Although I thought this was old news, there is a new picture of the Carters that apparently has some folks critiquing the parents and others, including this well written article, chastising those who are talking crazy about Blue Ivy’s hair. If you didn’t know, Blue Ivy is the daughter of Beyonce and Jay-Z, and her hair is a natural mess.
And I think that’s a good thing.
Today a few friends and I took a field trip to the local mall. Our destination? The new American Girl store, two stories of little girl heaven. We planned to get there early on a weekday in order to avoid the lines that are common in the evenings and on weekends. Since we are all students, ten a.m. worked well.
I bought along the American Girl doll my daughter received for Christmas. Yes, we, her parents, were the folks who bought it for her. It wasn’t an easy purchase, mainly due to the price. For the doll, a stand, and a brush, the total came to about $160. That was the only gift she received for Christmas from us.
I never had an American Girl doll growing up. Honestly, I had no idea what they were until about a year ago when my little girl started talking about them. After doing a little research, I see they were big in the 1990s, but perhaps I was a little too old for them by then. In any case, I was totally in the dark about the dolls and likely when I was a preteen I wouldn’t of even shaped my mouth to ask for such a thing. Not at $100.
But I did it for my little girl. Living where we live, and where a lot of black girls live, there are no positive images of little black girls. No book series for the young reader. No engineering sets. A whole lot of nothing. And her talk about her white dolls being more adorable than her blacks ones was breaking my heart (I’d never bought her a white doll, but other people had.) And many of her friends already had at least one of the dolls. I’m not usually one to do what everyone else does, but I recognized the cultural capital inherent in the dolls. Just like Bey Blades and Pokemon are today’s popular toys for the kids in my son’s circle, American Girl is the “it” toy for my girl and her friends. And given it was her only Christmas grift due to the cost, I didn’t feel like I was spoiling her.
Continue reading “Black Girls and the American Girl Doll Dillemma”
When she was a young girl, Little M dreaded having her hair groomed. Sure, disentangling and combing her kinky hair would require some uncomfortable pulling and tugging, but she feared something much worse than the rough feeling of her grandmother’s hands in her hair: the even rougher tone of her grandmother’s words in her ear. Ordered to sit still on the floor while her grandmother unbraided, combed, and re-braided her hair, Little M endured a stream of insults and negative assessments. Her grandmother stretched the hair-combing sessions out as long as possible, so that she could maximize the time spent telling her granddaughter about all the things that were wrong with her; all the inappropriate gestures and language she had used; all the problematic requests she had made. With each charge of bad behavior, Little M’s grandmother painfully pinched her cheeks, or wrung her ears. Grandmother’s hands left behind smears of hair oil on Little M’s face, like a scarlet letter broadcasting to the world just how inadequate she was. As she walked away, finally dismissed from the session, she felt shame and inadequacy; she believed that she was worthless.
Half a century later, my mother combs my daughter’s hair everyday. Together, they have a ritual. Little K runs to retrieve her booster seat, places it on the table, and asks to be seated in it. Ninnine unbraids my daughter’s hair, as my daughter begs her to comb it into her favorite style—an afro. My mother tells her, “non, mon amour, Mommy does afros; Ninnine does cornrows.” My mother starts the French DVRs that they watch during the sessions, and together they fall into the rhythm of the language lessons. “Strawberries!,” my mother will say; “fraises!,” my daughter will respond. “Bread!…du pain!” “Cake!…gateau!” “Oh, my little Kisou,” my mother ultimately says; “I love you all the time!”
When I come home from work, my daughter runs to the door to tell me about her day, and to show me her new hairstyle. “You look beautiful, K,” I tell her, and she responds, as she does everyday, with “Ninnine combed my hair!” I feel grateful that my mother manages my daughter’s kinks and coils in this way, and I admire the intricate rows and patterns of braids my mother has created with my toddler’s hair, like a crown. Deeper than beauty or convenience, however, the hairstyle and accompanying ritual are symbols of the bond my mother and daughter are creating with each other. I like to imagine that each cornrow represents a long line, stretching from my mother, the dispirited little girl, made captive to words that hurt and tore her down, to my daughter today, the spirited little girl who is repeatedly assured of her worth. Along that line lays a path of healing. My mother, no longer trapped between her grandmother’s legs on the floor, has released the pain and indignity of those hair sessions so long ago, knowing that her caregivers didn’t really know any better. Our mothers and grandmothers don’t always realize that their good faith–but old-school–attempts to discipline us can inflict wounds that we are later compelled to re-inflict on the vulnerable in our own care, just as little children act out their abuse on their dolls in an attempt to make sense of it all. Ninnine, however, has broken the cycle, using her power during hair sessions today to build Little K up, rather than break her down. Each flick of my mother’s wrists weaves a new hairstyle and a new connection, conveying to Little K just how adequate, indeed just how inherently worthwhile and perfect, they both are.
Little A’s came out of the womb with almost no hair at all. It wasn’t until she was almost three that her hair began to grow. Little A’s hair is soft and fine. In the sun, it glistens with hints of red. When brushed, it can be brushed straight. When left alone, it curls into large corkscrews. It tangles and knots easily when not braided or combed every day. It will begin to loc after several days of being let free.
A typical morning of grooming sounds like this:
“Ouch!”
“Ouuuuccccchhhh!”
“No more comb, mommy! I can’t do it! I just can’t do it!”
These are the protests of my little girl as I comb her hair.
I remember HATING to get my hair combed. No matter what the size of the comb, I remember the feeling of my head being yanked as my mom attempted to pull the comb through. I remember enduring the cornrows and braids so tight so that they’d last all week. I remember crying. I remember pain.
I don’t want that for my little girl.
I never want her to feel like she has to endure pain in order to “look good.” I never want her to dread a specific part of her body. I never want her to believe that something on her needs to be fixed.
So, I’m contemplating loc’ing her hair. My own hair has been without chemicals for about 10 years and loc’d for five. While sometimes I am annoyed with my hair, mostly due to my own lack of creativity, I think loc’ing it has been the best decision I ever made for it. Hair is never no-maintenance, but five years in I wash every two weeks, quickly retwist, which takes an hour, and the lightly oil and brush every other day. No pain. No dread. (No pun intended.) I can wear it back, out, up, straight, crinkly or curly. And it just keeps growing.
When I’ve contemplated this before, loc-ing my little girl’s hair, and aired my thoughts, I’ve gotten all kinds of opinions, the most oft being “Don’t do it!” When asked why, folks usually reply that loc’ing is permanent, and therefore not a decision a parent should make for a young child because “What if they don’t like it? Then they’ll have to shave their heads!”
I think these opinions have more to do with how people feel about locs than any legitimate concerns about child autonomy.
First, we already make so many decisions about our children that are “permanent” — they wear the clothes we want them to have, their dietary preferences are shaped by ours. And I do my child’s hair almost every day in the way that I want it. She’s only 4. Second, it’s only hair. I’ve rocked the TWA, BFA (Big Fat Afro), braids, twists, and press-and-curls. And, as shown above, Little A is adorable with no hair 🙂
I think people who have these opinions are just not comfortable with locs in general.
They think it’s too “ethnic”, too “black”, too much of a statement maker.
They think putting locs in a child’s hair is like expressing your political views on your children.
So what if it is? If the political view is that I want my little black girl to love her hair, and skip the years of self-hate I had about my hair – what’s the problem?
Written by CocoaMamas contributor Tracy B.
The other day my oldest son asked me if it was hard being a parent. I pondered his question purposefully and I prepared a response that would hopefully help him understand how seriously his father and I take parenting and also, how carefully we chose it and consider ourselves blessed by the privilege.
I told him yes – parenting is hard, because we want to do our collective and personal best to be the best parents to him and his little brother. It is also rewarding because we get to see ourselves in their faces and actions and watch them grown and become great men.
He looked at me confused and proceeded to say that being a parent looks easy because we get to do what we want – “stay up all night and party” (his words, not mine), eat and drink whatever we want and tell him and his brother what to do – and all they can do is obey or suffer the consequences. Well, that incited a chuckle from me and again, I had to carefully choose my words.
I explained to my son that parenthood is about more than staying up late and rattling off rules because we can. And, by no means is parenthood a daily party where his father and I stay up until the wee hours watching cartoons and eating snacks as it seems he suspects jealously.
The more I tried to explain what it is we parents do and why it’s so difficult, the more I seemed to confuse my poor child and eventually myself – almost. I mean, I know what I intended to say because I know what my intentions are as his mother. I know that I wanted my son and, to a certain extent, I planned his conception. I knew his name and I felt him and his importance as he grew inside me, I prayed about his purpose and I pictured his little face. I wanted to be the best mother I could be without knowing what exactly that meant. It is a definition I am still revising daily and something I strive and aspire to moment to moment.
As our conversation ended, he asked me, “Mommy, why does it look like you have tears in your eyes?” And I just told him that I hoped that someday he could understand everything we’ve done over the years as his parents and I hope he knows how much he is wanted and loved. I told him that when we give him and his brother rules about what to eat and when to go to bed, it’s not because we don’t want them to have fun or hang out with us – it’s because they need to behave like children and eat what’s healthy and get enough rest to play and grow. And I hugged my beautiful boy and looked him in his face and told him in terms that were probably easiest for him to understand:
“We pay the cost to be the boss … and although it may look like we’re having a lot of fun, it’s a lot of work, so you enjoy being a kid for as long as you can.”
Written by CocoaMamas contributor Tracy B.
My oldest son is getting ready to go back to school. He will be starting fourth grade at a public school near our home and the anxiety and anger that I feel are difficult to articulate.
I grew up fortunate enough to be able to attend private schools up until high school, when I decided I wanted to go to public school. Where I came from, the public school system had a reputation for brokenness and in my neighborhood, especially, the public schools were frightening. Because my single mother was able to send my older brother and me to private schools, I decided that I, too, would make this a priority in raising my children. I saw the difference first-hand and I wanted to give my children the best opportunities possible.
When my husband and I started our family, I made it clear that I wanted our children to receive a private school education. At the same time, we took up residence in suburban areas of Georgia where the public schools performed well. Since my oldest began school in pre-kindergarten, he attended a Christian school that we loved and he thrived. And while paying for it has at times been a bit of a struggle, the compliments we received about his above-average intelligence and the results we saw made the struggle worth it.
But, to be perfectly honest, it seemed that the struggle began to be mine alone and my husband no longer shared in the vision I thought we were collectively working toward. Having grown up in public schools, or maybe because he felt that the schools in our area are just as good as the school we were paying for, there was not the fervor to continue to make the sacrifices so that our son could stay in a school he’d grown in. And so, at the end of the last school year, I was faced with the task of telling my child that he would be going to a new school, would have to make new friends and things would be changing for all of us. My sensitive boy fell into tears and I held him as he told me through sobs that he did not want to go to a new school and did not want to have to try to make new friends. I reassured him the best way I could, uncertain that what I told him was right – hoping that this would be a decision that would work out for the best.
As a loving parent, I want to shield my boys from everything in the world that may cause them even an inkling of discomfort. If it were up to me, I’d home-school them and supervise every minute of their life for the promise that they’d just live long enough to become men. But that’s unrealistic. And yes, I do know how valuable it is for children to be exposed to different experiences and environments.
Living in suburban (or closer to rural) Georgia and entrusting someone to teach my children without inserting their racial bias or other ideas into the lesson plan is a definite concern. Only time will tell what the transition will mean, but I am hoping I will be pleasantly surprised. I hope my son attends school close to home and is relieved when he finally makes friends that live close to our home that he can play with. I hope that his advanced abilities will translate well and be nurtured so that he continues to thrive academically at his new school. I hope. I pray. I worry.
At the end of the day, I’ll put it in God’s hands and trust that it is all as it should be. Deep down I know he’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. After all, I know that I won’t accept anything less.
I don’t know if it rises to the level of an epidemic, but lately I’ve seen a number of little girls – as in, girls under the age of 12 – wearing hair weaves, wigs and lacefronts.
As black women, our hair issues begin at birth. We black mothers study our girls’ hair texture, waiting to see if those fine baby curls are going to “nap up.” Some of us start putting that baby hair into plaits, cornrows and ponytails as soon as our baby girls are able to sit up. If there’s not enough hair to comb, we brush it as best we can and put a headband on our girls’ heads, so everyone will know the baby is a girl and not a boy (strangers still get it confused, though).
I didn’t really know how to take care of a girl’s hair when my daughter was born. My mother did my hair until I graduated from high school. Although I didn’t relax my hair until law school, I wore it pressed from age 12. I had decided my girl’s hair would stay natural, but I had no idea how to style natural hair.
I was lucky to find a wonderful babysitter, a Mexican woman who taught herself how to care for my daughter’s hair. She styled my daughter’s hair in elaborate beaded cornrows and two-strand twists. Even after my daughter started school and we no longer needed her babysitting services, our former nanny still styled my daughter’s hair.
It never occurred to me to consider letting my daughter wear her hair out, loose, free. I was brought up that only white girls and girls with a certain hair texture – what we used to call “good hair” – could wear their hair out all the time. I shunned the term “good hair” but was still trapped in its mindset. I believed not combing my daughter’s hair would result in it getting tangled, matted, and eventually falling out.
I said complimentary things to my girl about her hair. I told her how wonderfully thick and curly her hair was and how much she should admire it. I bought all the right books and said all the right things to combat my girl’s jealous feelings towards classmates whose blonde and brunette locks swung down their backs. But my actions spoke to a different belief – that her hair wasn’t the right texture.
My daughter and I began having hair battles. I kept her hair washed, conditioned, combed and braided, but I could no longer fit trips to the nanny into our schedule, and I didn’t know enough cute natural hairstyles.
I gave up and took her to the African braiding shop. I thought I’d found the answer to all my prayers. Their cornrows were so perfect! Even without extension hair braided in, the style would last at least two weeks. With extension hair braided in, they would last even longer.
And so we continued down that steep, slippery slope of “your hair isn’t good enough.”
Written by CocoaMamas contributor Tracy B.
I have two beautiful Black sons. And, yes, I am biased – but they are also truly beautiful. Like most parents, I love when they receive compliments, and like most parents, I teach them never to talk to strangers. But, because they are handsome – their curly black hair and smooth, deep cocoa skin seems to attract attention wherever we go. I try to take it all in stride; after all, I don’t want my boys to grow accustomed to special treatment. I don’t want them to begin to believe that they are special just because some people think they are attractive. In fact, as much as I lavish attention on them and do my best to help them know that mommy thinks they are the most beautiful and special sons any mother has ever birthed, I’m not all that moved by strangers’ curious commentary – just the opposite, actually.
For instance, there was the time when my husband, sons and my younger brother and I were out having dinner at a neighborhood restaurant and the young ladies in the establishment kept coming to our table to comment on how beautiful my youngest son is. The first couple of times, it was flattering, but when a crowd gathered in the kitchen and a small group formed at our table, it was a little much. By the time we were ready to leave, one of the young ladies mustered up the nerve to ask if she could give him a lollipop and pick him up. My husband, who thinks this attention is cute, obliged before I could object. No harm done until another girl took out her camera phone to take a picture of the other girl holding my baby. Needless to say, dinner was over and we have not been back to that restaurant since.
And just yesterday, while shopping at a home furnishings store, the older woman associate comes to greet us and begins to tell me how handsome my two sons are. I thank her and continue on my way as she kneels down and beckons my youngest to hug her. I stood in shock as he hugged this stranger and listened as she asked him, ‘would you like to come home with me?’ When my child nodded ‘yes,’ I was overcome by so many emotions I could barely contain myself.
I wondered – ‘why does ANYONE think it’s appropriate to walk up to someone else’s child and hold them? WHY would anyone ask a child if he wants to go with them and WHY did my child have to say yes?’ Truly, the woman was harmless, and to her, she was just a lady who loves children. She simply saw two beautiful children and did what she probably always does. And that’s all right – except … it’s really not.
It is one thing to compliment someone and tell them they have a beautiful baby, or whatever other form of flattery a stranger wishes to verbalize during a casual encounter. It is another situation entirely when a complete stranger walks up and caresses another person’s child and asks if that child wants to go home with them.
I know what you’re thinking – you’ve heard this same phrase uttered a million times. Maybe you, too, have watched as your child betrayed you by telling some stranger they want to go with them. And you probably think that I am over-analyzing this harmless situation. And, you might be right if millions of children weren’t lured away from their parents by some seemingly nice stranger who wished them harm, instead of good. Because there is no way to distinguish between good strangers and bad, we teach our children to be safe and not talk to ANY strangers because there’s no way to be sure who’s a good guy and who is not so much.
It is for this reason that I would prefer that strangers, look, but not touch. Thanks a bunch for the compliments, but please, keep it moving. It is quite confusing for a two year-old to understand why mommy is so upset about the hug he just gave to the nice lady. Of course he’d never want to go home with that lady, and the family inside joke about how she’d bring him right back is completely true. But, it’s still inappropriate. Because it goes against what I am teaching him when I tell him not to talk to strangers. Already, his young mind has to try and reconcile our lesson to be polite, which means he should speak when spoken to, yet not to strangers??? It’s no wonder our children are confused. But strangers could make these little life lessons so much easier by just maintaining safe, sensible boundaries.
I’m so proud to have two little ones that are easy on the eyes. Prouder still that they are smart and well-mannered, too. Sometimes, some may say that I am a little over-protective of my boys and they are probably right. But, it’s a strange world out there, and it’s my job as their mother to protect them when I can – even if that means shielding them from seemingly innocent special attention.
Tracy B. is best known as an expert communicator and brand development professional. With extensive experience as a journalist for prestigious national publications, Tracy honed her skills and natural talent for recognizing newsworthy subject matter, topics and personalities in positions ranging from General Assignment Reporter to Managing Editor of daily newspapers as well as monthly magazines. A mother, wordsmith, world traveler and woman of many talents, Tracy B. is gifted while yet demonstrating her truest desire to leave a positive mark on the planet. Using powerful and transformational words as vehicles of communication, bridging divides and authoring an American fairytale one day at a time, Tracy intends to change the world, endeavoring to, in her own way, make each day more meaningful than the last.
“Did Big A get a haircut?”
I look over at my precious boy, fresh from the barbershop. His experience with getting a haircut so different at five than it was at three, when her would scream the entire time. Once, there was an entire patch of hair, the size of a quarter that just wasn’t cut cause the barber couldn’t take it anymore! But now, he loves getting his hair cut. It tickles around the ears, he tells me, but getting a haircut is no big deal. And getting to go to McDonald’s afterwards…well, that makes up for any unpleasantness.
So when a preschool “friend,” and I use the term begrudgingly, asked me this afternoon whether Big A had gotten a haircut yesterday, I happily said, “Why yes he did! And doesn’t it look lovely?” Because, of course, I think it does. I love the way the close cut makes little black boys look all grown up by allowing you to focus on their faces. I love how I can really stare into my angel’s eyes, with his long eyelashes and deep brown irises that really seem to look into his gentle soul.
But apparently, I’m alone in this appraisal. For this little girl said, “No. He has no hair. He looks like an alien.”
I was shocked. Taken aback. Then outraged. Angry.
For it dawned on me that this was not the first time some child had said something disparaging about Big A and his haircuts. I remembered him telling me how the kids at the other school called him “baldy-head” whenever he got a haircut, and how they were not saying it in a nice way. I remember him telling me that it hurt his feelings when they said that. I remember him telling me that he was never going to get a haircut again.
As I thought about this, I looked around the playground. As much as we lament what little black girls go through with regards to their hair, I never thought about the fact that little black boys face their own hair issue when surrounded by boys who are not black like them. As the only black boy on the playground, Big A was also the boy who has the least amount of hair. In relation to all the other children, even the boys, he WAS bald. All of the other little boys had a significant amount of hair on their heads – hair that flopped in bangs on their forehead, around their ears, on the nape of their necks. Some boys had more closely cropped hair, but enough to run a little gel in it and make it stand up or lay down. Certainly not bald. And, as we all know, kids DO have funny-shaped heads. When all the hair is removed, things can look a bit…well…strange.
Of course, though, to me, I didn’t see it the way this little girl did. All my life I’ve seen black men get haircuts, from high top fades to taking it all off. It’s normal to me to see men and boys with hair of all different lengths, from locs like my father’s to the floppiness of these little boys to the boxes that were popular in the 90s to Big A’s curly Qs when he was a baby to the close cut he gets today. I’ve seen it all, so none of it shocks me.
But these kids, raised in elite suburbia, have not. They don’t live around people who are different than them who do other things with their hair. So a little black boy with a close cut is a novelty to them. And when something is strange, they ridicule and “otherize” it.
Even when it is as beautiful as this.
There really isn’t much to say, as the video speaks for itself. Colorism in the black community is as much a symptom of racism as is white privilege; both stem from a belief that the whiter, the better. While we can applaud that more black faces are being heralded as beautiful, the truth is that lighter skinned black women with longer, less nappy hair is considered to be more beautiful than darker-skinned black women with shorter and nappier hair.
If you don’t believe me, watch the video again.
The question becomes: what do we do about it? Do light-skinned black folks have some affirmative duty, like we call on white folks, to call attention to their privilege in order to denounce it? I don’t know if I “qualify” as light-skinned (that sounds so ridiculous); at various points in my life people have said yes, and others have said no. But I’ve experienced some of what these kids are talking about in the video. I remember a boy saying that he liked my knees because they weren’t dark!
Whatever my classification, I’m pretty sure, according to my sources, that my children are considered light-skinned. And they have less nappy hair (although you wouldn’t know if the way they carry on.) And I already see the privilege that is conferred on them because of it. I’ve heard the comments about their “good grade of hair” and how “beautiful” they are; I don’t remember anyone saying I was beautiful as a child. And while I can’t really stop what other people say, I’m trying hard to make sure they don’t internalize the messages; I try to have every shade of black represented in their books and toys, and talk about how gorgeous all the colors of black are. Both of their grandfathers are darker-skinned, but it doesn’t help that we aren’t particularly close to those sides of the family.
Yet on the other hand, I want to be able to tell my daughter that she’s beautiful. I want to be able to do her hair in her ponytails and say, Little A, your hair is so pretty. I hope that she understands that I am making an individual judgment about her, and that my hair being loc’d reinforces that black hair in its many configurations can be beautiful. But I also don’t want her to grow up with a complex about the whole light-skinned thing either, just like I’m sure white folks don’t want their kids to grow up with a complex about being white.
Ya feel me?
CocoaMamas 