lesions on my scalp where the relaxer gave me chemical burns. I was willing to disfigure myself in order to be deemed “presentable” and “pretty.” To be truly seen. At twelve, I had not been once called pretty. Not by friends, not by my family, and certainly not by boys. My friends all had people checking them out and had their isn’t-that-cute elementary school boyfriends. I was completely and utterly alone and invisible.
What was it like for my mother to sit there for hours upon hours, watching these black girls she wanted to raise to be proud black women become seduced by assimilation? And then to see her child screaming and squirming with open sores on her scalp because she wanted her hair to be as soft and silky as possible. My hair turned out like that of any other black girl with a tight curl pattern who’d gotten their hair relaxed and styled: medium length, slightly bumped under, except with lesions that would later scab.
Even after I was burned, with each trip to my cousin’s salon, I carried with me the hope that this would be the week I was going to look like the pictures. That misguided goal remained unattainable, of course, but I could always tell the difference in the way people treated me when I came fresh from getting my hair done professionally.
“Oh my God, your hair looks so straight.”
“Your hair looks so nice that way!”
Translation: You look prettier the closer you get to white. Keep trying.
If I didn’t have my hair done professionally for school picture day, I didn’t want to give out the prints when they arrived. There are years where my school photo is simply missing from the albums because they were given to me to take home. If I didn’t look within a mile of what I thought of as “okay,” I just didn’t give the photos to my mother. I was not going to give her the opportunity to hand that eight-by-ten glossy to my grandmother so she could frame it next to photos of my cousins who had lighter skin and straight hair.
I would tear the photos into pieces, scattering images of myself in different garbage cans to eliminate even the chance of piecing my ugliness together. “No,” I said to myself, “you’re not gonna document this fuckery.”
BECAUSE I’VE DONE SO MANY BLACK FILM PRODUCTIONS, HAIR HAS NOT always been the focal point of my performance. But on white productions, it is like another actor on set with me. A problem actor. First of all, they never want to hire anyone black in hair and makeup on a white film. Hair and makeup people hire their friends, and they naturally want to believe their friend who says they can do anything. “Oh yeah, I can do black hair,” they say. Then you show up, and you see immediately that they don’t have any of the proper tools, the proper products, and you look crazy. If you ever see a black person on-screen looking nuts? I guarantee they didn’t have a black person in hair and makeup.
I figured this out right away on one of my very first modeling jobs, when I was about twenty-two. It was for a big teen magazine, and they said, “Come with your hair clean.”
I actually washed my hair. Now, if you ask any black performer who has been around in Hollywood for more than a minute, “Come in clean” means you come in with your hair already done. That way, they can’t screw you up. You come in pressed, blown out, or flat-ironed. Otherwise, you’re just asking for trouble.
I didn’t know that. My dumb novice ass showed up for my first big modeling shoot fresh from the shower. This white woman was literally trying to round brush my hair and then use just a curling iron to get the edges straight.
“You don’t look like how you looked in your modeling photos,” the hairdresser said. She hair-sprayed my hair and then put heat on it. My eyes got wide. She was going to break my hair right off of my head. I said nothing and did anything but look in the mirror. I didn’t have enough confidence to say, “You don’t know what you’re doing. Step away from my hair.”
She did her damage, then leaned back to take in her efforts. “You look beautiful!” In fact, I looked nuts. Then I had to do the shoot, and proceeded to be documented for life looking like a