Am I the only one who thinks that black women and straight hair generally don't go well together?

[MrsThierryHenry]

Yes, it's Friday afternoon idle timewasting chat time!

When I see a black woman (or man, for that matter) with straight hair, I just can't help thinking that 99% of the time some lovely curls would suit them SO much better. Compare this to this.

Now, okay, perhaps Beyonce's not the best example here, as she would look amazing even with no hair at all (the cow! ) but on the whole IMO black skin and straight hair is not a happy pudding.

Anyone else?

[BigGitDad]

Now Brian May, I think his hair is awful especaily at his age Do you think if he had it straightened he would look like Neil from the young ones? What do you think?

[MsDemeanor]

I think it's absolutely hilarious the shift (and the embarrassed shuffling of feet) that happened when people realised MrsT was black!
Mumsnet is so holier-than-thou sometimes.
I can see that black hair is a political issue. That it is very hard for black women to be considered attractive/professional etc without having to submit to endless chemical processing of their natural hair. Very hard to imagine Mr & Mrs Obama being in their position if one or both wore natural hair (and impossible to imagine Michelle Obama reaching the career heights she has with an afro style). I agree that the kind of hair processing I see every day where I live makes hair look bad - fragile, stiff and immoveable. Even poor old Naomi is going bald due to constant use of straight extensions. But it seems to be almost compulsory to have straight hair, and all the local black salons have huge ads for straightening and weaves in the windows. But I assume that much of the pressure is internalised and now comes from with the black community as well as from outside it.

[mammya]

Hello, I have a question for all you out and proud curlies!

My dd 7 is mixed race, and has lovely curly light brown hair. I am white, with straight blond hair. I've always dreamed of having curly hair and had all manners of perms etc when I was younger. Now well, I have resigned myself to having straight hair.

My dd though, really wants to have long straight blond hair. What can I do to help her love her curls, other than to keep telling her how lovely it is and how I wish I had curly hair? I sometimes buy afro hairstyle magazines, so that she can see that curly hair is beautiful but it's not making much difference.

Any advice welcome!

[mistypeaks]

Funnily enough I saw a white chap yesterday with dreads and he actually looked really good . Not as hot as the chap at work (Not sure where he's from, too shy to ask, but is African origin) he wears his hair in braids in a big old pony tail. I love that look.
I think I'm in agreement (hoping I haven't misunderstood). It is sad if women or men of any origin feel they have to subject themselves to hard work to try and 'fit' in and look like something they're not. In the same way as hollywood types over plastic surgerying themselves so they all just look like carbon (or plastic) copies of one another. I wish that I was as brown in winter as I am in summer, but there is no way I'm going through fake tan year round!!!

[Blu]

MT7 - what if you are making assumption about why people took issue with the OP / thread title/

As it happens, some MN-ers feel more strongly about personal choice / comfort / freedom than they do about Style Diktats - and from MTH's list of 'what suits who one of the things I find most exasperating about MN is the plethora of threads bemoaning people who have the temerity to cause social offence by inflicting their flabby knees, bingo wings, straightened (too old for it!) / unstraightened (ugh - frizz!), aging skin, muffin tops..and crocs on the perfect yummy mummies of MN.

In fact my reaction to the OP (but didn't bother to post) was much the same as the reaction I had to an illustrated lecture / performance thing I went to by a Black British guy, Peckham through and through, who went on a 'back to roots' creative muse pilgramage to Ghana and came back in trauma because of what Ghanaian womn were doing to their hair - shock horror - wasting thier Sfrican-ness, not fulfilling thier duty as reposittory f his los sense of african-ness - how DARE they take the opportunity of choice and hairstyle?

Different things may or may not suit different people, but the most important point, surely, is that people do what they like, experiment successfully, or disastrously, or not give a damn, free of tutting and bosomey comment-did-you-see-that comment.

Perhaps 'racist' was used as a substitute for 'presumptionist' - and certainly deciding what one race should do (whether you are of that race or not) over an issue which is firmly linked to racial qualities, is making race the fulcrum of deciding what people 'should' or 'should not' do..... very close to the mechnims of racists, no?

It was some posts later that TH emphasised that she didn't ant to impose a 'should'...but it's hard to eve enter a discussion abou what 'suits'people without being just a little judgmental.

[InLoveWithSweeneyTodd]

my only problem with straight hair is that it gives people a "uniform" look. You see groups of girls around and they all have the same hair, same length, sometimes even the same shade!. You can hardly tell them apart! Straight hair is trendy, but it's bland IMO, and no matter what people think, it doesn't suit all features, regardless of skin/hair color. Some people would benefit of a bit of volume IMO. In some cases it looks so flat and so perfecly straight that it doesn't look natural.
I prefer a more natural look. But it is just my preference - I always hated the "just been to the hairdresser's" look.

[InLoveWithSweeneyTodd]

mammya, i think your dd is just proof that we always want the hair we haven't got! I don't know of any girl who at some point hasn't wished she was blond/red/brunette/straight/wavy/etc, anything but the hair she's born with!
I cannot really give you any advice, other than keep telling her she's gorgeous and how you crave curls!

[thumbwitch]

mammya - not sure I can help there, when I was young I always wanted different hair to what I had - I really wanted a long thick black plait or 2 (a la Tiger Lily from Disney's Peter Pan). I was in my teens before I started to really appreciate my hair and even then wished it would either be MORE curly or LESS, not the half-and-half effort that it mostly is. late teens led to acceptance - as soon as I was allowed to do what I like with it, I no longer wanted to.

If you can find someone rich/famous/celebrity etc. with hair like your daughter's, it might reconcile her to it a bit more but in the end I think it is just one of those things - we always want what we don't have because we somehow think it's better.

[JT]

Beyonce?

I think black women look great with straight hair

[TheMagnificent7]

Blu - We killed this post a couple of nights ago I thought. Now I can see your words but when I read them out loud it sounds like "Na NA NAA nA na na na na na nana na na nnaannaa na na".

Sorry, didn;t get what you mean, and in the interests of keeping everyone awake lets be honest, I was just right and you've missed what was being said [haven't got a der! wankicon]

[Blu]

Oh, pardon me for picking up a thread from Active Convos and being interested enough to post on it...didn't realise you were in charge of deciding when discussion should stop etc.

oh well.

I think you have interesting things to say - but you are very rude.

[MsDemeanor]

Bloody hell M7 that was as astonishingly rude post. What is the matter with you?

Blu, but what if someone who is black or Asian posted, 'I think it's awful when black or Asian women use chemicals to lighten their skin' and the background is the prejudice against darker skins?
I'm white by the way!

[TheMagnificent7]

Blu addressed me regarding a thread that isn't even mine, that I commented on late regarding attitudes towards presumed race. Blu's message is garbled, and missed my point entirely. Perhaps not the OP, but mine certainly. If they want to address me then fine, but if they'd read all the posts instead of one or two perhaps they would have seen that a) everyone is bored of my dissertations now; and b) the post was never about race on the face of it, just a black woman talking about black women's hair and asking an opinion.
So, thanks for your reposnse, but didn't get a word of it. Batters, it was just blu, and slim22, that I had any problems with.

[TheMagnificent7]

MrsTH - Congratuations. Just two more hours and your post has reached 1 full week.

Can we have another for this afternoon please.

[MsDemeanor]

She is entitled to post (very politely) without getting a heap of insulting, gratuitous rudeness. I think you should apologise.

[TheMagnificent7]

It was addressed to me as if I'd said something wrong. I'm nothing to do with the post. It's about hair. And the whole point of my contribution was the ridiculous PC Race Police wetting their pants about race, when it was simply a question of hair. It was deliberately non-descript regarding the OPs race, and all the bandwagoners have turned it into a massive race debate. Which is what I was congratulating the OP for speculating may happen. It wasn't at all polite to question me over something that was discussed days ago, in detailed manned, and had been explained many times over. Perhaps if it had been a little less aggressive, and with more understanding and less padding, it may have come across as polite.

But I stand by my original interpretation , "Na NA NAA nA na na na na na nana na na nnaannaa na na"

[TheMagnificent7]

MsDemeanor, you do realise the OP is Black, don't you ?

[Dragonbutter]

I'm still here. Lurking on this thread wondering if i've learnt anything.

I still am unsure if the OP posted this thread to genuinely find out if any others thought beyonce looks better with curly or straight hair or if it was done to draw out PC mumsnetters with a title which could be percieved as racist so that her and Mag7 could point and snigger. And then I'm confused about what is fun about that?

I think there are many other ways MrsTH could have worded her thread title that would have initiated an interesting debate. But her 'point' has been confused by Mag7's comments and the fact that beyonce looks great and so do many other black women with straightened hair.

It is likely that as many assumptions have been made by posters at the beginning of this thread as have been made by MrsTH and Mag7 about people who were offended and their reasons for being so.

Interesting thread though MrsTH, not bad for a bored friday. What you got up your sleeve today?

[LyraSilvertongue]

I don't think M7 should dismiss Blu's comments so rudely either.

[TheMagnificent7]

Lol. I love that. The second you say anything someone doesnt like on here you are either a troll (FFS) or a poster with a new name. Nope. Just same old me. And I'm put out by blu's lecture at me. I found it, not rude, but a little like the rest of the posts had been ignored.

I apologise wholeheartedly, and hope that she hasn't had a lovely Friday spoiled by an ignoramus such as I.

I'm just not sure why it was all adressed to me.

[Blu]

TM7.
Ve-e-e-ey slowly:

-I have read the whole thread, every post.

• I replied particularly to you because you had taken great interest in the fact that to you, many reposnes early on were based on the fact that people were thinking te title / OP were racist. I wanted to suggest that people sometimes take issue with NY generalisation about how people look etc, and suggestions that the thread title was asking an unnacceptable q were not just because it was todo with race.
• It is disinegnous to suggst that the thread is about hair not racce, in toto, (that's Latin, not garbled reference to other film characters) because it is refers specifically to hair qualities and features which are spcific to race. Therefore the context must be to some extntpolitical - as many people have discussed...pressures on blak women to westernise, deny or celebrate black features etc etc
• You assume that people were only saying 'racist' because of some sort of over-snstised PC-ness - but of course a pov (acronym - not latin) it might have been racist whatever the profile of the poster.

Now, this bit is even more slow:

I was paing you the compliment of not being bored with your posts, and responding with a 'yes but...' with no implication that you had done anything 'bad'. Why on earth would you think that?

But, since I did see how you were rude and v ugly in your attitude to Slim I should have wasted my virtual breath.

I cannot fathom why you should have any problm wih either me or Slim22.
Unless you have issues???? .

Hear what you lik - I see udeness, agression an an inability to enter a disussion with any intention of doing so wih any mutuality.

I shouldn't be rising to this, should I?
But it's shedding a little more light on YOU Take a good look, MN-ers!

[Blu]

Oh, OK, x-posted.

Why on earth would you think i was having a go at you?

I was discussing.

There was no 'tone' in my first post addressed to you...but so that you can se the difference, there was in the one below.