black women, hair, seriousness
It's so interesting, this cultural moment we're in — in which, for huge swaths of the African-American population, there's simply no good simple inexpensive thing at all to do with your hair if you're a woman. In Chris Rock's movie "Good Hair," he pretends to be shocked — shocked! — at the lengths women will go to to adhere to their culture's standards of beauty. The cumulative effect is, nonetheless, shocking in its own way.
I have a friend who's unfortunate to be in Washington DC, where such trends seem to be amplified (and the most prominent African-American women are exclusively straightened/relaxed/woven), but simultaneously quite fortunate to be in academia, where, at least it seems to me, such trends have less power. Is that my imagination? A law professor, for instance, is almost expected to have a closely-cropped afro with a little grey. Certainly if there were one cast in a movie that's what she'd look like.
Hm. Not quite the right picture.
Much more like it. There, you see?
What if my law professor friend showed up at Howard one morning in one of Nicki Minaj's fauvist cotton-candy fantasias?
Something tells me it would be difficult for some students and professors (and administrators) to take her seriously. —ah! "take seriously." That hits on it, right? Here we are in 2013, and we're still very much in the world Anne Hollander described in saying men have an abundance of opportunity to be sexy and serious at the same time (witness our president in a slamming suit), but almost no such opportunity for women. They can be serious (Hillary Clinton in a sober suit with just that much feminine touch) or they can be sexy (Hillary Clinton in a sequined ball gown at an inauguration), but it's just about impossible to be both.
Vexing. Michelle Obama, also with a law degree and career, very significantly chooses sexy/unserious nearly 100 percent of the time — a modern-day Jackie Kennedy — and who's complaining? She's fantastic, especially compared to the choice of her predecessor, the very beautiful Laura Bush, who chose the Bush family route of unsexy/unserious in her prim matronly grandma outfits.
I'm always amused at the solution the boss character in the television show "Suits" arrives at: she shows up (in a $2000-a-month weave, from the looks of it) looking like it's a cocktail party at 10 in the morning. Bare shoulders, gleaming short skirts. There is no possible way an actual law firm would have room for that!! Ah, television.
I have a friend who's unfortunate to be in Washington DC, where such trends seem to be amplified (and the most prominent African-American women are exclusively straightened/relaxed/woven), but simultaneously quite fortunate to be in academia, where, at least it seems to me, such trends have less power. Is that my imagination? A law professor, for instance, is almost expected to have a closely-cropped afro with a little grey. Certainly if there were one cast in a movie that's what she'd look like.
Hm. Not quite the right picture.
Much more like it. There, you see?
What if my law professor friend showed up at Howard one morning in one of Nicki Minaj's fauvist cotton-candy fantasias?
Something tells me it would be difficult for some students and professors (and administrators) to take her seriously. —ah! "take seriously." That hits on it, right? Here we are in 2013, and we're still very much in the world Anne Hollander described in saying men have an abundance of opportunity to be sexy and serious at the same time (witness our president in a slamming suit), but almost no such opportunity for women. They can be serious (Hillary Clinton in a sober suit with just that much feminine touch) or they can be sexy (Hillary Clinton in a sequined ball gown at an inauguration), but it's just about impossible to be both.
Vexing. Michelle Obama, also with a law degree and career, very significantly chooses sexy/unserious nearly 100 percent of the time — a modern-day Jackie Kennedy — and who's complaining? She's fantastic, especially compared to the choice of her predecessor, the very beautiful Laura Bush, who chose the Bush family route of unsexy/unserious in her prim matronly grandma outfits.
I'm always amused at the solution the boss character in the television show "Suits" arrives at: she shows up (in a $2000-a-month weave, from the looks of it) looking like it's a cocktail party at 10 in the morning. Bare shoulders, gleaming short skirts. There is no possible way an actual law firm would have room for that!! Ah, television.
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