"Why Don't He Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American
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University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository English Faculty Publications English 1995 "Why don't he like my hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" and Zora Neale Hurston's "Their yE es Were Watching God" Bertram D. Ashe University of Richmond, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/english-faculty-publications Part of the African American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, and the Race and Ethnicity Commons Recommended Citation Ashe, Bertram D. ""Why Don't He Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their yE es Were Watching God." African American Review 29, no. 4 (1995): 579-92. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "Why don't he like my hair?": Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes WereWatching God "How can he not love your hair?. It's his hair too. He got to love it." "He don't love it at all. He hates it." (Song 315) Bertram D. Ashe is a doc- toralcandidate at the College of Williamand Mary.His dis- sertation,"From Within the T his last declaration,uttered by a feverish, distraught,dan- Frame:Storytelling in African- gerously mentally ill Hagar Dead to her mother Reba and AmericanFiction," is on the her grandmotherPilate comes midway through one of the most writtenrepresentation of heart-wrenchingscenes in Toni Morrison'sSong of Solomon.In the African-Americanoral story- passage, grandmother,mother, and daughter discuss whether tellingfrom Charles W. Milkman,the novel's centralcharacter, "likes" Hagar's hair. By Chesnuttto Reginald the time the scene has ended, it doesn't matterthat Pilate has McKnight. offered credible reasons why Milkmancouldn't not love Hagar's hair-" 'How can he love himself and hate your hair?'" Pilate asks-Hagar is certain that Milkmanis only attractedto women with distinctly Europeanfeatures and insists, with deadly finali- ty/ "'He's never going to like my hair.' "Ultimately, all Pilate can say in reply is, " 'Hush. Hush. Hush, girl, hush"' (315-16). African-Americans,with their traditionallyAfrican features, have always had an uneasy coexistence with the European (white) ideal of beauty. According to Angela M. Neal and Midge L. Wilson, "Comparedto Blackmales, Blackfemales have been more profoundly affected by the prejudicialfallout surrounding issues of skin color, facial features, and hair. Such impact can be attributedin large part to the importanceof physical attractive- ness for all women" (328). For black women, the most easily con- trolled feature is hair. While contemporaryblack women some- times opt for cosmetic surgery or colored contact lenses, hair alteration(i.e., hair-straightening"permanents," hair weaves, braid extensions, Jhericurls, etc.) remains the most popular way to approximatea white female standardof beauty. Neal and Wilson contend that much of the black female's "obsessionabout skin color and features"has to do with the black woman's attempting to attain a "high desirabilitystem[ming] from her physical similarity to the white standardof beauty" (328). But just whom do African-Americanwomen hope to attract by attaining this "high desirability"?While there is some debate as to whether the choice of one's hair style automaticallysignifies one's alliance with, or opposition to, white supremacy,anecdotal evidence clearly points to the straighteningof black hair as a way to fit, however unconsciously, into an overall white standardof beauty.' What is often overlooked, however, are specific black- African American Review, Volume 29, Number 4 ? 1995 Bertram D. Ashe557 male expectationswhere black-female opposing sides of the white-beauty hairstyles are concerned. construct.Pilate Dead, who wears her In much the same way that men hair closely cropped, represents gravitatetoward certain styles, behav- "Nature... [as she] energetically iors, and attitudes that are more likely work[s] against the allure of outward to attractattention from women, male appearances"(Guerrero 769). Pilate's "likes"must rate, on some level, as at granddaughterHagar, on the other least a considerationwhen a female hand, "fantasizesa persona that she hair style is chosen. Of course, the rea- imagines will make her more desirable soning a woman employs while choos- to her projectedlover, Milkman"(769). ing a hair style ranges much further Hagar'simagined "persona"is one than simply trying to attractsome man. that will include "silky copper-colored Above all, no doubt, women wear their hair" (Solomon127), because Morrison hair in a style that pleases them. primarilyuses hair in Songof Solomon However, as EricaHector Vital put it in to draw Pilate and Hagar as opposites a recent article about cutting off her where the white standardof beauty is dreads and retaininga short, natural concerned.Eventually, by revolving style, certain these opposites around Milkman,the Toni Morrison characters, such as novel's centralcharacter, Morrison Hannah in Morrison'sSong of Solonwn, devises her own African-American Sula in a novella of the same name, standardof beauty, an alternativeto and the girl-child Pecola of TheBluest the white-beautyideal. Eye,all fall prey to dishonor and grief Hurston, in TheirEyes Were without the presence of the mothering voices to grant the essential reminders: WatchingGod, also examines the black- Don't let your slip show, don't sneak female response to the white-beauty off with the neighborhoodboys, don't ideal, but in a markedly different man- forget to do your lesson, don't be a fool ner. While both Pilate and Hagar have with your hair .... no man likes a bald-headedwoman. (11) dark skin and "kinky"hair, Hurston gives her centralcharacter, Janie While Vital did go on to cut her CrawfordKillicks Starks Woods, all of dreads-as she certainly should have, the attributesof the white-female stan- since that was her preference-one of dard of beauty. Janie'sfeatures con- the questions she asked herself in those form to the black version of the white final moments in the barber'schair ideal, including those Neal and Wilson was, ".. what will the brothers designate as the most important:light think?"(12). This considerationof the skin and long hair (325-26).Although black male's "likes"is not always on Janieenjoys possessing these features, the surface, but, like the black male's she refuses to allow her light skin and regard for the black female's"likes," it long hair to separateher from the is there, subterranean. Eatonvillecommunity. Indeed, much Morrisonand Zora Neale Hurston, of the novel concernsJanie's struggle in their works, engage the black against the community's attempts to female's struggle between her own place her, because of her features (par- hairstyle preferencesand the female ticularlyher hair), on a social level that hairstyle preferencesof the black male. is above and apart from the communi- These two authors offer dissimilarbut ty. In Janie,Hurston creates a character compatible discussions of not only the who subverts the "historyof differen- black female's encounters with the tial treatment"(Neal and Wilson 325) white-female standardof beauty, but traditionallyaccorded those of her skin also the black female's difficulties color and hair texture. negotiating her black-malepartner's The person in the community pri- conception of that standard.Morrison, marily concernedwith blocking Janie in Songof Solomon,critiques the ideal from the community's full acceptance by creating two characterswho fall on is her second husband, Joe Starks. 580 AFRICANAMERICAN REVIEW Determined to force Janieto acknowl- than immediately announcing her hus- edge her "difference,"Joe insists on band's death. separatingher from the Eatonville Hurston makes it clear very early townspeople by keeping her in a "high, on that hair is going to be a primary ruling chair"(Their Eyes 54). Like issue in Janieand Joe's relationship.It Morrison,Hurston privileges hair as was Janie'shair that first caught Joe's the battleground of Janieand Jody's attention.As Joe walked up the road, fight over access to the Eatonvillecom- He didn't look her way nor no other munity.2 way except straightahead, so Janieran to the pump and jerked the handle hard while she pumped. It made a loud noise and also made her heavy hair fall down. So he stopped and looked hard, and then he asked her for a cool he first thing Janiedoes is let drinkof water. (47;emphasis added) down her hair. In one of the most powerful scenes Not only is Hurston careful to identify Janie'shair as the catalyst that brings in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie and Joe together,but she contin- in Janie confrontsJoe Starks,as he lies bed ues the hair referencesduring their dying: brief courtship.When Joe is trying to "Listen,Jody, you ain't de Jody ah run convince Janieto leave Logan Killicks, off down de road wid. You'se whut's Janie'sfirst husband, he refers to her left after he died.... You done lived hair to help persuade her: wid me for twenty years and you don't half know me atall. And you could "Youcome go wid me. Den all de rest have but you was so busy worshippin' of yo' naturallife you kin live lak you de works of yo' own hands, and cuffin' oughta. Kiss me and shake yo' head. folks around in their minds till you When you do dat, yo' plentiful hair didn't see uh whole heap uh things breakslak day." (50) yuh could have." (132-33) Hurston loads allusions to Jody's inter- When Janie says that Joe didn't know est in Janie'shair into their meeting her "atall,"she is referringto the way and courtship,so it is not surprising he stymied her repeated attempts to that Janie'shair becomes an issue dur- become an integral part of the ing their marriage.