few days back. Miss Jackie, our favorite cashier, complimented Trena on her afro, which I have to say was picked out and beautiful.
This compliment, along with a bomb I casually tossed into the middle, set off a conversation about hair between Miss Jackie, Trena, and the young lady bagging our groceries. Three generations of black women with very different attitudes about their hair.
Note: The bomb came in the form of a comment regarding Trena’s feeling that an afro is not professional enough to wear to work.
So, back to the whole pink hair thing for a moment. The braids were not my idea. Well, they were kind of my idea, but it was a casual comment just tossed out to make me seem like a good guy. It happened in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Trena had put three pink yarn braids in my hair to commemorate her grandmother and two others.
At some point I said, and this is where I fucked up, “I’ll wear a whole head of the things if it makes some money for the cause.” It got the intended reaction, and I promptly forgot the words had fallen out of my mouth.
Wouldn’t you know it, Trena did not.
The next year, in September, she comes to me, or maybe it’s better said, she came at me, with the good news that quite a bit of money had been pledged for my braids. I’ll tell you what, it took a little time for her words to actually settle in and make any sense. But when they did, it occurred to me that I was the one who had set the trap, and short of asking for a divorce, I could see no way out.
Well, I guess a no might have worked, or maybe even, there’s no way in hell you’re braiding pink yarn into my hair, but what kind of man would that have made me? When you paint yourself into a corner sometimes all you can do is stand there until the shit dries.
The conversation, in the checkout line, revolved around the ever-changing attitudes towards different hairstyles and what those styles said about you as a black woman. It also slightly veered into the whole code-switching concept. Although none of them referred to it as such.
I’m of at least average emotional intelligence, but somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that stepping back and forth between the cultures was an uncomfortable task for Trena. I understood from experience that being the only black person in the room would, at times, make her feel a little out of place.
There sure as hell have been times, her grandmother's funeral for one, when I felt a bit pale for the crowd. Someone even asked me to pull the car around at that funeral, thinking I was the limo driver. And if “Out of place like a Caucasian at a black funeral” is not a saying, it should be.
What I didn’t get was that moving back and forth between the two cultures was as or more difficult than just sitting in one. Early on in our relationship, which has gone on for something like twenty years, I started apologizing to Trena’s dad for ruining her. I think he’s over it by now, but I can't be sure.
You see, I led her down the road to punk, which devolved into alt-country and bluegrass, and somehow planted us on an acre of land on the edge of a cornfield, where we keep chickens, and apparently, goats next spring. She even stopped getting her nails done and doesn’t throw quite so much of a fit when the car isn’t clean. It's not what you might expect for a girl who came up in the hood.
The first time I had to step out of our apartment with two skeins of the most hideous pink yarn, trying to rip my scalp loose from my skull, it took a force of will I can’t even begin to explain. The Raggedy Andy look didn’t flatter me at all. I’d like to say I got used to it, but no, I just put on a brave face and owned the shit.
Someday I might share a bit about those adventures.
For now, I’ll get to the point of this whole thing.
It’s something like the weight of cultural expectations can be overwhelming. Most of us go through life not really paying much attention to those expectations. We put on a suit or a dress to go to a wedding. If you’re like me you might bitch about the tie being too tight, but you put the thing on and conform. Most of us do our best not to swear in church or at our grandmother or at anyone's grandmother, for that matter.
We do what’s expected of us and don’t give it all that much thought.
The weight only becomes truly oppressive when you need to slip between two cultures with vastly different expectations, and it really piles on when there is something about you that says you might not belong. That’s the code-switching thing.
A white man cosplaying as Raggedy Andy isn’t all that acceptable on either side of the fence. And Trena feels that her picked-out afro is kind of the same. It’s not professional enough for work, and it’s not braids or extensions or even flat-ironed, so it’s somewhat frowned upon by some on the other side.
This is all just the surface-level stuff, but it’s a reflection of the deeper, tribal things that keep us apart. I will say that the young lady bagging our groceries had a much more nuanced way of thinking about her hair as a symbol of culture. Maybe this means that on some level, a bridge is starting to take shape, and in the near future, we’ll all find a way to accept each other as we are.
Although I think the pink yarn braids on a white man thing is not going to catch on. Or at least I hope it doesn’t.
Well said, my love! Towing that line is weird and you definitely explain it well.
"Maybe this means that on some level, a bridge is starting to take shape, and in the near future, we’ll all find a way to accept each other as we are." I hope so.