The Politics of Hair
On the 16th of September 2022, Mahsa Amini, an Iranian girl dared to be immodest in the eyes of Iran’s religious morality police by wearing her hijab loosely and showing parts of her hair. Upon setting eyes on her, the religious morality police of Iran felt enraged at how this young girl is defying the government standards of morality set on women and show a bit of her hair. As a result, she was beaten heavily, which led to her ending up in the hospital where she later died.
I was first introduced to the topic of The Politics of Hair when I watched a video where Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talked about how had Michelle Obama had naturally curly hair, Barack Obama would not have been elected president. This is due to curly hair (which is mostly associated with Black people) being seen as rowdy and untidy. I was not surprised by this statement as I have always known that curly hair, even in Emirati culture, is seen as something untidy and that it needs to be tamed. “Kisha” they call it, which translates to untidy.
In other instances, the politics of hair arise with female beauty standards. The typical Beauty standard being those with straight hair, then there are those with blonde straight hair — who are seen as the ideal beauty standard. Some might say that beauty is subjective. However, beauty will stop being subjective when popularization channels such as the movie and tv industry stop presenting white blonde women as the beautiful trophy for the protagonist. Beauty stops being subjective when Black women are no longer vilified for being chosen for roles that some think should have gone to a white women (e.g. the recent casting of a Black girl for the role of Little Mermaid).
In her novel, Americanah (a novel I highly recommend reading for more understanding of non-American Black culture), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie touches upon many topics that affect Black identity in America, more specifically African identity. She tells the story from the perspective of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman who migrates to the United States as an undergrad student and now 13 years later, a prominent blogger and a fellow at Princeton, is contemplating returning to Nigeria. She differentiates African identity from Black American identity. If you spoke like an American, you were viewed more positively, but someone with an African accent was seen as uneducated.
When it comes to the topic of hair, Chimamanda dives deep into the complex relationship between a Black woman and her hair. She discusses this topic through Ifemelu’s relationship with her hair.
One of those instances is when Ifemelu struggles to find a job due to her status as a migrant (employers want to avoid the problems of immigration paperwork and visas) her White rich republican boyfriend uses his connections to help her find a job at a large corporation. Upon landing an interview, her boyfriend’s mother advises her to straighten her hair in order to look “presentable,” as though braided hair is a sore to the eye. While at first she attempts to relaxen her hair by herself at home, she finds her efforts are making things more difficult and so she seeks the help of a professional who is able to do the job for her.
A while later, she finds her hair damaged and constantly falling off. She gets advice from her fellow Nigerians that she should revert back to her natural hair, because her hair isn’t meant to be relaxed. When Ifemelu let her natural hair flow, she found herself faced by snarky comments from her White colleagues such as “Is it supposed to be a political statement?” It could be a political statement, but in Ifemelu’s particular case, it wasn’t. It just so happened that she had her hair damaged as a result of wanting to keep appearances, and through her courage to wear her natural hair proudly again, it was seen as a political act, because it is. Because hair is political.
It might seem too simplistic, and maybe materialistic to just say that “hair is political” but the truth is that everything in the appearance of a disenfranchised person of color is political, particularly women. There’s a reason there’s a revolution in Iran right now, and it’s because women’s hair is political. There’s a reason there are anti-islamophobic activists in Europe, in countries such as France, fighting for Muslim women’s rights to wear a hijab in public buildings, because women’s hair is political. There’s a reason Muslim and Sikh men were harrassed endlessly after the events of 9/11 due to them wearing turbans or having long beards, it’s because their appearances (turbans and beards) are political.
Mahsa Amini’s hair was a defiant political statement.
