It is not many children that enter the world and have their hair seen as a form of defiance. Of natural being seen as "unnatural."
It continues for Black women, who feel the weight of societies’ grooming expectations, and the white standard of beauty. How is it possible that for some, choosing a hairstyle is about face-framing, about selecting the most flattering, or easiest to maintain, while for others, it is an act of protest, of activism, of pushback to rules that were not made for them – it is wearing a crown as a statement, but also wearing a crown of first impressions, and prejudices.
For Ra’anaa Brown, hair means Sundays; and Sundays meant braids.
It meant braids for Brown and her three sisters; but this was not a few minutes of struggle and what might result in an imperfect single braid. For Brown, Sunday braiding took hours, and was more than a little painful: “I'm surprised I have any hair left,” says Brown.
“Sunday's my mom would sit us all down and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to sit you all down and do all of your hair in one Sunday,’ which sounds like nothing, but it's like a two-hour feat to get braids done on a child’s hair.”
Brown started to get up as early as she could on Sundays, because while it was hard to get out of bed, “it was the fight to get the first slot, because you were done the quickest and then you were free for the rest of the day!”
It also avoided their mother’s more than completely understandable, but certainly draining patience. “She would threaten to leave my hair half done,” she laughs. “And while that’s fine if you’re just putting it up, for me that means I would have one half braids, and one half afro.”
A good look to try, but maybe not in elementary school.
From those early moments of braids, to now, as Brown wears her hair in dreadlocks, has been a journey that is tied to those moments with her family. Her parents, born in England (but living there only briefly) with Jamaican and Caribbean ancestry, have instilled in her from an early age that she is beautiful, and that black is beautiful. Her mother began to wear her hair in locks, and so did Brown’s older sister, and she continued the tradition – but she does wonder if that would be the case had her mother chosen another style.
“I love my hair,” says Brown, “But it was like, I wonder how my life would have been different if my mom didn't (have dreadlocks), because similarly, when I had classmates growing up and they were Black, it was like: if their mom had processed hair, then their hair was processed, because that's how mom knew how to do it. If she had a weave then her daughter would have one. It's a very generational thing.”
While that happens in many families, the generational commitment to a style could be more related to the inability to find a stylist who can properly work with hair that has specific textural requirements, and the complete lack of products available to help with common Black hair requirements.
And it’s not just the requirements for texture; unfortunately, Black hair is not solely the domain of Black people. It is colonialism, white supremacy and oppression that has affected the grooming of Black hair, the prejudices surrounding its look, and the consistent attempts to make it ‘more white.’
This has extended to professional sports, where players are being forced to change their dreadlocks – even in high school. And while important laws were passed in New York and California, banning discrimination against natural hair, it is interesting to note that this only happened in the last two years.
Brown, who has her Master’s Degree from the School of Architecture and now works in the Liaison Services Department at Laurentian University — and is the co-president of Black Lives Matter Sudbury — is doing her level best to create conversations around Black issues, and particularly Black issues in Canada, and examining the experiences of Black women and their hair.
One such opportunity came this year as she was asked to work as guest curator for Up Here, after previously working as their installation co-ordinator. It gave her a chance to work with photographer Isak Vaillancourt and two others to create an exhibit called ETHEREAL, now featured at Kuppajo Espresso Bar downtown. There has been such a wonderful response to the visual art exhibit that the creators are working on locations in other parts of the city – and hopefully further.
“Honestly,” says Brown of the project, “it’s so beautiful and I can’t believe we pulled that all together.”
It’s a celebration of what makes beauty, and how that ideal can be shaped by both oppressive forces, and through the reclamation of the identity that was taken. For instance, the demands of styling Black hair into what some thought was ‘more professional’ or ‘more in keeping with society’s ideals’, require stylists who can understand the tools and techniques. And so, “the Black hair salon, and even the barber shop is something that's so special,” says Brown. “I don't go to a regular salon, but I've been in salons and you go there and you feel like family, and they just create this sense of community.”
So if she’s not at a regular salon, where does she get her hair done in Sudbury?
“I brought my stylist with me when I moved,” she says. “It’s me.”
Though her hair looks like the creation was overly complex — and if you had straight hair, they would be — her locks are the result of her natural hair texture. She simply directs the corkscrew curls together, and twists them with gel and beeswax to give them hold and protection. To use a simplistic analogy, it would be similar to the way a telephone cord twists into itself, where a straight cord would not.
And of course, there are many other questions she commonly answers — for there are many misconceptions about dreadlocks.
The first, and most important: don’t touch other people’s hair. Brown has had strangers on the street — even during the pandemic — reach over to touch her hair. While it is often followed by curiosity or a compliment, this is invasive to anyone.
Next – the locks.
Yes, she washes them. Routinely. She likes to make jokes when people ask her how she washes them.
“I say, ‘I detach it from my head and put it in the washing machine, how do you wash yours?” But really, it is lather, rinse, repeat. Potentially less frequent, as she needs to maintain the hair oils for her scalp, but still use as directed. However, it’s the after-washing that takes time.
If you have ever heard the misconception that Black women can’t get their hair wet, you are mishearing, according to Brown. “It’s not that I can’t get my hair wet, but instead I don’t want to get my hair wet,” she says.
If it’s a pool, she’ll take the smell of chlorine with her for more than a little while, so she’ll need to wash it, no matter what. Same with lake swimming. So when her hair gets wet, she has to go home, begin the three-hour work to wash it, twist it, and let it dry – sometimes up to 24 hours.
If she has an event, she works back from the day of the event to find the best point to wash her hair, sometimes up to five days in advance.
And don’t get her started on hats. “Don’t get me started on hats! One size fits all is a lie!”
Luckily though, while it can get quite hot in the summer, her hair is pretty perfect for natural protection in a long-wintered community. In addition to being beautiful, it is quite heavy. Of course, that could be dye — in order to achieve her new light blonde locks, she needed 10 boxes of hair dye.
So many will never understand the weight that comes from your physical being existing as a form of protest, of activism; from others making extreme judgments based simply on personal grooming. To be told that you are unprofessional, that you must change yourself in countless ways, especially for something that many Black women consider inextricably linked to their sense of self. But Brown is hopeful that this will change. She notes that thankfully in the 13 years that she has had her dreadlocks, with the exception of comments of ignorance, she has not faced an overwhelming struggle, but knows that is not the same for every Black woman.
She is continually hopeful for more change, more understanding, and really, more Black hair care products in Northern Ontario.
You can still enjoy ETHEREAL, the photo exhibit running at Kuppajo.
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series on hair as a cultural expression. Next up, author Waubgeshig Rice discusses hair in Indigenous cultures.
Sudbury.com has pre-emptively closed comments on this story and will not be sharing it to our Facebook page. Unfortunately, these types of stories generate too many racist comments, such that attempting to moderate becomes impossible.
Jenny Lamothe is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter at Sudbury.com.
