I do think that we have to be careful not to assume that getting a perm or wearing a blonde wig is a desire for whiteness. It may or may not be. Listen, I live in a poor black neighborhood where women wear blue hair, green hair, and all kinds of stuff. So, I simply see it as a different set of choices.
While women may look different, as some wear suits and others wear saris, or some cover their hair while others wear their hair loose, women need to stand together because they all face the central point of discrimination, although the extremity of which may be different from Kigali to Kabul.
I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.
I used to have blue hair, and a lot of people hated that I had blue or green hair, and I'd get so many comments like, 'you're so perfect, but why do you have blue hair?' And it's like, okay, but it's my hair and I can do whatever I want.
My hair has been this chapter thing for me. In 'Jem,' I have blue hair. 'Insidious,' it's pink. In 'CSI,' I have blonde. I love changing my hair. It's just hair and it grows all the time.
I don't think that a white woman is in denial when she dyes her hair blonde. And I actually think we are the most varied in terms of the choices we make about our hair. Some of it may be political or psychological, but an awful lot of it is just aesthetic, how we like to view ourselves when we look in the mirror.
If wearing a weave is what makes you feel beautiful, if wearing a wig, if wearing your hair pink, blue, that's what matters, in my opinion.
I'm an African woman, I suppose these thoughts torture me more than they do black American people, because it's like watching my own children trapped in a car that's sinking to the bottom of a lake and being impotent to save them'the black Americans have their own holocaust going on. You see the black man erasing black children from the landscape, you see black women desperately trying to get the black man's attention by wearing blonde hair and fake blue eyes, 500 years after he sold her and their children across the ocean.
I have hair that I audition with, my sitcom hair which is a curly wig. I have my long chic hair that I wear to my son's school so they know I'm not playing around. I always tell people that my husband gets a different woman every night when I come home from 'The View.' Hair makes you feel a certain way, like putting a power suit on.
I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian community, and most of my friends had blonde hair and blue eyes. So I was always straightening my hair, wearing colored contacts, and I never tanned, if I could help it.
As for facial hair, I think I decided it was a good look after graduate school. I always shave it myself and trim my own beard. I change the look depending on the role. For 'Million Dollar Baby,' I had no facial hair. For 'Men in Black 3,' I had no facial hair but did wear a wig.
The stockbrokers, their hair isn't long and full of leaves and stuff like that, so they don't catch your eye. They're wearing the tie-dye, so they don't stick out, but you don't see them. The ones you see are the ones with the leaves in their hair, the matted hair and all that kind of stuff.
When I was in my early 20s, I had my hair permed. Bad Idea! It turned into total frizz. My advice to women is: if you have nice hair already, don't get a perm, leave your hair alone.
When I was in my early 20s, I had my hair permed. Bad idea! It turned into total frizz. My advice to women is, if you have nice hair already, don't get a perm, leave your hair alone!
There's this black and green hair style I did one time. And it was literally inspired by my neighbor taking out their green recycling bins in a black outfit. I just loved the color combination, and I was like, Oh, I want black and green hair now.
Being blonde is definitely a different state of mind. I can't really put my finger on it, but the artifice of being blonde has some incredible sort of sexual connotation. Men really respond to it. I love blonde hair but it really does something different to you. I feel more grounded when I have dark hair, and I feel more ethereal when I have light hair. It's unexplainable. I also feel more Italian when my hair is dark.
Black women have kinky hair, and we think we have limitations on what we can do. It's interesting that people think, 'Oh this is the only thing they can do.' But if you have blonde, straight hair and don't change it for 20 years - nobody thinks about it. Nobody says anything!