Locks of Controversy, Rumors that Angelina Jolie had cut off her adopted daughter's hair Options

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Boston Globe

Locks of controversy
Rumors that Angelina Jolie had cut off her adopted daughter's hair caused an outrage. Why is hair such a highly charged symbol in the black community?

By Wesley Morris | July 8, 2007

JUNE WAS A busy month for celebrity news (Paris Hilton went to jail, Kelly Clarkson canceled her tour, Matthew McConaughey is still a superbachelor). So you probably missed word that Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt, the second of Brad and Angie's four children (she's from Ethiopia), may have received a drastic haircut and that this haircut was deeply upsetting for certain stargazers with Internet access.

"I think they shaved the poor kid's head cause they have no clue in how to style her hair. I think they should get a professional African braider to braid her hair," wrote Sexycocoa in a post to the black gossip site Media Take Out. On the same site, Akan5 wrote, "I DON'T TRUST THESE PEOPLE AT ALL. Why cut her hair. WHY! IN THIS COUNTRY people always let the girls' hair grow." That's a representative sample of what wound up on various message boards late last month, from Take Out to E! Online, and in people's inboxes, including mine.

Whether they realize it or not, Jolie and Pitt have wandered into the fraught zone of black hair care, particularly as it concerns black women. For centuries, the identities of African-American women have been bound up in what they've chosen to do with their hair: straighten it, get extensions, get a press 'n' curl, get a Jheri curl (yes, it's still an option), get cornrows, grow dreadlocks, twist it, wear a weave, wear a wig, or just leave it natural. It's a prideful question asked in the poorest homes and the toniest houses -- a question from which no black female living in America is immune. Oprah Winfrey might be able to do anything she wants with her hair today, but when she first started out, she had to face the same dilemma as a lot of black women breaking into TV: whether or not to get rid of the kinks.

Now, arguably the two most famous parents on earth will have to tackle what all nonblack adoptive parents of black children inevitably do. But they will have to figure it out with the world's camera lenses focused on little Z. And according to a growing number of concerned black folk, Z's parents may not be fully prepared. With more and more black chat lines demanding to know why one little black girl's hair isn't fuller, thicker, or at least more moisturized, a "Save Zahara" campaign may not be far behind.

Black hair is personal. Black hair is political. Black hair is lucrative: In 2004, black-hair-care products were a $1.7 billion industry; that's a figure that doesn't include the hundreds of millions spent on styling.

Black hair is also a ritual that's been bringing black women together for centuries, whether it's at a beauty shop or in somebody's cousin's kitchen on the Saturday night before church, the week's biggest hair event. (Part of that ritual traditionally featured the hot comb, the controversial straightener embraced by the grooming pioneer Madame C. J. Walker.) In some neighborhoods, parlor owners double as community leaders. Books like "Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories" and "Chicken Soup for the African-American Woman's Soul" provide a vivid sense of the heritage associated with black hair -- doing and undoing it, celebrating and questioning it. There are hair parties, trade shows, and magazines such as Hype Hair and Sophisticate's Black Hair Styles and Care Guide.

More than anything, black hair epitomizes the deep disconnect between white society and black society. By and large, most whites are oblivious to the cultural minefield young black girls are born into, just by virtue of having hair that doesn't bounce and behave. The issues it raises are complex and seemingly eternal, and while only a few of the most hostile emails and message board posts begrudge Jolie and Pitt the right to raise a black daughter, from the moment Zahara was adopted in 2005 there was an almost unanimous consensus that her parents should be doing something else with her hair.

An African baby in this country will have the politics of appearance thrust upon her, and even the most well-meaning, open-hearted parents will be judged through that lens. Part of that scrutiny is over texture. Notoriously and unceasingly, black hair is jammed into two categories: "good" and "bad" -- good being straight, manageable, "white"; bad being kinky and unmanageable. Spike Lee's 1986 "School Daze" featured a big-band musical number on the subject -- called, succinctly enough, "Good and Bad Hair" -- in which the light- and dark-skinned women of a fictional historically black college square off at a hair salon.

Topic A in this scene is hair. Topic B is identity politics: Why would you want kinky hair when you could have it long and luxurious like this? (Whether you grew or bought it notwithstanding.) But when the fair-skinned women in Lee's movie sing, "My hair is straight, you see?" their darker-skinned opponents note that "[your] soul's crooked as can be." In the song, for the light-skinned girls, "nappy" is a no-no.

This, of course, is partly why Don Imus's scandalous reduction of the Rutgers women's basketball team earlier this year was appalling: He was talking about good and bad hair. Never mind that nappy connotes unyielding hair and that, once upon a time, a nappy head meant a strong woman. Now, nappy is the other n-word. One of Malcolm X's selling points for the Nation of Islam was, "We teach you to love the hair that God gave you."

A few years ago, the folk-soul singer India.Arie, sick of all the signifying, decided to get rid of her dreadlocks and was nearly bald for several months. She even wrote and recorded a kind of protest song on the subject: "I Am Not My Hair." It was a wishful moment. Arie's hair is back -- and thick, too. She has made her peace with the politics.

As it happens, Zahara's hair wasn't shaved. It had been swept into a ponytail somewhere in the back of her head, rendering it invisible in some of the thousands of paparazzi photographs of the baby. But it didn't matter, really. This was bigger than whether she had no hair or whether the little hair she had was being styled "properly."

Wide Horizons, the Waltham-based international adoption agency that helped Jolie adopt Zahara, offers help to American parents with foreign-born children, and tries to put them in touch with similar families. According to a spokeswoman, the agency offers "culture camps," social networking opportunities, and, yes, advice on hair care. It also encourages aspiring adopters to talk to other parents on a Wide Horizons resource list.

Dru Davies, a white mother who two black children in Marshfield, says her 23-year-old daughter sometimes looks at photos from her girlhood and asks, "How you could let me look like that?" They have a good relationship. But Davies says even though she did the best she could, she could have done a little better.

"Grooming and hair in the black culture are extremely important," she says. "You really have to be aware of it or you're doing your child a disservice in terms of being part of their culture."

Shellee Mendes, the owner of Salon Monet, Newbury Street's only black-owned business, has a dozen suggestions for what mothers like Jolie might do with their daughters' hair, stressing that for a woman of any race, hair is a showcase for her personality. But she does note an exception.

"With a little girl, her hair doesn't say as much about her personality as it does her mother's," Mendes says of Zahara. "And this little girl's hair says her mother doesn't know what to do."

Wesley Morris is a Globe film critic. E-mail wmorris@globe.com
Francie Latour of the Globe staff contributed to this article.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

BOSTON GLOBE

[Advertising Bot]

[JENNIFER3333]

(IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/lol.gif) give me a break (IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/hysterical.gif)

[rolandg]

This surely must be a satire?

[queenbee]

GMAMFB!

[love_ab]

Wait..you can look at someones hair for they personality??
She needs to go on the internet more often, there is nothing wrong with Zee hair..and dint Angie say that they try to do something but Zee removes it.
If Zee like her hair this way, she dosent need an "expert" to tell her that she needs to do something.
If Zee is not complaining then its up to her (i think)

This post has been edited by love_ab: Jul 8 2007, 11:11

[JENNIFER3333]

This surely must be a satire?

(IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/lol.gif) I hope so.


I think people take hair, or more importantly OTHER people's hair too seriously. I had some black homeless person ask me if my hair was "my hair" and not a weave. He then went on about how too many black women don't have their "real hair" out. People need to seriously mind their own business. Too much importance is put on how other people want to dress or style themselves. It's a personal thing. I don't need to consult the NAACP on wether I should get a weave. Or the homeless.



This hit a nerve with me (IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/giggle.gif)

[queenbee]

This surely must be a satire?

(IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/lol.gif)

This made me LMAO!

"I DON'T TRUST THESE PEOPLE AT ALL. Why cut her hair. WHY! IN THIS COUNTRY people always let the girls' hair grow."

(IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/crazy_grin.gif)

This post has been edited by queenbee: Jul 8 2007, 11:26

[Estelle]

Angie really doesn't like her girls as much as her boys does she?






(IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/lol.gif)
What a load of crap!

[x0wynn0x]

that was a long ass article. maybe someone should email them and say 'but they didn't cut her hair...'

and my mother gave me a bowl cut when i was little, does this mean she's an incompetent mother who's ignorant of her child's feelings?

This post has been edited by x0wynn0x: Jul 8 2007, 13:51

[lee_suh]

LMFAO they should listen to this song http://youtube.com/watch?v=bZd1KeZhjfU

[JENNIFER3333]

LOL That's my fav song. I use it on my LJ (IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/biggrin.gif)

[kbrown]

"That totally hit a nerve with me also. I had to send him a email. Being a black africa women who the hell give him the right to judge! Do Angie &Brad have to explain there every move? What the ****! I remember when I was 8 or 9 my hair was breaking off so bad, that my mother cut my hair very low that I was almost bald!

He need to shut-up and get he's facts right! (IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/devil.gif)

[kim718]

your kidding me , right?

[Love Her Madly]

this is so stupid.if this crap is true, it is angelinas descision whether or not her childs hair will be cut.sometimes these things cannot be avoided.i had to cut my daughters bangs for the first time the other day, mainly because it was in her eyes all the time.babies are not too fond of ponytails you know.i dont think it was for fashion.z is talking now, doesnt anyone think that if she said no i dont want my hair cut, angie would not have it done?this story is absolutely rediculous.but what do we expect, they cant really catch her pregnant so they have to invent some bullshit mess like this.big ****ing deal.a haircut is a haircut, it doesnt matter what race the child is.

[Gia_Honey]

jeez, these people need to get out more and stop worrying about other peoples kids hairstyles.

[vivaciouslady_79]

wow, angelina gets harped on for just about any single thing.

seriously, i hope that longwinded article is a joke . . . if not, that author has to work out some issues to be spending that kind of time drafting a ridiculous article.

This post has been edited by vivaciouslady_79: Jul 15 2007, 15:49

[naghme]

wow, angelina gets harped on for just about any single thing.

seriously, i hope that longwinded article is a joke . . . if not, that author has to work out some issues to be spending that kind of time drafting a ridiculous article.

now,here`s a thing:these people are literally sick!!they don`t give damn about Z`s hairstyle or anything.they just wanna sell their articles,they don`t have anything to write=>they write about brad or angie,cuz they know as far as their names are in sth, it will be sold .i have no doubt that they don`t care about any of the stuff they write (IMG:style_emoticons/smilies/naa.gif)

[Zana89]

I agree with all of you. This is SO ridiculous! It's just hair! Who cares? If Angelina HAD cut her hair, are they seriously saying that would have made her a bad and ignorant mother? Oh my GOD, that is ridiculous!
She did not cut Zee's hair off, but if she had, so what? Everyone has hair and sometimes you let it grow and sometimes you cut it, no matter what country you come from.

If Zahara was growing up in an Ethiopian family, maybe she would never ever get a hair cut because of the culture there. But she is not. She may come from that country, but it is not her country now; it is not her home and it is not her culture. She's an American girl and she will do as she pleases with her hair and until she can do that, her parents make the decisions.

How can they say Angie doesn't respect African culture? And why would they let a woman who's not from Ethiopia adopt a child from there if she will be accused of being disrespectful if she does not raise that child the "Ethiopian way". That is just silly!
Besides, if Ethiopian girls can't ever cut their hair because of their culture, how can they say that is good? It is not the girl's choice. What if they don't want long hair? Are they not allowed to cut it? Would that make THEM ignorant and disrespectful?
Silly, silly, silly.

Yikes, I can't even believe we're discussing this. There should not be a reason to discuss her hair this way because there should not be an article like this. It's just stupid.

I agree with naghme: they just want to sell a story and they know that anything about Angie or Brad sells. They don't really care about Zee's hair (if they do, they're really weird people), they just want a story to sell.