Good Hair Response

Last night, I watched comedian Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair with some of my classmates. In this film, Chris Rock looks at the pressures put on African-American women to get their hair straightened or to get a weave, the high prices it cost African American women to get their hair straightened (sometimes even $5,000!), and the location where all these beautiful weaves come from (India). While I was watching this film, I found it funny, interesting, and informative. However, after reading Jeannette Catsoulis's review on the film, I realized that there may have been some other emotions that other viewers could have felt while watching this movie.

Like Ms. Catsoulis, I found this movie informative and hilarious, but there were elements in this film that I saw, but could not feel. Catsoulis states that this movie shows the psychological and physical harm that the hair business brings to the African-American community. However, being a Caucasian male, it was hard for me to relate to the stress and pain that these women were going through in the movie. It is a lot easier to watch someone get their hair "relaxed" than actually getting it done and a lot easier to hear how much money these women are paying for their hair than actually experiencing the work they had to go through to make their hair "beautiful." For this reason, I feel that while I still got a lot out of this movie, I was not able to relate to and appreciate it as much as African-American women, or even Caucasian women, can.

After watching this film, I am definitely going to try not to judge women on their looks. Just because a women has more resources to receive special hair treatments or the best make-up does not mean they are any better than the women who do not have these privileges. I am greatly appreciative that I was able to participate in this dorm film showing, and I hope this film will make me live in a way that lines up with what the "Kingdom" should be like.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/movies/09hair.html