Don’t Touch My Hair. But Why?
By Ambar Johnson
7 min read
Guestlist. FINGERWAVE SAINT. Art by Shani Crowe
Don’t Touch My Hair. Is not just one of the best songs off of A Seat At The Table.
From fros to rows, it’s something many Black people say out and about while rocking our hair.
There have been countless reports of unwarranted or unsolicited touch of our hair, from airports to schools to work. But it is more than just an invasion and entitlement of personal space, it can be spiritual as well.
“You don’t let just anybody do your hair” is a tenet passed from generation to generation. While mother or grandmother does a child’s hair, this tenet secures loyalty to stylists and kin. Sometimes, equipping the person receiving that message, to 1) learn how to do the bare minimum to have their hair be done, or 2) have a style hold on for months, like for summer camp or a college semester, until it can be done again reaching home.
But why?
Doing hair is incredibly personal. In fact, “there are swaths of the United States became regions where people with Afro-textured hair must travel miles to find a trusted stylist — if they can even find one at all.” In terms of preserving length and the health of your hair, and the effort and maintenance to do so, it’s important to have someone know what they are doing. On average, hair grows at a rate of 1/2inches per month, so to grow a radiant halo around our heads, can take several years to create. With that length is given convenience to partake in cultural styles like locs, cornrows, and more.
Given the time and energy it takes to cultivate our curls, locs, and strands and the cultural and spiritual meaning they have to an individual and community, it’s a risk not worth taking entrusting your strands to hands you don’t know.
When it comes to hair, it’s all about trust, “particularly due to the fragile, sensitive, and emotive relationship that many women have with their hair.” -- London Paper
What my mother and other Black women may consider consciously or subconsciously before choosing a stylist, professional or not, “hair envy” comes to mind. Hair envy is coveting another person’s hair due to texture, length, and or density. When trusting someone with your hair who at best does not understand it, or at worst, wants it for themselves, the chair becomes a hot seat.
Culturally, there are two types of stylists: those who have “growing hands'' and those who are “scissor happy.”
While those in the former are in the realm of cultivating and sustaining growth, with you and your hair’s best interest in mind, the latter who are of the spirit of coveting their locs, except for those who are misnamed as being scissor happy by clients who desperately want to hold on to split ends for the sake of length. Knowing there are those who have “growing hands” or who are “scissor happy” is a deep diasporic spiritual and cultural connection.
Though hair can be seen as something to covet for aesthetic purposes, even the process of removing all hair from the scalp is a sign of rebirth.
But what happens to the hair after it hits the floor, is deeply important to know what will that hair do in the wrong hands.
In the Hoodoo tradition, hair is not to be left around. Even proper discarding is necessary. It is important to not just throw hair away, but to burn it. Hair could be used in root work, the practice of using spiritual and natural means to have power over a person or situation. In Michele Lee’s, “Workin the Roots” she records a story by a North Carolina resident about how hair in the wrong hands could influence someone’s behavior: “After she got better, we took her to another root doctor to get the spell off. The women tol’ her, “whoever done dis, dey got yo mother’s hair.“ (Granger, 2004 pg. 342).
In fact, in Black and/or indigenous communities, it is custom to burn the hair after cutting to prevent spiritual attack.
In the 1930s the Georgia’s Writer’s Project set out to capture oral narratives of African Americans who lived along the coast and islands of Georgia, called Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes. Those who were interviewed were direct descendants of Africans captured from slavery, or those who were previously enslaved, with some who could recall their lives living on the Continent. In the book, discussions of African tradition and heritage of conjure, rootwork, hoodoo, and spirits are most prevalent, with stories of conjure and hair at the forefront:
Sophie Davis, oldest person in her community of white bluff sais, nebuh let a enemy git any yb yuh haiah wut been cut off...ef he git deze he kin make sumpn dat will cause alot of trouble . i kin tell yuh sumpm else bout duh haiah too. Ef a bud gits duh haiah, yuh’ll hab a headache soon” (Granger., 2004 pg. 342).
”Duh haiah is one uh duh mos powful tings yuh enemy kin git hole ub cuz it grow neah duh brain an a han made outuh haiah kin sho affec duh brain,” says James Washington” (Granger, 2004 pg. 39).
Despite aesthetics, spiritual significance, or superstition, it’s important to recognize that it’s an honor to trust and be trusted to do someone’s hair. Perhaps this history of conjure within our culture is why it’s important to stay away from people who are too happy to cut off our hair. One can only speculate. However, given our hair is the highest point of our bodies, it seems appropriate that without consent, the only thing allowed to touch our “crown and glory” is the sun.
Who are stylists you know who have growing hands? Share them in the comments below!
Check out these amazing styles done by Shani Crowe for Solange.
BET. Shani Crowe braids for Solange.
References
Mary Granger, Joyner, C., Bell, M., & Bell, M. (Eds.). (2004). Drums and shadows: Survival studies among the Georgia coastal negroes (Nachdr.). Univ. of Georgia Press.
Ambar Johson is an urban and transportation planner and digital storyteller writing from New England. Her writing focuses on Diasporic connections between the importance of health, ritual, hair, and spirituality. Her writing secret? She delicately dissects something that connects us all - how we get around.