You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

by Phoebe Robinson

She still tells terrible dudes at bars that insist on having shitty conversations with us to Please buzz off. I’m in my thirties. She always says, My eggs are dying. I don’t have time to hang out with anybody that I don’t want to. Fair enough.

Advice like: “Doggy style is a great position to have sex in, that way you can have a little bit of you time. You can get some work done, you can think about your taxes or about what groceries you need to get tomorrow. . . .”

That being a black woman and a feminist is a full-time job. Like, #fuckthepatriarchy even though we both usually date white dudes who look vitamin D deficient and probably burn in the sun too easily. That black lives do matter. And that we both think that Carrie Bradshaw was a fucking stupid idiot for breaking up with Aiden for Mr. Big. Like, really? The man is a carpenter; he could literally make her furniture. And he even bought the apartment next door to hers so he could combine the two. The man wanted to MacGyver her living space! I think I can speak on behalf of all straight women everywhere when I say, “Hi, hello! Sign me up for that, please!”

wonderful. She is a badass black feminist and somehow manages to stay #woke while not taking herself too seriously. She is delightfully petty in that way that leaves us giggling and talking shit about everyone around us when we go out for drinks. And she is brilliant onstage. Even with all the comedy shows that we have done together, Phoebe still manages to surprise me and make me laugh until I pee myself a little bit by accident.

But the ’90s were full of bad choices, OK? Like guys in boy bands wearing golf visors when they weren’t golfing, the movie Battlefield Earth, Lou Bega and his “Mambo No. 5” bullshit, pizza bagels, the Gulf War, Utah Jazz point guard John Stockton wearing short shorts on the basketball court, and me spending three weeks trying to memorize the lyrics to Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week”—after those twenty-one days, all I got down was: “Chickity China, the Chinese chicken.” Three weeks, guys! That’s all I got! The point is, in the ’90s, mistakes were made. Lessons were learned. And thanks to Ricky Martin’s “The Cup of Life” performance at the 1999 GRAMMYs, I learned that my vajeen is capable of quaking over nonblack dudes the way the glass of water did in Jurassic Park when dinosaurs were nearby.

Simply put, I was stunned. I was in love, but I was also surprised—I was never really drawn to a nonblack guy like this before. Not that I was ever anti-nonblack dudes; they just never really were on my radar because they didn’t look like me. And I think that most folks would agree with me when I say that it’s human nature to be drawn to people who look like us, especially when we’re younger and not very exposed to the world. So that first time I felt attracted to someone outside of my race, it felt, for a moment . . . transcendental.

I, Phoebe Lynn Robinson, had transcended past race! That I was capable of seeing people and not their skin color. In other words: I was (drumroll, please) postracial. Yeah . . . No. Look, dude and lady boners can do a lot.

But as a nation, we are far from the “everyone holding hands in racial harmony” that we assumed would happen once Obama was ushered into office. In fact, throughout the Obama years, there has been, at the very best, resistance to change, and at the very worst, a palpable regression in the way the country views and handles—or more accurately, refuses to handle—race.

We only have to turn on the nightly news to witness the significant uptick in police brutality toward black men and women. Eric Garner. Trayvon Martin. Sandra Bland. Laquan McDonald. Rekia Boyd. Yvette Smith. Shereese Francis. Timothy Russell. Malissa Williams. Sean Bell. Oscar Grant. Miriam Carey. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. MappingPolice Violence.org states 37 percent of unarmed people killed by police last year were black, even though blacks only make up 13 percent of the US population.

the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) stating that “police forces are up to 28 times more likely to use stop-and-search powers against black people than white people and may be breaking the law” to do so.

I would have run out of tears a loooong time ago if I let every time someone was racist toward me devastate me. Still, even though I’m fairly used to micro-aggressions, there are those occasional situations that manage to surprise me, and not the “I found a $20 bill in a winter-coat pocket” good type of surprise. I’m talking like the “Aunt Flo decided to visit when I just put on a brand-new pair of my Victoria’s Secret five-for-$25” type of bad surprise,

this is trifling, but when you’re so single that your Apple TV remote has its own side of the bed, you really try to do anything to make yourself feel special, hence the Uber; and two, my driver looked like Villain #4 from the Taken movies, you know, just real Slavic AF, so for the purposes of this story, he will be known as Taken Face.

Let me just say this right now, in case there’s any confusion in 2016: If you’re a white person and you have references on standby to verify that you’re allowed to say the N-word, you are probably the last person on planet Earth who should be saying nigga. Your overpreparedness is very suspicious, and makes you the Tracy Flick of racism. How about instead you use those type A powers for good and teach the world something useful, like how to fold a fitted sheet properly?

The truth is, evolution is slow, glacial even, and it cannot occur without people doing difficult and painful work. That doesn’t sound like a whole heck of a lot of fun, which is precisely why it hasn’t happened yet. But there’s an even harder truth to accept: The kind of growth required to move past race is nearly impossible to achieve because racism is rooted in the foundation of America. (Ahem, the Three-Fifths Compromise of our Constitution, anyone?) Without awareness or acknowledgment of how these things have left a permanent stain on our country, no amount of blind hope is going to remedy the erosion that racism has done to this country.

Other times, that hope reveals itself in far less noble instances. Like the time when I was crashing on the couch of a dear friend in LA, who happens to be white, and a piece of my weave fell out and her dog started to eat it, which forced her fiancé to chase the dog around the living room and wrestle the weave from its mouth, and they were totally chill about it, like this happens to them all the time. Hmm, maybe that’s a sign that we’re getting closer to living in a postracial society.

I’m using this waiting period as my chance to pull a Clarissa and explain it all.

Nope. You can’t touch my hair. Even if my hair catches on fire, do not come to my rescue; just let me do a Michael Jackson spin move to put the blaze out. Honestly, there is nothing I hate more than people groping and marveling in National Geographic–esque hushed tones about how my hair feels different than they expected. It’s frustrating how something as simple as a quick trip to the supermarket can turn into an impromptu seminar about the history of black hair, during which I’m supposed to clarify where I stand in the #TeamNatural vs. #TeamRelaxer debate, discuss how I think black/white relations are going in America, and admit that if I was less defensive about my hair being touched, racism might be solved in an hour.

Well, like I wrote earlier, there are tons of things I still have to explain about being a black lady in this day and age. Such as what it’s like to be the black friend (Hint: It’s annoying), what it’s like to be black in general (Hint: It’s very cool and awesome and also annoying), feminism (See: What it’s like to be black in general), and working on-camera as a black lady (none of the clothes fit, and I audition for lots of characters named Laura and Abby, but then lose the parts to actual white ladies named Laura and Abby).

reading Nora Ephron while a Jamaican lady braids my hair is pretty much the America Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of.

I have taken a nap during a pregnancy scare because I was like, “Eh, it can wait.”

Postponing a binge-watch session to read this book is probably the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. And my mom turned her vajayjay into a Six Flags Water Park slide so I could enter the world. Sorry, Mom, but you’ve just been demoted to number two on my list of awesome people.

Black hair has always been somewhat mysterious, like who the heck Keyser Söze is or why Forever 21’s adult-sized leggings are so small they could double as condoms for sea turtles. And when something is mysterious, people fear it. Fear the Afro, for he who wears it is going to start a revolution! Fear the dreadlocks, for she who wears them must be a drug dealer! Fear the kinky twists, for he who wears them must be an unstable vagrant!

And when you add mystery plus fear together, it equals various forms of oppression, such as how black women who don’t have their hair relaxed (aka chemically straightened) have been told they are “unprofessional,” or how schools have told young black children they can’t wear their hair natural because it’s a “distraction” for everyone in the classroom, or the daily, unwanted commentary, such as this unsolicited message I received when I had dreads: “You know, you would be so pretty if your hair was straight.” Wow—“hire-ability,” acceptance, and attractiveness are all on the line when someone wears his or her hair naturally?

The fear of black hair has been an ever-present part of America’s social history. The tumultuous relationship between black hair and America can best be explained this way: If black hair is the hardwood floor in a Broadway theater, then America is Savion Glover just soft-shoeing all o...

Outside of skin color, nappy hair is probably the biggest in-your-face reminder of...

The message that society sends to black women is that their hair does not belong to them but is fair game to be discussed, mocked, judged, used, and abused, and it serves as a home for people’s preconceived notions about blackness, as if it is an abstract concept that is not connected to living, breathing, and feeling human beings.

(for example, the word angry doesn’t get hurled at me nearly as much when my hair is straight as when it’s in an Afro)

We black girls are conditioned from a young age to treat our natural hair as a problem that needs to be remedied, that we need to have that “good hair,” meaning hair that, in its natural state, is not difficult to comb through.

Black hair is fun! When I have dreads, I feel like a badass Marvel comic superhero. When I shaved my head a decade ago and was bald, I felt free. I didn’t have any hair to think about. Yippee!! And when I recently switched up my kinky curls for a beach wave, ombré look, aka the #LowBudgetCiara, I always felt like someone was following me around with an industrial wind fan.

For all of us black women who are not #Blessed to be Oprah, we don’t have the luxury of being celebrated when rocking natural hairstyles.

That’s a tired argument typically implemented by a woke black person who does his faux-deep version of the Fetty Wap triple greeting of “Hey, what’s up, hello”: “Sister, queen, goddess, don’t you know what the white man is doing to you? You should wear your natural curls like a crown.” Whenever I hear that, I always think, Oh, shaddup. Just because you wear Buddhist beads doesn’t mean you’re enlightened. But yet, this kind of gentle admonishment is said to black women way too often, so let’s clear this up right now: If a black woman straightens her hair, it doesn’t mean she’s rejecting her blackness. Sometimes a black lady wants her hair straightened because it looks cute that way, or she just wants to switch it up, or sometimes . . . well . . . OK. Take a seat, because what I’m about to tell you is a BPS, aka a Black People Secret. For the uninitiated, a Black People Secret can fall under one, or be a combination of, the following categories: 1. Classified information that is kept under wraps for fear of cultural appropriation or judgment by society at large. 2. Something that’s common knowledge within the black community but not society at large. 3. A fact that black people would openly acknowledge if so many nonblack people weren’t vocal about said fact in the first place.

Clearly, I have confidence, alright? But I reach my limit of fierceness when, while relaxing in the comfort of my own home, my hair is twisting into itself until it’s knotted like a pile of tangled iPhone earphones. Do you want to know what happens when my hair looks jacked up like that? Dudes stop trying to tap this and my dating life dries up. And if my dating life dries up, my vajeen will get covered in vines and moss like Edie Bouvier Beale’s house in Grey Gardens. I can’t live my life like that and neither can the thousands upon thousands of other black women whose natural hair suffers from this sort of shrinkage. So say it with me: “That’s some damn bullshit!” Ergo, black women’s penchant for perming/relaxing/straightening their hair.

Sure, the details may be different—swap out Living Single for Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, and Sojourner Truth as the go-to reference instead of Frederick—but the point remains the same: From a very early age, the experience that most black girls have is one in which their hair is transformed from its natural state.

“You have to sit still so you don’t get burned.” Yeah. If you’re thinking that’s a lot of responsibility for a very young person—to stay still as a piping-hot piece of metal hovers mere inches away from your scalp—you are correct.

This, my friends, was the milk shake that did not bring all the boys to the yard. It was the milk shake that made them go, “You know, I’m really not into dairy right now. Or gluten. Or literally anything else that Phoebe Robinson is about.”

Recently, I’ve started to question my deep fondness over my childhood looks. A lot of my self-love during that time was tied to my hair being manipulated to mimic that of white people’s. Not that that was necessarily my or my mom’s intentions, but looking like everyone else made me feel good. Fitting in, especially when you’re a kid and don’t realize that standing out is the way to go, was important. It’s necessary for survival in school.

There was absolutely, positively, no scratching my scalp because if I did, when I would get my hair relaxed again later, the chemicals from the perm would sting the areas, causing a scab to form. “Aaah!” exclaimed my ex-boyfriend, a high school teacher, after I explained this to him a few years ago. “I was wondering why I only saw black girls doing this. Didn’t want to think it was a ‘black’ thing.” No, babe, you were right; patting our heads like they’re the bottoms of ketchup bottles is indeed a black thing.

Because getting a perm at a hair salon is a long process that eats up many hours on a Saturday, I learned that having a weekend was a white thing. My white classmates would regale me with tales of doing things like going to the movies, playing in the park, eating fast food. Then it’d be my turn: “Well, I went to the hair salon for most of Saturday.

my hair was not the good hair that a hairdresser could easily comb through; mine would have to be tugged along like a Real World/Road Rules Challenge contestant being dragged across the finish line.

I also love that when other people see you on boats, they think your life is literally cunnilingus from unicorns, and even though that’s not the case, you’re still like, “Yep! Pretty much!”

they think your life is literally cunnilingus from unicorns, and even though that’s not the case, you’re still like, “Yep! Pretty much!”

A hot dude rubbing your booty the way Bobby Flay puts spice rub on a slab of ribs, and then kissing your donk as if to say, “I know I do not deserve any of this or you, so I’m going to literally kiss your ass and then metaphorically kiss it later on” was and continues to be #RelationshipGoals, #BoatGoals, and #LifeGoals for me.

I fell in love with fantasy. I needed fantasy because real life was not as fun or fabulous. Being the sole black girl in my class who no guy, black or white, thought was pretty or worthy of special attention was a lonely, seemingly never-ending experience—and it was all my hair’s fault, I was sure of it.

It’s where I watched Living Single’s Maxine Shaw with her awesome braids be a successful lawyer and kick it with her awesome black bestie girlfriends who always had her back.

I learned that my hair is also kind of hard to comb through sometimes, which can be annoying, but I like it. It’s not easy, but I’m not easy, so we match.

I can establish a kinship with other black people who wear their hair this way. Our hair becomes a language that only we speak.

And I have Angela Davis to thank for that, because she and her Afro are, by far, some of the biggest symbols of black self-love, the civil rights movement, and challenging the status quo.

This traditionally masculine hairstyle (known as the Kid ‘n Play) is a fuck-you in the face of societal standards. It wasn’t meant to turn men on; instead, it was an extension of her artistic expression. Grace, after all, is an artist, something that society conveniently forgets that black women can be.

Not only do dreads celebrate the rejection of mainstream beauty standards, but they also have the added bonus of illustrating how spiritual the wearer is (it is believed that spiritual energies usually exit the body through the top of the head, so if the hair is knotted or dreaded, the energy stays in the hair and body).

If I had to be birthed out of anyone else’s vajeen besides my mom’s, it would be Erykah Badu’s. I just feel like it’s the perfect combo of all-natural Earth Mother nurturing and swag-filled “I ain’t got time for these fools.”