Not a Hair Out of Place

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Some use hair to make political statements by recreating themselves.

By Cat Clark

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Hair is just a bunch of dead cells stacked on top of one another. Yet, we’re obsessed with it. We brush it. We wash it. We dry it. We curl it. We crimp it. We straighten it. We braid it. We style it. We cut it. We shave it.

We spend hours caring for our hair – in all its forms – and spend millions of dollars on products to make it look better.

Hair is a central part of our identity, an inherent aspect of our lives, culture and society that we rarely analyze. We may fuss over it, but hair remains just a “natural” part of presenting ourselves to the world. But hair has meaning. We give it a power over ourselves and identities. Through our hair, we can say who we are and what we support.

But the politics of hair extends beyond the hairstyles of politicians. Politics also deals with power structures within society and culture, and like gender or race, hair possesses a power that identifies people upon first impression.

Throughout history, people have recognized this power and latched onto it to express themselves in a myriad of ways.

Young adults are at the center of a variety of different hair initiatives. Women are refusing to shave or are dyeing their armpit hair. Some men are growing “man buns” or putting glitter in their beards. Other young adults are standing up against cultural appropriation and some are embracing their natural hair in a political move against patriarchy.

Before they began shaking things up and rebelling against social norms, these rebels first recognized the power they gave to hair in their own lives.

Identity

“Imagine this,” natural hair blogger Ticia Kaggwa said with a smile. “Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning and you were bald! Because I’m like ‘Oh, my hair. Whatever.’ But I know if I woke up tomorrow morning and I was bald, I would be ruined! I don’t know what I would do.”

Kaggwa, 26, not only works in Social Media marketing and graphic design in Toronto, Canada, but also runs her own blog on how to take care of natural hair. She has worn her hair naturally her whole life and sees it as the best choice. Kaggwa points to her mother as the reason behind her love for natural hair.

“My mom was very adamant that I not relax my hair until I was at least 18,” Kaggwa said. “She came from Tanzania to Canada about five to 10 years before I was born, so she didn’t really have the same social pressures to straighten her hair when growing up in East Africa that a lot of people have in North America. So for her, it was like why would you do that to yourself? Your hair is completely fine the way it is.”

As for identity, Kaggwa sees hair as something that is another form of expression. She said that it is all about balance. For some people, hair is the foundation of their identity, but for others, hair is just hair, said Kaggwa. Above all, it’s a subjective decision.

“For me, I love my hair and I try to take as best care of it as I can. I try to use it as an expression of my personality and choose styles that reflect who I am, but at the same time, I don’t know if I necessarily would say it is who I am,” Kaggwa said. “It’s just an expression of who I am. So for the people who do use it as an identifier, I think it’s the same as people who are really into shoes or make-up. It’s just another form of outwardly expressing yourself to the world.”

But most importantly, hair is free and can change.

She said: “Your hair can really be manipulated to say things or not say things about who you are.”

Madin Ray Lopez, a hairstylist at Salon Folklore in Los Angeles, who prefers to go by the pronoun “they” over “he or she,” emphasized hair’s malleability as an explanation for our cultural obsession.

“It’s really our first message to the world, similarly to fashion,” Lopez said. “It’s the way that you are identified, so oftentimes if you have long hair, people will automatically assume you are female. If you have short hair, you will automatically be assumed to be male. Within those variations of texture, length, color there are so many other messages that we are sending out to the world without saying a word.”

Lopez believe that this first message is critical in how we are received within society.

“It’s the way that people around us will categorize us with intention to harm or hurt or possibly love or have affection for,” Lopez said. “I think that because it’s the first intention and impression it is a very deep thing and a very important space to take up in the right way.”

For Lopez, hair as identity is a central part of their career. Hair may be just hair, but it has the power to make you feel amazing or horrible, said they. Within themself, Lopez uses hair to test others and to mark their space.

Lopez said they have changed their hair countless times, but has kept one hairstyle for the past four years in order to send a specific message to others.

“It’s longer on this side and around the back it just comes to a point,” Lopez said. “It honestly means nothing and it means everything because automatically I can tell what kind of person I’m interacting with by the way they interact with me hair-wise, body-wise, face-wise.”

Jessica Salans, a 27-year-old children’s book publisher, has seen hair as a tool to explore the meaning of gender. This past year, Salans has grown out her body hair and begun to question what is inherently feminine and what is inherently masculine.

“[Not shaving] goes against the mainstream narrative. I think it’s actually very empowering to say that you as an individual can define what beauty means to you,” said Salans, “and if you are comfortable in yourself and in your own standards of beauty, and you are surrounded by people who actually care about you the self, then you can let go of everything else.”

Kaggwa, Lopez and Salans all emphasize that hair is intrinsically tied to how people identify themselves and how hair broadcasts a number of meanings at first glance. But these meanings are nothing without the power we give them in society.

Power

We start giving power to hair at a young age as we begin to become socialized by our culture.

“I remember when I was 11 and I came home sobbing to my mom wanting to shave my legs,” Salans said. “And she let me do it and guided me. We grew up that women should be soft and delicate and fair and beautiful. Beauty in this culture means hairless.”

Salans argues that this messaging about hair and hairlessness shapes us until we don’t even think about the choices we are making, but the power lies in our abilities to break the stigma and feel comfortable in it.

“Like I hate myself when I’m like ‘uh, I feel so ugly.’ That sucks, but I have those thoughts. I just try to give myself some grace – ‘Listen. That’s ok. This is not your fault.’ If it consumes your mind so much, get rid of [your hair]. Simple, you know?” Salans said.

Lopez agrees that we hold the power over each other through our hair. They point to the black community as an example.

“Within the black community, there’s a lot of different type of hair textures, and we’ve been hard on each other on what our hair looks like and feels like, what our hair’s doing that day,” Lopez said. “Even the militia has been hard on black women on not allowing them to wear their natural hair texture. I think that we hold the power and it just comes down to how we implement it with each other.”

This power isn’t just within specific communities though, said Lopez. It crosses into people’s work life, where they feel confined to a specific hairstyle or color. By falling in line with what is acceptable, we continue the status quo, said Lopez.

“If you don’t do it and stand up, then no one else will behind you,” Lopez said.

Like Salans, Lopez emphasized that power must be recreated within ourselves by ourselves before we can make change in our communities.

“Allowing the world to make dents on us every once in a while is comfortable, because then, we can figure out who we are and see what works for us and what doesn't,” Lopez said. “And I know it's literally just hair. But I also work in the transgender community an awful lot and it's pretty intense what it looks like on someone's face when you make them feel the most feminine that they've ever felt in their lives. Like that is a real experience and it can be with a wig or with chopping them bangs or making their hair just sit on their face in a way that accentuates all their feminine attributes. That changes all their experiences which means they can move on and change others experiences.”

From this recreation comes the opportunity to break barriers that are set within social power structures.

Barriers

People use their hair to announce to the world certain identifiers. “I’m a woman,” long hair can scream. “I’m a rebel,” a Mohawk may shout. “I’m fashionable,” suggests dyed, silver hair. “I’m Muslim,” says a hijab. And on and on it goes. By handing hair this power to identify us and introduce us, we set up subconscious barriers that determine our reactions to and thoughts about others.

One set of barriers that hair creates are the ones that surround gender.

Lopez sees hair as a way to break gender political barriers. While working with homeless LGBT youth, Lopez witnesses how the world has forced 17- to 21-year-olds to figure out their identities and how hair allows them to make that leap.

“It’s always a big deal when someone can say, ‘Shave my head, because all this energy is too much for me.’ Or ‘I realized today that my gender identity does not lie in my genitalia and my hair is the only way I can afford to change and that isn’t going to be bodily harm,’” Lopez said. “That one step is such a big step and to be able to come to that realization and have that safe space and be loved and doted upon for it.”

Salans regrew her body hair to question and to break her own understanding of being a woman.

“If anything, really growing out my leg hair, especially when I’ve been with a man intimately and then seeing our bodies next to each other and looking at him and being like I’m so much more like you than I’m not,” Salans said. “That never happened to me before because I think when I strip it away, my hair puts up almost a barrier to how alike we are.”

Lopez also does not remove their body hair due to comfort, but also as a way to break more barriers. For the last two summers, Lopez jumped on the armpit hair dying trend and colored theirs pink.

“I thought this trend is amazing because I do hair and my underarms are always in people’s faces. You just have to be used to it, and now, it’s like ‘Oh, look it’s pink!’ It gives it not just visibility, but I feel like for so long people would just ignore it like you would a booger in someone’s nose, as if it were a flaw. So decorating body hair changes that completely to where it becomes like you’re wearing the earrings,” Lopez said.

At the same time, these barriers extend to race and ethnicity. For generations, women of color, specifically black women, have felt pressure to relax or straighten their hair because they had “bad hair.” Natural hair and traditional styles were casted aside as “other” and “wrong.” This myth of “bad hair” and “good hair” exists throughout Latin America as well. The Venezuelan movie “Pelo Malo” (2013) discusses this myth and the feeling of being trapped within oneself. Recently, natural hair has risen again as a movement to reclaim blackness and redefine beauty.

Natural hair blogger, Kaggwa personally never felt this pressure while growing up in Canada, but said she has read stories and knows people who have felt this pressure, even within the black community. Kaggwa emphasized that her own family is divided on the subject of natural hair with some saying that natural is the best and others feeling that their hair has to be perfect all the time.

“It really varies from group to group. I do know from reading other people’s blogs that some were almost disowned by their parents when they went natural,” Kaggwa said. “It was such a huge deal. They were like, ‘I can’t look at you anymore. Why do you want to go around making things harder for yourself?’ I think it does come out of concern. People lose jobs over this, so it’s not necessarily thinking the decision in and of itself is wrong, but the implications can be pretty life-changing.”

Lopez spoke along the same lines and emphasized that the “bad hair” myth creates a hierarchical system within the black community of “worthiness.” Lopez speaks with their wife often about each other’s hair.

“My wife is half black and half Mexican, and her hair texture is a lot wavier. Only when being with her have I ever realized she wants my hair. When my hair grows in and it’s a little think and a little afro, she’s like ‘Oh my God! It’s the most beautiful thing in the world,’” Lopez said. “It’s interesting how she wishes she had that and I wish that I had hers, when I was younger.”

The reason for these different hair goals, Lopez explained, is again society’s expectations.

“Society said, ‘Straighter hair is better. The straighter the hair, the lighter the skin. The longer the hair, the lighter the eyes.’ All these things about beauty that have been shoved down our throats for so long have always been in someone else’s eyes completely different,” Lopez said.

The consensus among Lopez, Kaggwa and Salans was the need for a conversation within oneself and with others.

“I think that we’ve always used physical tools,” Madin said. “And I think it’s about time we start using emotional tools and societal tools like power, knowledge and privilege. There are all the things that play a major role. Those conversations are the only way to start active change.”