Hair Tells A Story Hers Yours And Ours – Margo Maine

Before long, this proud and happy little soul had started a haircut club, initiating a movement toward shorter hair among her preschool peers! Denise’s conscious ­hair-raising will serve Elizabeth well in life. Dianna, an accomplished woman in her early 30s and a ­first-time mother of a baby girl, has also committed to what I describe as conscious ­hair-raising. Her earliest memories are of Saturday mornings when she was four or five when conflicts about her natural hair began to blossom. Her mother would wash her hair, then braid it when it was wet.

If it was allowed to air dry, a comb would never penetrate that thick, nappy texture. All she remembers is heat and pain to get her hair straight: hot combs on the stove and grease that would burn her scalp, in a ­mother- daughter ritual fraught with the literal pain of a burning scalp.

She is determined to never “relax” her baby’s hair and instead to learn how to work with her natural curl. Dianna sees the African American community of women as still caught up in ­self-hatred about skin tone and hair and desperately wants to protect her daughter from this. As a young mother, she constantly hears the conversations about little girls’ hair that start off with “What are we going to do with her hair?” After years of insecurities related to her hair and resentment of the time and expense of trying to manage it, Dianna has answered that question: “I was always deathly afraid of having a daughter.

I didn’t know what kind of hair she would have and knew it would take so much time to learn how to bring out the beauty of kinky hair. I don’t want to pass along my ­self-hatred. She’s still an infant but I have vowed to never straighten her hair. I’m going to let her love it, instead of believing there is something wrong with it.”

Dianna is determined to love her daughter’s natural hair so that her daughter will love it too. She does not have to hand down the tradition she knew as a child. Instead, she can give the love and care she received without the tensions and insecurities about hair that came with those ­- mother-daughter rituals.

Fathers: An Afterthought or More? Whenever women talk about their hair, mothers figure prominently— they really are on ­center-stage in these conversations. Fathers are at best an afterthought if they are mentioned at all.

Library of Congress and British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number 2022056386 © 2023 Margo Maine. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover images © Nadia Grapes/Shutterstock Printed in the United States of America Toplight is an imprint of McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.toplightbooks.com OceanofPDF.com Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Hair Matters: Untangling the Universal and Unique 1 Every Woman’s Issue 2 Women and Hair: A ­Love-Hate Story History: The Roots of the Past 3 It’s Never Just Hair 4 Hair Throughout History 5 Hair, Sexuality and Gender Politics 6 Hair Economics Hair Stories: The Realities of Hair Today 7 Hair and Me 8 Our Mothers: Our Hair 9 “Hair doesn’t get fat”: Hair and Body Image 10 Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow 11 What’s Age Got to Do with It?

12 Tangles, Snarls and Transitions 13 “Good hair”: The Dilemma of ­Non-White Hair in a ­White-Powered Culture 14 From the Roots to the CROWN 15 Hairapy or Therapy? Stylists as Essential Workers Conclusion: Connection, Connection, Connection Appendix: Questions and Exercises Bibliography Index of Terms OceanofPDF.com Acknowledgments First, I must acknowledge that I am one very lucky soul to have had the support system I needed to write this book. Yes, “it takes a village” and I have been blessed with a special village my whole life.

My family— especially my parents—lived a life of integrity, perseverance, and hard work: caring for others and making the world a better place were both spoken and unspoken values. What a great beginning. Over the years, I have enjoyed amazing friends and colleagues, always sticking by my side throughout professional challenges and surviving the eight books I have written. I especially want to thank Carol Dohanyos, Lin Druschel, and Beth McGilley, longtime friends who have been living this dream since I started thinking about hair back in the first Obama administration.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 57bf643b0e0eb0ed
• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9781476688619, 9781476647975
• Pages: 215
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 321.51 minutes
• Total Words: 64,303
• Total Characters: 388,579
• Average Words per Page: 299.08
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