From Political Symbol to Personal Pleasure
In chapter four of The Substance of Style I discuss how unusual aesthetics often start as ideological or religious statements, only to have their meanings diluted over time, as more and more people adopt them, at first because they embrace some of the original meaning and then increasingly simply because they like the style. The same pattern occurs with such diverse styles as neo-Gothic architecture in the 19th century and dreadlocks in the 20th century.
In an article on the new book Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair, the NYT's Guy Trebay delves a bit into the complex relationship between pleasure and meaning in the styling of black women's hair.
"Black people perhaps have always pushed the boundaries of creativity in this country," explained [Queens author] Mr. [George] Alexander, whose book is also the subject of an exhibition at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C. "During the slave era there were obvious limits in terms of what you could do, since you were considered property. Basically, ever since, there has been this expanding desire to express oneself." That expression now takes the form of hairstyles that may involve the chemical processes that continue to stoke the multibillion-dollar, so-called ethnic personal-care market, but that equally results in Macy Gray Afros or the microbraids popularized by African immigrants, or else corn rows or Bantu knots or Bolga braids or the Barbie-style hair extension favored by Naomi Campbell and Beyoncé Knowles.
Most surprising perhaps, among the styles now popular among African-American women is dreadlocks (now called locks), an ancient coiffure often exclusively associated with the Rastafarians and now an ordinary hair-care option at many black hair salons.
"Fifteen years ago locks were still a heavily politicized thing," explained Shannon Ayers, the proprietor of the Harlem salon and day spa Turning Heads, who appears in "Queens" with her locked hair plaited into braids as thick as hawsers.
A decade ago, when Ms. Ayers decided to abandon her corporate job in publishing, she stopped processing her hair and let it lock naturally. Her early experiments involved nothing more radical than prim little twists. Even at that, "my family thought I had lost my mind," she said. "And if I met a Mr. Banker or Lawyer, the reaction was, 'I can't be bringing somebody with these little Buckwheat things in her head to my corporate functions.' "
Now about half the clients at Ms. Ayers's salon come to have their hair styled in the locks, twists and coils worn by women as disparate as Ms. Morrison and Lauryn Hill.
"It's not radical anymore," said Cherare Robertson, a police officer in Washington, whose rust-tinged and restyled locks were set to dry one afternoon last week beneath a cap dryer that anomalously brought the Donna Reed 1950's to mind. "A couple years ago I just stopped worrying about satisfying society and started to enjoy my own beauty," she said.
Queens, which I haven't seen, includes glamorous black-and-white portraits by Michael Cunningham, whose earlier book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats is a favorite of mine.