April 12, 2007

• are you suggesting this as an appropriate punishment for Imus?
• Cool link, thanks Wedge. hair is a funny thing.
• He had a knack for imagery, didn't he? I particularly liked "I gritted my teeth and tried to pull the sides of the kitchen table together." How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking "white," reflected in the mirror in Shorty's room. And how ironic that twentysome years later, I burned my own scalp trying to turn my naturally-straight hair into a copy of Whitney Houston's with perm after perm. Of course, any white woman with a black man isn't thinking about his hair. Ah, yes, what's racism without a dollop of misogyny on the side?
• i don't think he's referring to whatever it is that you think he's referring to, TUM.
• Well, there are a couple of different things he could be referring to -what's your interpretation?
• my personal take- he's referring to her thinking about being killed for being with a black man, not getting dreamy-eyed over his man-tackle.
• There was a hair-straightening scene in Spike Lee's Malcolm X. I haven't seen it in years, but I recall the scene being interesting and funny.
• I've always he figured he meant both likely interpretations.
• This was the first thing I read by Malcolm X.
• There were a couple in the Spike Lee movie IIRC. The latter one seemed made up just to be funny and involved him finding the water to the apartment turned off just at the moment when he needed it to wash out the lye.
• Imus fired
• The sad thing is, curly hair is still considered a Bad Thing. Though white, my hair is curly, and I fought with it for many, many years of self-loathing. Finally I happened across a copy of Curly Girl: More Than Just Hair...It's an Attitude and Saw The Light. I've always adored and respected CCH Pounder for just letting her hair grow as it will. Takes guts, it does. Curly hair, represent!
• I still get jealous of girls with afro puff pigtails.
• what he said
• How could curly hair be a bad thing when it's been fashionably for the last 20 years? The perm industry is still HUGE. Now, natural black hair is still not, sadly, fashionable, even though it is so much more attractive than any straightened hair. But the kind of big, open curls that many white curly-haired women have has been much more desirable for the whole period of my life than limp straight hair. Even when straight hair might have brief a brief accendancy in fashion, curly hair remained the standard of beauty. Just think of how you would cast the heroine in a romantic film, something timeless, maybe a fantasy -- straight hair pulled back in a braid? Or masses or curls tumbling down her back? The images of beauty I grew up with all had curly hair - occassionally had thick waving hair, and almost never had thin straight hair. (They might have Asian hair, but that is a very different kind of straight hair - I'd love to have it.) As for no one knowing how to care properly for curly hair - I have fine straight hair, and I don't think anyone knows how to care for it any more. It is easier to cut and shape, than curly, so barbers don't stress as much - but it never has the body or life that my curly-haired roommate's did. She could wear her hair down, and it would look great - I have to put mine up, or braid it or something, before it has any shape. (Down, it also tangles when you look at it. Hers would tangle, but you never knew - it always looked stunning). Now all this isn't to belittle your self loathing -- I think everyone gets frustrated with their own hair and thinks the other side is better. And the more extreme your hair, perhaps the more this frustration is. But if you think logically about it - how many actually curly haired women are currently straightening their hair (as opposed to wavy-haired women just flattening theirs a bit), versus straight haired women curling and perming it? The straightening industry is there for black women (who have a very different kind of curl naturally, and in many cases they are going for a white-style curl rather than actually straight), but it isn't there for white women, not since it's brief triumph in the late sixties. I do wish that people wouldn't "conk" their hair. Partly because it does seem to belittle natural black hair (though who am I to say, when it is their fashion, and their choice to make) - but more because everyone's natural hair is more beautiful than chemically treated. And I think that is equally true of straight haired people permed into curls.
• everyone's natural hair is more beautiful than chemically treated SET MOTHNINJA.HAIRCOLOUR = ULTRAVIOLENT
• The moment I decided to let my hair be the way it wanted to be (heavy, bangless, and ramrod-straight, the gift of my Native Amercian great-grandma) was one of the most liberating, exhilarating ones of my adult life.
• Well put, TUM! "The grass is always greener..." until the day you realize that what you already have is usually better than whatever it is you THINK you want. Curly hair rocks! So does "ramrod straight" Native American hair! So does sparkly African-American hair, flame-red hair, rich dark hair, platinum-white hair, silvery-grey hair and even NO hair, so long as it's worn with pride and style. It's not so much the hair, as the wearer of that hair, that makes it gorgeous.
• *disappointment with lack of chestnuts in thread*
• I don't buy the argument that conked hair was a sellout of the wearer's "blackness". It was just a popular fashion fad in the 60's. Like all other fads, it came and (mostly) went with the times, and was sociologically indicative of nothing. People have always altered their appearance according to the current fashion. Hair gets straightened, curled, cut, extended, and shaved, and it's all cool. Except Jheri curls.
• I disagree - for a black man (in the - 1930's?) to straighten out their kinky hair and style it into a pompadour was making it similar to the a white man's hairstyle. That was the intent of the fashion (and if the argument is that it wasn't . . then . . that's a heck of a coincidence). A hairstyle like those of the people in power could mean a shorter road to more money, more women, better everything, etc. Still does, I would think.
• my personal take- he's referring to her thinking about being killed for being with a black man, not getting dreamy-eyed over his man-tackle. Could be, could be. Since the context seemed to be using the hair as a means of attracting a mate, and not pleasing the mate you're already with, it struck me that he was talking more about what would cause a white woman to give a black man she didn't already know, a second look. And that that something had nothing to do with his personal sense of style. But you're right; without the writer here to clear it up either interpretation holds water.
• you can take my hairdye when you pry it out of my cold, dead, redstained hands!
• pete: I guess my argument is that for the majority of conkers, they were imitating the hairstyles of influential black role models - mostly entertainers (James Brown comes to mind), and not consciously trying to look "white".
• I may have missed the obvious, but what is the etymology of the word "conk"?
• Regardless of the sociological implications and whatever, anything that involves dumping lye and cut-up potatoes on your bare skin? Jesus. That's hard-core. *goes back to plucking eyebrows and waxing legs*
• A hairstyle in which the hair is straightened, usually by chemical means. Also called process1. tr.v. conked, conk·ing, conks To straighten (tightly curled hair) usually by chemical means. [Perhaps alteration of congolene, substance for straightening hair.] rocket: but wouldn't it be the same thing if those same influential black role models created the look to imitate the white hairstyles? (and fwiw, afaik, the passage here is from the 30's when JB would have been about 1 year old. (point taken, just sayin'))
• but what is the etymology of the word "conk"? Probably a shortening and altering of "congolene", which was the solution used.
• Or, what pete said.
• I couldn't tell from googling if that was the name of the homemade potato-and-lye mixture or a brand name of some kind.
• Murray's Superior Products Company filed the trademark name of Kongolene in 1975 (the trademark says, however, that they first used that name in 1914). However, the product shown below (supposedly from the period of 1920 - 1940) was manufactured by the Kongo Chemical Co., Inc of New York. Kongolene, "straightens hair for 20 days or more by softening its stiffness." The use of the word Kongo seems key here. Also interesting to note the graphic, which displays a prominent KKK. To Europeans in 1885, the word Congo evoked exotic images of far-off central Africa known as The Dark Continent. Good hair was the hair that bounced and shook. You saw it in all the shampoo commercials, the white lady with the hair bouncing around, and you were told that was good hair. No one ever defined what bad hair was. I'm surprised there is very little on teh internets - - I had to pull out my shovel and dig a bit. I pulled the image from a cached ebay auction. I post it here for reference...
• Thanks SMT! Interesting stuff. And that it was spelled with a "K". The search for "konk" found more than "conk" Around this time Sugar Ray Robinson, the fighter came on the scene. On TV his wig [hair] would be “laid” and between rounds his handlers would comb it. His barber was Roger Simmons. Sugar Ray had a barber shop in his block of businesses in Harlem. Roger Simmons put the waves in the konk. Before hair was straight back, and the master konker was Jack on 55th who traveled sometimes with Duke Ellington. Nelson was in the barber business cutting hair and he started to konking hair so he went up to New York and hung out with Roger Simmons and learned how to put the wave in the konked hair. The 63rd Street neighborhood changed and Blacks moved east past Cottage Grove. The Tivoli Hotel on 63rd and Maryland changed over and the white barber shop on the first floor of the Hotel sold out to a Black man named Rich. Nelson came out to the hotel to work with Rich. I had a room in the hotel and Nelson practiced on me because I wore the process. He worked on my hair every day. The hair style became more popular and the shop became too small so he moved to 6430 Cottage Grove in a store below the Mansfield Hotel and opened the House of Nelson. Later he traveled with singer Brook Benton and Nat Cole, doing their hair.
• Monkeyfilter: master konker Another intersting read, pete!
• Wow - fascinating, you two! Thanks.
• Really interesting thread with excellent links. Go, you guys! I have wavy hair which I like very much. As a teenager, though, I would sometimes shower in the evening, braid it into many little braids, sleep on it, unbraid it in the morning and watch it go pooooooffffff. (Ah, the 80s.)
• PA I used to do that too!!!
• Ha! When I was in high school (class of '89... oh yeah) my hair was hippie-long and went pooooooofffff enough on its own, but I had this one lock near my right temple that I cut off shorter and kept braided all the time. I was so cool.
• my personal take- he's referring to her thinking about being killed for being with a black man, not getting dreamy-eyed over his man-tackle. I was following the same path - sorta. I thought he meant that when a white woman dates a black man, she isn't too concerned about him looking naturally black; because she's obviously not concerned about the color of his skin, why would she fret over the shape of his hair? At least, that seemed to be the importance of his story, so it sort of fits in the context. Mebbe.
• I dunno, I read it as TUM apparently initially did. fwiw.
• Watch us speculate!
• you sick fucks. personally, i'd rather be hung than hanged, i suppose. but given the previous sentence: "The ironic thing is that I have never heard any woman, white or black, express any admiration for a conk." (conk, not cock) and the social/historical context, i have to agree with something more along the lines of insolentchimp's & es el queso's interpretations... i.e.,

  "donna, did you notice his hair? it's almost as straight as a white man's! isn't that nifty?" "no, nancy, i was too busy thinking about his enormous black snake." "oh, donna, you're such a size queen!" "actually nancy i'm rather frightened of reptiles. but let's see if he wants to walk to the malt shop with us after science class." "gee whiz, that's a swell idea!"

  btw ^that "KKK" logo is... spooky