Love, Naturally*

February 16, 2016 8:48 AM

Why Do Black Women In Movies Have To Choose Between A Weave And A Relationship? "Pop culture fronts like black women can’t love both a partner and our hair extensions, but it’s really not that deep." Hannah Giorgis writes for Buzzfeed about the strange movie trope of black women taking out weaves when falling in love
posted by MCMikeNamara (7 comments total)

Between makeup the other day and weaves here, African American women can't catch a break.
posted by sukeban at 9:18 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Indeed, all women have long been subject to an impossible bodily scrutiny that at once demands we adhere to specific ideals (long hair, feminine presentation, thin bodies with the acceptable curves) and chastises us for working to achieve them. Lots of men profess to prefer the “natural look,” but regularly underestimate the amount of labor that aesthetic might involve.

^this, the myth of effortless beauty, is the core of the problem.
posted by sukeban at 9:23 AM on February 16, 2016 [9 favorites]

We were just talking about something similar in the most recent Walking Dead thread - someone was shipping Rick and Michonne, and brought up that POC female characters are often not thought of as romantic interests in the way similarly constructed white female characters would be.

I am against Rick paired with anyone or anything but a dramatic death scene, but thought it was an interesting and horrible point, and so this is a timely read, thank you.
posted by mordax at 10:06 AM on February 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

I loved this article when you posted it on Twitter earlier, glad to see it posted here!
posted by Juliet Banana at 4:07 PM on February 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

This was a really interesting read, thank you (and the author). I'll definitely be on the lookout for movies which fit this trope in the future. It's also interesting to read her critique of Tyler Perry and I'm going to dig into that a bit more; he's such a successful figure that I feel like criticism has been muted but she brings up some great points.
posted by librarylis at 4:35 PM on February 16, 2016

(Also this seems like the relevant place to drop a link to the recent long form article on Tyler Perry and the resulting Metafilter discussion).
posted by librarylis at 4:39 PM on February 16, 2016

I feel like I can easily answer this author's question: because the African-American screenwriters here are GenXers. If you're younger than 25 you might not remember a time when natural hair was anathema. As an older Millennial, I can clearly remember that for a black woman to be beautiful in the '90s she needed hair like Aaliyah: Long and straight. Relaxers were all but required; braids made you acceptable, pressing made you unsophisticated, and dreadlocks made you a radical. Unreconstructed afros, the natural hair many rock today, were only for the members of Bone Thugz-N-Harmony.

When weaves came on the scene ( and became affordable for the majority of black women) they offered the desired length and straightness to the masses. With that change came a new pressure to hide natural hair with weaves. In high school I remember abandoning my family's favorite salon ( a traumatic event) after months of pressure from the owner to do a weave. The rift was incredible stressful for my poor mother who had to placate the lady with, "She just wants to do braids for a little bit." until I graduated.

In this context, it's no wonder that the removal of a weave became a symbol of liberation on par with bare feet, beauty without make up, or burning your ex's belongings in his car.

Also, for Something New, I think the writer wanted black women to know they didn't need to be Vanessa Williams to attract a white man. I'm so glad young black women today, don't need the reassurances these movies were trying to offer, but I don't think they were a bad thing.
posted by CatastropheWaitress at 7:28 AM on February 18, 2016 [7 favorites]