asablehart:
I see a post that goes around every once in awhile that says “Not every narrative is...
I see a post that goes around every once in awhile that says “Not every narrative is empowering to every women” and lists women from different cultural backgrounds may not work with certain feminist tropes in writing. Ok, fine. But one of the examples was “Long hair is more meaningful to a female black character than short hair. This is referring to the trope that feminists and/or queer women cut their hair short in ‘rebellion.‘
That statement is a load of bullshit. Black women are pressured from the day they are born to make sure their hair conforms to white womanhood (long and straight). Black women with short hair are powerful AF and nothing can ever convince me otherwise. Yes, the relationships many black women have with their hair is different than what white women have. Because white women can conform to womanhood if they keep their hair long, and black women will never be able to conform to this unless they spend hours of upkeep a day making themselves “presentable.” In fact, in many places, such as work places, professional places, schools, black women are forced to do this or else they will face repercussions. No one except black women will know how deeply and viscerally upsetting it is to be told that the way your hair grows is unacceptable for the public eye.
A black woman cutting off her hair isn’t a rejection of femininity. It’s deprogramming racist propaganda. It’s terrifying, scary, and HARD, and the seriousness of this decision is a cultural phenomenon in black communities. The “big chop” is a colloquial term for when a black woman cuts off all her damaged hair, sometimes to the scalp, so she can grow it back in natural and not processed to look like a white woman’s hair. The big chop is a near universal experience, because most black women have hair that’s been ironed, heat damaged, and chemically relaxed repeatedly for YEARS causing sustained damage that cannot be remedied without growing in new hair. This is a decision to maintain their hair the way THEY WANT TO and not how white people tell them.
I feel like that post was written by someone who has never spoken to a black woman in their life.
