Sexuality and Hair: The Day I became unwomanly and a butch

The first time I cut my hair, particularly short; I was about 16 years old. This was before the new “natural hair” trend that we are currently experiencing. Back then to be that young and bold (in the eyes of some) was truly a radical act. I went against what most thought as the proper performance of a girl/young woman. For me, it was one of the most liberating things, to date, that I’d ever done. I didn’t do it as an act of defiance to the scripts of womanhood. I did it because it felt right. It felt like me. It was freeing. 

Between the ages of 16 and 25 I experimented with many hair styles. You name it I tried it—braids, weaves, and naturals. My hair changed color depending on my mood. I had fun with my hair—for the most part. However, there was one thing that stayed constant during that time. I was never really in love with hair. I’m not a particularly fussy person and neither am I one to be moved by trends. However, I do know what I like and what I don’t. Hair is not high on my like list. 

Chrisette Michele

Around my 20^th birthday (sometime in the early 1990s) I went to the barbershop on Rutland Road in Brooklyn, NY. There was a barber in this shop who had the reputation of being excellent. I sat in his chair, after waiting for what felt like hours, and told him that I wanted a tight fade. He gave me one of the best fades I’ve ever had. Like clockwork, I would show up for my edge up and trim. One morning as I positioned myself in his chair an older man mumbled, just loudly enough for me to hear, “a woman should never do that to herself.” The barber and I both ignored him. Not being satisfied at the lack of response, he said louder “that’s just not right and it ain’t natural.” My barber stopped, looked at him and replied, “I saw her with long her and I’ve cut her hair this short. To me she’s even more beautiful now.” Interestingly when I wore a head full of weave and braids no one was ever so bold to say to my face that it was “unnatural”.  

Little did I know that cutting my hair and wearing a fade would illicit such responses. Some men were so bold as to ask me if I was a “butch”. My cousins were questioned about my sexuality. The only thing that changed was the length of my hair. Unbeknownst to me was that my hair sent messages about my sexuality. I did not know that long hair = heterosexuality. 

Walking the streets in NY became increasingly more challenging. Prior to my fade my non-response to cat calls resulted in me being cussed and accused of thinking that I’m better than others. In my post long, permed hair era, my refusal to respond to such calls resulted in more than who the “fuck do you think you are!” to “ain’t nobody want you, you fucking butch!” I was told how I needed some “good stiff dick” to rescue me from my perceived homosexuality.

What I did not understand was how in the time it took to cut my hair my sexuality had changed. Beyond exposing how hair is valued in society, my experience taught me about the functioning of society and what academia eventually taught me was marginalization. The questioning of my sexuality, vis-à-vis the length of my hair, reflects how we define the boundaries of our community. It speaks to how we determine who is allowed in and what allows them in. So I could pass and be accepted into the community simply by wearing a wig. That simple act would deflect some of the street harassment I faced.

But it wasn’t just gendered-sexed street harassment that I encountered. I also encountered censorship from some older Black women in the community. In a short period of time, I became the damaged Black woman. Some would ask I if was sick. It never entered their imagination that someone would willingly cut their hair as short as I wore mine at times. When I would respond that I’m not sick, eyebrows would raise ever so slightly. Some women were polite enough to let that be the extent of the reproach and questioning. Others would be bold enough to ask, “why would you choose to wear your hair that way?” Some quoted the Bible to me about how my hair was my crowning glory and how it was against the teachings of God for a woman to deface herself by cutting her hair. In my mind I would think, I didn’t break any of the Commandments so there is still hope for me to make it into the Kingdom. In the meantime, I just couldn’t be accepted among my people. 

How has your hair been used as acceptance or denial into particular communities?

“Project Prevention”: Saving Black Women from Themselves and Creating a Better Future

My intent was to simply write about the recent NY Times article that suggested that Black women are responsible for being overweight and all associated illnesses. Then I started reading more about an organization that was called C.R.A.C.K (now called Project Prevention) and my blog post changed. So what does this call for Black women to lose weight and the actions of an organization that seeks to sterilize drug-addicted women have in common? They are both part of a larger ideology that pathologizes Black women’s bodies. Contextualizing these two parallel conversations shows that at the core is the privileging of some bodies over others. 

Black women’s bodies have historically been problematic for those who hold the power to define race-gender hierarchies. Early Europeans constructed Black women’s bodies as different, highly sexual and “other”. Black women’s societal worth is often devalued in the eyes of European Americans. Such devaluation can also occur when other Black folk subscribe to the ideology of the damaged Black woman. The damaged Black woman is often used to promote policies that focus on changing individual behaviors as opposed to critically questioning societal structures that contribute to Black women’s inequitable positions. The result is the culture of poverty, the culture of fatness and the culture of drug abuse that permeates the two stories that I discuss below. 

Fat Ass Black Women and Self-Inflicted Illnesses

If only fat ass Black women would change their behaviors then all that ails us would disappear. If only poor ass Black women would stop being so bossy then they’ll get married and all that ails us would disappear. See the similarities between these statements? If only Black women would change. Change woman, change! Become skinny, get married, stop being poor. Darn it, if we can only get these women to behave differently then dangerous (culturally, economically, medically) Black folk would disappear. 

The recent article in the New York Times (May 5, 2012) says,

“I call on every black woman for whom it is appropriate to commit to getting under 200 pounds or to losing the 10 percent of our body weight that often results in a 50 percent reduction in diabetes risk. Sleeping better may be key, as recent research suggests that lack of sleep is a little-acknowledged culprit in obesity. But it is not just sleep, exercise and healthy foods we need to solve this problem — we also need wisdom.”

Elizabeth Catlett 1967 

I don’t take issue with Randall’s call for Black women to take better care of our bodies and health. I don’t dispute that Black women appear to be susceptible to illness that are weight related. What I take issue with is the individualistic approach to conceptualizing the problem of weight and illness among Black women.

Alice Randall’s approach is rather reminiscent of the Moynihan approach to dealing with poverty in the Black community. Let’s fix the women and all else will go away. Employed is a cultural approach to understanding weight and its intersection with race and gender and illness. What is ignored is how structural factors, such as racism, contribute to Black women’s inequitable health. 

After reading this article I did wonder as to whether or not Randall has  been in the “Hood” recently? In my recent trip to Brooklyn, NY, here’s what I noticed: there is on average 3 fast food restaurants/per block (and I’m being generous with the term restaurant), there are multiple liquor stores, etc that fill these urban concrete jungles. My, 80 plus year old, grandmother lives in Brooklyn, NY. She lives on a quiet residential street--free of gang violence and all the troubles we tend to associate with urban Black communities. She, like my uncle, lives in a “middle-class” neighborhood (with the decline in wealth among Blacks, I’m no longer sure what constitutes a middle-class neighborhood). My Grandmother likes some of the products sold at Whole Foods. To purchase these products, she takes a bus and a train to get to the nearest Whole Foods Market. The products simply cannot be found in her neighborhood. I lived in Prince George’s County, MD—one of the so-called most affluent Black suburbs in the country. I had to leave PG County to shop at Whole Foods. This pattern of what’s available in our communities is a function of zoning laws and other policies. If we look at the zoning component, we have to go back to the country’s early efforts at urbanization. The federal government played a substantial role in placing certain types of people and businesses into certain communities. This is further perpetuated via tax credits and banking policies. I won’t make this an urban politics lesson. However, I encourage you to check out the placement of I91 in Hartford Connecticut. The placement of this highway forever fractured a viable Black community. How in the face of all of this can we simplify Black women’s weight in a statement that suggests that Black women choose to be fat? Where is the choice?

 

Eliminating a Potentially Damaged Child

The private sector is also engaged in “encouraging” Black women to change their behaviors. Children Requiring a Caring Community (spelled Kommunity to allow for the acronym C.R.A.C.K), now called Project Prevention, seeks to promote 

“public awareness to the problem of addicts/alcoholics exposing their unborn child to drugs during pregnancy. Project Prevention seeks to reduce the burden of this social problem on taxpayers, trim down social worker caseloads, and alleviate from our clients the burden of having children that will potentially be taken away. Unlike incarceration, Project Prevention extremely cost effective and does not punish the participants. We seek and welcome alliances with all sectors of our communities including drug treatment programs, hospitals, social service departments, among others, and have established such contacts throughout the United States. Project Prevention does not have the resources to combat the national problems of poverty, housing, nutrition, education and rehabilitation services. Those resources we do have are spent to PREVENT a problem for $300 rather than paying millions after it happens in cost to care for a potentially damaged child.” 

Stockwell Memorial Garden, south London

This organization offers substance-abusing women a $300 payment in exchange for their sterilization. The women are compensated if they agree to use long-term birth control, such as hormone implants, injections, IUDs, tubal ligations or vasectomies. The primary targets of Project Prevention are primarily poor women, and particularly poor women of color—look at who they are partnering with (social welfare offices and homeless shelters for example). 

This private organization has constructed the potential problem of drug-addicted women’s childbearing as a danger to others in society and as such decided that it must be contained. This is not a new phenomenon. Black motherhood has long been contested in the U.S. Black family formation, particularly among the poor, tends to be constructed as costly (consider the 1996 welfare reform discourse). In the meantime, there seems to be little concern about the women. 

Underlying the perceived danger of Black procreation is the standard of what/who makes a good mother. Black women, historically and currently, are not perceived as fitting the criteria of good mothers. Why, because we are perceived as lacking the necessary values (morality is often linked to skin color), and we are perceived as possessing excessive and uncontrollable sexual appetites. Given this, private organizations and the government (think family caps) have decided that they know what’s best for Black women. Control their sexual behaviors. Meanwhile, poverty, depression and sexual abuse--all factors that might contribute to drug use--are left out of our conversations (see James, The Violent Matrix). Where is the choice?

Both of these stories, fat Black women and the dangerous drug-addicted woman and her offspring, rely on a historical narrative that positions Black women as damaged. The question that I’m left with this week is why are some so committed to the erasure of Black women? What do you think?

For further reading see:

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore: Are Black women obese because we want to be? 

Dr. Duchess Harris: A Response to Black Women and Fat

 

Melissa Harris-Perry is Wrong: There is a War on Women, particularly Black Women

Politics is about words; it’s a struggle to define issues. E. E. Schattschneider, in the Semi Sovereign People, details how (problem) definition is central to politics.  Deborah Stone extends this argument in her discussion of causal stories and their functioning in the policy process. I say all of that to say—words and images matter!  Whether consciously or unconsciously selected to describe a policy issue/response, words matter. 

On April 28, 2012 Melissa Harris Perry asked her viewers to consider not using the words “war on women” to frame the current conservative policy response to women. According to Harris-Perry

“about a war on women in America. At first, all these war talk had me stockpiling supplies and wondering if I needed to run for the hills or stop, drop and roll, and then it hit me. There is no war on women, and you didn't think that I would say that? Just chillax, my fellow feminists. Don't get me wrong. We are in the midst of a massive, coordinated effort to roll back women's rights. But I take issue of the word, war. War means something specific especially for those who have lived through the war. And we need to be careful with how we use words. Now, I want to urge the folks to just say no to hyperbole and cliché’s. To help out, I want to introduce the MHP guide of what not what not to say in political conversation. Number one, unless someone is shooting at you or about to drop a bomb on your head, you are not at war. Good-bye to the war on women, the war on the poor, the war on terrorism, and other falsely created notions of war. War talk too often distracts us from understanding the complexity of policy.”

Harris-Perry considers the use of the term “war”, as a way of talking about social problems, detracting. She might be valid. If we name everything a war, we might become desensitized to the larger policy issues. However, the narrow conceptualization of her meaning of war, as simply shooting and dropping bombs, ignores so many aspects of war.  

 Bombs don't Equal War 

Bombs are simply a tool of war. Also ignored in Harris-Perry's conceptualization of war is that war involves propaganda and ideology. 

I find the term war, as a tool to characterize the policy response to Black women, particularly useful. This is where a little Bob Marley might be helpful. In War, Marley eloquently sings,

“Until the philosophy which hold one race superior/And another/Inferior/Is finally/And permanently/Discredited/And abandoned/Everywhere is war/Me say war.”

I would guess that Harris-Perry, like Marley, recognizes that war is so much more than bombs. That war is also about ideology. It is the ideological component that I want to focus on in my argument as to why there is indeed a war being waged against Black women and why we should call it such.

As a result of policies, or non-policies, Black women are:

  

“The number of women incarcerated for drug-related crimes increased by 433 percent between 1986 and 1991. But for African-American women it rose an astounding 828 percent, while the increase for white women was 241 percent, and for Latina women a 328 percent increase.” 

“The HIV rate among black women living in some U.S. cities is the same rate as that of some African countries, according to a new multicenter study presented Thursday at the 19th Conference of Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. The jarring findings acknowledge that HIV is not an infection that has been eradicated, but one that has been somewhat forgotten, researchers said.”

“Among full-time, year-round workers, black women with Bachelors' degrees make only $1,545 more per year than white males who have only completed high school.”

“single Black women have a median wealth of $100, which is less than 1 percent of the wealth of their same-race male counterparts. It is only a fraction of one-percent of the wealth of single white women….Prior to age 50, women of color have virtually no wealth at all.

As the above suggest there is a war being waged against Black women.  

Black Women are the Recipients of Policy Drones

 

Why I think that there is an ongoing war on Black women. War is about power, it is about ideology, it is about a desire to eliminate those that some group has determine does not belong. War is about changing behaviors. If we unpack the policy treatment of Black women, from a historical perspective, we can see how indeed there has been a war against them. This ideological war involves the: 

• Power to define in a systematic manner, Black women’s value to society;
• Power to determine how these women are to be treated; and
• Power to alienate, destroy and/or remove Black women from society.

I agree with Harris-Perry that it is a cliché to talk about war on drugs, war on the poor, etc. However, what Harris-Perry ignores are other definitions of war which include “active hostility or contention, and  conflict.” This is why her plea to end the use of “war on women” for example is wrong.  Since Black women were forcibly stolen from the shores of Africa there has been a war waged against us--there has in fact been active hostility and conflict. This war does not necessarily involve drones, but it is one of ideology with real consequences that often results in our death, incarceration, abject poverty,  and geographic isolation in “ghettos” and by ghetto I’m referring to confinement of those who are considered “other”.  Black women have recognized such actions as war and have mounted systematic campaigns to combat the negative impact of policies directly or indirectly targeting our communities. 

Black women’s villages are being pillaged as a result of policy drones. Policy bombs have been raining down on us via stealth and overt actions. Should I be so bold as to use the analogy of war. This is all being conducted under an ideology that constructs Black women as "bad" and "dangerous". So Harris-Perry, if we can’t call this systematic attack on the bodies of Black women a war, what should we call it?