blonde on black

ps: just in case you didn't know what i was referring to when i mentioned blonde hair on the famous african-americans of today, here's two you've probably seen a lot. for the record, this one is eve


and this one is mary j. blige


i suppose i could wax some kind of poetic about the pain and expense that they had to endure to get their hair to look like that (nevermind the contacts or the makeup, if you can) but it's so far removed from what they're naturally like, you could probably fill in the blanks for yourself. if i wanted tamara dobson's afro when i was a little kid, i shudder to think of what black girls see when they watch their videos ad infinitum on b.e.t. and then look in the mirror.

Remember this?!

i want to be famous so i can declare war on weaves everywhere -- and any black woman who doesn't think that how she looks isn't presentable or acceptable, until she straightens her hair and dyes it some bizarre shade of blonde. i'm going to be a freakin' ultra blackgrrl superhero, just like cleopatra jones or foxy brown -- except instead of getting "the man" out of the community, i'm going to get him out of your hair.

Aron Ranen's Black Hair Documentary

if you are a black woman that straightens your hair, you might want to take a look at this 10 minute clip. it's a real eye-opener. as it turns out, getting that kink out of your hair is a billion dollar industry -- and the ones who manufacture and control the distribution of the products you use are (hit it, gomer!) * surprise, surprise, surprise!!! * korean.

what bothered me when i saw this is that not straightening your hair at all didn't really seem to be a viable option, especially on the west coast. the black folks in the hair industry are annoyed, not because of the warped image that we have of ourselves as females, but because they weren't getting a bigger piece of that financial pie.

can you imagine what would happen if black women everywhere stopped straightening their hair and invested that money each month, instead of putting it on their heads in some chemicals or a horsehair weave? we'd be rich.

oh, heck. if you've got that much money to blow on your hair every month, you already are.

you can buy the 50 minute documentary from http://www.blackhairdvd.com/.