Curly
Today I participated in the traditional Saturday encounter for the black woman: sitting in the beauty salon. Now granted, since I gave up straightening and perming my hair I have spent much less time in this type of endeavor that I did before. Yet today I didn’t have my regular stylist since she was out sick and we did something different to my hair, so I got to spend 4 hours in the salon.
Beauty/hair salons are funny places. They still are one of the last great racial divides. Whites and other straight/wavy hair types go to white salons and sistas go to sista salons. The hair is different. The products are different. The hair processes are different. Ergo the divide.
I remember once in college I called Glamour Magazine to find out where I should go in New York to get my hair cut and styled. I was referred to Bumble & Bumble. “Ask for the owner,” I was admonished. So I made an appointment with the owner.
A week or so later, I take the train down from New Haven and navigate my way to the salon. I let the chick at the desk know who I was and she had me go to the changing room. As I was in there, I heard a lot of whispering. Being naturally paranoid, I wondered if my presence had caused some sort of problem. Well it had, but not in the way I thought.
After a bit a woman comes to me and explains that unfortunately the owner doesn’t have great success in styling black hair. “He doesn’t get it to pouf like it should,” she explained. I didn’t know that black hair was supposed to be poufy. She suggested that I return next week when their black hair stylist returns from Hawaii. (As I discovered, these salons generally have a black hair stylist for the lone Negroes who wander into the salon. I told you…the great divide.) I then explained to said woman that I came down on the train from New Haven and would not be able to return the next week. More conferencing ensued. Then another woman came to me and explained that she had worked with black hair before and offered to be my stylist. She did a decent job though she did things that no black stylist I’ve had would ever do, like cutting the hair while wet. The whole experience taught me a lot about the great hair divide. Glamour should have sent me to John Atchinson instead.
During my myriad years of wearing a perm, I spent far too many Saturdays sitting in hair salons. It was never a fast process. Perhaps a half hour before you went back to the shampoo bowl to get your hair washed. Then the deep conditioner was put on and you would sit under the dryer for a half hour or so. After that, you had to wait for your stylist to realize that your dryer had stopped and get you back to the shampoo bowl and wash out the conditioner. Next you sat for another hour or so until the stylist would blow dry your hair. If you were lucky, she would blow dry and immediately start with the curling irons, but often more waiting between the drying and the curling and styling.
Don’t let it be touch-up day. That would add another few hours to an already horrifically long day. Perm has to be applied and the hair straightened by fingers or a comb. Then you sit while the lye would eat into the parts of your scalp you had scratched before you came in. The goal was to leave the perm on as long as you could (the hair would be straighter). Fingernails would dig into the armrest and finally the hairdresser would ask if you were ready. The perm would be rinsed off (ah my scalp!), neutralizing shampoo used, and then we went back to the events previously described. It was an all day affair.
Switching from perming my hair to braids was such a relief. Though the time spent in the braiding chair was often greater than a typical salon Saturday, at least you only had to get your hair rebraided every 3 months. And lets not even get to the other benefits of braiding such as being able to get your hair wet, exercise, and not act like the Wicked Witch of the West where a little moisture was concerned.
Now braiding meant switching from a regular black salon to a braiding salon. Here in Philly, this usually meant a lot of West African women spending long hours intricately plaiting your hair. They wanted you to come with your hair clean and dry since generally washing wasn’t part of the service. Just the braiding. But after 5 years of braiding, I moved on to locs.
Locs are a completely different kettle of fish. Finding a loctician is a lot like finding a Chinese restaurant that sells cha su bao. There are a ton of Chinese restaurants, but if you call each one asking about cha su bao, you will find that maybe 5% offer this steamed, raised pork dumpling on their menu. In the world of black hair salons, finding people comfortable with natural (meaning nonstraightened, non chemically treated) hair is a rarity, though it has improved somewhat. You go by word of mouth mostly. I think it is a sad testament to our hair issues that we can find 5 million salons that will throw chemicals in our hair to straighten it, but have to search high and low for someone willing to style hair in its nappy (and happy) state.
I’m glad that I found Duafe. My girl Syretta Scott runs Duafe and the place is a natural sista’s dream. Afrocentric decor, fabulous music, wonderful stylists, and lots and lots of locs. I remember how I met Syretta. I had gone to Duafe a few times but didn’t have her as my stylist. One day I decided to bring my hair products from Carol’s Daughter that my previous loctician used to use. As I took the loc butter and healthy hair butter out of my bag, Syretta looked over and made a beeline for me as if I had brought barbecue pork to a Muslim picnic. “Oh no, my sista,” she began. She explained to me that those products contained beeswax and shea butter that are heavy, make the locs dull, and cause them to attract dirt. She then got books about natural hair care explaining how natural oils were better, etc. And I was like, hey, whatever you think is best. You don’t have to work so hard to convince me. You’re the stylist.
Getting an appointment with Syretta is difficult. With her having clients like Jil Scott, my last minute appointment making ass gets to see her only when I say hi on my way to sit in another stylist’s chair…at least until go through one of my fits of organization and start making appointments well in advance. But that doesn’t happen very often. So today I was supposed to see Thalia, but she was sick, so I had another stylist. I also fell in love with the receptionist’s locs when I walked in. She told me that she had a rod set, something I had never tried. Today I tried it. Now I look like the black Shirley Temple:
I’m told that it will last for 3-4 weeks. We shall see. My styles rarely last 3-4 days.
All in all, it was a decent day at the salon. The music was pumping, the discourse was lively, and the requisite guy selling bootleg purses came in at the end of the day to make my time complete. Yet when one of the brothers decided that I would get pregnant if I just gave up meat and exercised since black women don’t have infertility issues, I knew it was time to go.
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