This week, we are reading Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman and watching Chris Rock's Good Hair. In both of these works, we see connections to the ways that the hair and skin color of African Americans can be read as important facets of
identity negotiation. African Americans relationship to their skin color and hair texture has a direct correlation to how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived by dominant society. In Yellowman skin color is the basis for intraracial tension. Alma and Eugene must negotiate their relationship within social constraints that they inherit from their families based on the color of their skin. In Chris Rock's Good Hair , we see Black women of all skin colors discuss their hair as a site of oppression and empowerment.
As you blog on the key themes of Hair and Color Politics, think about the ways that Alma and Eugene identify with their hair and skin color as living parts of their identities? What opportunities are enabled or foreclosed by their skin color and/or hair texture? How are the characters defined by their skin color and the social and cultural stigmas and/or entitlement associated with them? How do you understand hair and skin color as representing "political" identifications?
The issue of hair and color politics within the African American community has been an on-going debate, especially within popular culture today. In Dael Orlandersmith's play, Yellowman, she focuses on delivering this message between her characters Alma and Eugene. Alma states, “They always have light skinned girls with them-these girls with long swinging hair that they-the light skinned boys-play with” (Orlandersmith18). The jealously of Alma comes in her tone of voice, where the guys were giving the light-skinned girls with “good hair” more attention. In Lecture we learned, “Black men/women with lighter skin and straighter hair are still perceived by dominant society as more acceptable than darker skin blacks with coarser hair” (NHP Lecture 4/6/10). The culture in today’s society has proven this concept to be true, that beauty is defined by the social standard. To hit more on this idea, the famous Chris Rock (Actor/Producer/Writer/Director) starred in the documentary, Good Hair, which surrounds the question of what is considered “good hair” in current society. Actors in the film discuss their own experience with the chemical, relaxer, and how it disrupts the hair, but conforms it to the “beautiful” straight way. It’s all about conforming to the social normative. Summit Entertainment is releasing Step Up 3-D in August of this year. Films are tumbling in a downward spiral, one after the other following the lead of 3-D, mostly due to its tremendous success with the film, Avatar. This is all due to 3-D becoming the normative, just as straight hair and light skin is what the big businesses think is the definition of “beauty”. Orlandersmith brought forth this concept of popular conformity, trying to show readers the political standards of hair and skin preferences. It’s all political, and our society is trying to paint in our minds what good hair vs. bad hair is. People are conforming, such as those mothers on the Tyra Banks Show, discussing their own hair politics. But the politics still remain, making us (consumers), the left-over guinea pigs of the big brother businesses that chose to give us the want, but not necessarily the need.
ReplyDeleteI was in absolute shock after I watched Chris Rock’s Good Hair. I was so unaware of what went into maintaining a weave (cost and physical maintenance), the dangerous and violent reactions from hair relaxer and the age of the girls who start using relaxer. Not only do the weaves start at one thousand dollars, but the documentary enlightens the viewers on how it affects relationships between black men and women. Black men feel pressured to finance their woman’s hair, and if the woman is single it’s possible that she would forego paying rent in order to have a new weave. This is an awful (yet poignant) example of the pressure women feel to have a certain look in order to be accepted in society. This is in direct correlation to one of the themes in Yellowman, “hair as an indication of class and education status” (THR 327 lecture 4/6/10). Eugene, who was lighter skinned than Alma, had less “ethnic” hair and was thus looked at differently. Alma had the hair of a natural black woman and she was thought of as inferior to Eugene because “black men and women with lighter skin and straighter her are still perceived by dominant society as more acceptable than darker skinned blacks with coarser hair” (THR 327 lecture 4/6/10). Something that was out of their control affected the relationship so much just as the men and women in Good Hair. So much so, that they are willing to put themselves in financial trouble and cause possible permanent damage to their skin and that of their children. That puts an ugly pot mark on society that we are unable to get rid of.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Dael Orlandersmith's play Yellowman, it saddens me that Alma is experiencing the same ignorance due to the societal believe that the lighter-skinned girls with straight hair is a more desirable than the more natural look of a darker skinned woman. In Lecture we viewed in my opinion a disturbing example of how lighter skinned and straighter hair are more desired than darker skin and hair that may not be as straight (NHP Lecture 4/6/10). Unfortunately, some of the mothers on the Tyra Banks show do not understand the long term damage they are doing to their little princesses, by putting perm after perm in their hair and not allowing them to wear their hair naturally. Instead of spending dollar after dollar on perms to make the hair straight, maybe they should spend more time teaching the children at a young age that their hair is going to be a little different than the other kids. It upsets me that society has constructed this believe that lighter skin and hair is the definition of beauty. This believe alone can damage more than the hair of several people due to the harmful chemicals in perms, but also the morale of the people who try to fit themselves within this sphere of beauty. On the other hand, Orlandersmith writes a great play of how lighter skinned woman may get more of the positive attention as the darker skinned woman are as some say “put on the back-burner” as Alma doesn't receive as much attention as Eugene due her skin color and hair. In Lecture we talked abut how lighter skinned individuals receive more opportunities than those of darker complexion (NHP Lecture 4/6/10). We can date this all the way when light-skinned slaves were allowed to work in the homes of their masters and dark skinned slaves we only allowed to work as field hands. Today, people who are light skinned are still provided better opportunities in advertisement, music videos, and etc. People today see “nappy” hair as a sign of poverty or uncleanliness but what the need to understand that it is a representation of something that is as close to authentic as possible.
ReplyDeleteThrough-out this week’s reading of Yellowman it is apparent that racism among the black race is still a large problem today. Whether it is the assumptions made about dark skinned blacks being lower class, light-skinned blacks being stuck up or the combination of both, the effects are still toxic to the person. As we see in Yellowman, both characters Eugene and Alma are affected by the comments that others say about their skin and body. Alma’s mother says “It don’t look nice for a girl to be runnin’- especially cause ya so big…runnin in dis heat, ya don’t wanna git black” (16, Orlandersmith). On the opposite end of the spectrum, Eugene’s father says “You pretty yella niggas don’t know nuthin- easy street niggas ain’t struggled for nuthin” (65). No matter which shade of black they are, African Americans are criticized by their own race as well as other races. I believe these intra-racial connotations stem from slavery. Because the darker skinned African American slaved often worked in the field and the lighter skinned worked in the house, the idea of lighter skin being a higher status was set from the 1800’s. Unfortunately this legacy has carried over to the beauty standards of today. As we discussed in class “the darker the skin, the less beautiful you are, the lighter the more beautiful” (Lecture, April 4).
ReplyDeleteIn Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith the issues of hair and skin politics are major themes throughout the play. Within the African-American community skin tone and hair texture seem to be something everyone deals with at some point in their lives. Some African-Americans are forced to deal with this “problem” at a young age like the girls we saw on the Tyra Banks show. In Chris Rock’s “Hair”, we as the audience are exposed to some intense subject matter though it may not seem that way. The idea that people must put themselves through extreme pain to fix their hair is quite unreal to me. In regards to skin tone issues we see in Yellowman the struggle between Alma and Eugene and how they appear to the world. Certain intra-racial tensions occur as elders to both Eugene and Alma express their opinions to the girls, “Don’t you know them darkassed Geechies think we’re punks-FAGGOTS because we’re light?” (Orlandersmith 36). This quote is from Grandfather which shows how serious the skin tone issue truly is. Generation after generation of blacks struggle to be happy with their hair and skin color but old ways of thought put a stop on moving forward.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I am appalled at some of the things I witnessed in the movie “Good Hair.” Selling hair that is given homage to a deity that another person wears on their head bothers me. Also children as young as 3 years old are getting perms to fit into the socially acculturated atmosphere. I believe they themselves still do not fell adequate enough. On the cover of BlogSpot the little girl mentioned that getting a perm was not good enough because her hair was short. Whether your hair is short, long, wavy, curly, straight, it seems like each one carries an identity or ideology transfixed on that particular individual. Politics come into play because someone or something has set an imaginary benchmark or rule that one has to be like or achieve to be accepted as beautiful. African Americans now are trying to get in where they fit by changing their styles of hair as a pragmatic way embody the cultural norm. Why one may ask? I believe beauty has been twisted and revised by the ones who establish this norm whoever that may be. Do we blame society and the direction it is going that perpetuate what is beautiful. Do we blame the people persuaded and manipulated to follow the yellow brick road of acceptance? In my opinion whether you are African American, white, Asian, Hispanic, Latino one will do what it take to achieve their idea of beauty no matter where it manifested from
ReplyDeleteGood Hair was a great visual example of the money, effort, and pain that goes into the idea of what good hair is and how it defines African Americans. This documentary brought up the question from lecture as to whether or not this was blacks trying to assimilate into white culture through the aspect of hair, or if it is simply the ever present struggle for women of all cultures to always try to “improve their looks.” Along Yellowman it’s easy to see the ideas of class and social disparities in both the film and the play, when basing it off the idea of light skin and “good hair” being preferred in black culture over darker skin and more textured hair.
ReplyDeleteYellowman follows a group of African Americans of varying darkness, texture, and size, and how appearance plays an important role in their lives, especially that of Gene and Alma. “How do I look against these sheets-how fat, black and ugly do I look…” (55) Alma repeats to herself through her voice and her mother’s who blames Alma’s dark skin and textured hair as her curse, and as Alma’s curse in life. In the beginning Alma constantly is comparing herself as worse to Gene and lighter black women with lighter traits, but slowly learns to love her beauty and her body. By removing herself from those that made her believe that lighter traits were better, Alma was able to defend her blackness as beauty and not as a curse.
It is amazing to be brought to my past, present, and future within a time frame of few acts and scenes is sometimes incomprehensible, however this has happened for me with Dael Orlandersmith’s play Yellowman. My past was exhumed with Olandersmith’s play. I was born into a family with a very light skinned mother and a dark skinned father.
ReplyDeleteThey produced two dark skinned children and my eldest brother whom is very light to the point that he was called “yellow dog”. I was called “mutt” because I had the features of my African-French mother and the coloring of my Negroid father, until the past ten years, where I have become more of my father’s descendent. This change has infuriated and confused my mother. On one of our last meetings in January she stated while applying a texturizer to my hair, “ I do not know where you got this hair from, it must have been from your father, because it was not from my side of the family.” It is this frustration from my eighty year old mother that forced me to realize the state I was in, because the only reason I was putting a chemical in my hair was because I was cast in a show and felt that I needed to maintain the hair politics that got me into the show. Whether I would have been cast with my natural hair that I had worn for twenty years I will never know, however the fact that I felt that I needed to process it to be considered is revealing. The stigma that is attached to being of darker skin is damaging. This is portrayed in one of the many points in Yellowman with the relationship of Eugene and his first male friend Alton. Eugene and Alton yearn to write comic books together, however when Eugene goes to Alton’s home, comic books in hand, Alton’s mother berates him, “ You come heah to see how po’ we is so you can go back to dat yella momma o’ yourn an pitch-black nigga daddy o’ yourn an laugh’ bout how me and my boy does live.” I was not allowed to play with children that had darker skin unless they resembled our class status. My mother made this very clear, and just as Eugene and Alton were not able to nurture their relationship, I wonder how many friends could have been a part of my life were it not for color politics.
After viewing Good Hair several aspects immediately stood out to me. The idea of “good hair”, which essentially meaning white hair, but in actuality being hopefully Indian hair, or anything but black hair. This idea of needing change, or more so having something wrong with what you are, was enforced in the mind of girls as young as three. The oppression is furthered through the price of such hair pieces running thousands of dollars, apparently targeted at the elite of society, but this is not always the case. The issue has regressed to a point where the answer to pay the electric bill or get my hair done this week is not so clear. I also think this creates another interesting phenomenon from a relationship standpoint. In hip-hop we talked about the reputation of women as gold diggers , or being interested in men for money. Good Hair discusses the issues of your man paying for your hair, something most women interviewed said was a must. Men spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on someones hair does not go a long way to argue this reputation, a man must have means. Skin color and seeming “hair quality” has become yet another tool of separation. Yet if someone if ever accepted as ‘white’ into society it opens them to a new world of scrutiny as skin and hair issues are not isolated to the African American community. As a white college student you face pressure not to be too white or pasty, creating the interesting reverse phenomenon of tanning, or white people trying to be darker. As the black community for some reason shuns the ‘african’ looking skin, white society shuns those without that healthy I-just-went-on-vacation-somewhere-warm glow. My personal hair, is often kept buzzed these days because it becomes ‘too straight’ and will not sit down once it reaches a certain (short) length making it unmanageable in anything but the simplest styles. As the most apparent surface level divisions between all people, but specifically races, skin and hair issues are bound to continue within all aspects of modern society.
ReplyDeleteYellowman by Dael Orlandersmith contains a lot of intra-racial tensions within with African American community. The idea that lighter skinned African Americans are somehow better and more beautiful than the darker skinned African Americans was a prevalent idea in the show. When Odelia is telling Alma what type of man she should marry she says, “An when ya grow up, ya should marry a man just like dat Gaines boy, dat purty yella boy. Don’t you marry nobody like Alton-darkass like Alton- ole funny lookin’ nigga- dat boy is BLACK-BLACK and UGLY.” (Yellowman, 16). This is showing how within the African American community their standards of ‘high class’ and beautiful are based off of how dark their skin is. Alma even states “I don’t wanna be dark an big- make me pretty God- make me pretty.” (Yellowman, 22). Through the show you see Alma try and transform into a ‘lighter version’ of herself. In order to fit in with societies ideas of beauty she begins to get her “hair straightened and buy makeup.” (Yellowman, 32). She puts this chemical in her hair to straighten it that can cause serious health problems. Some of the health problems that it can cause is baldness if you leave it in too long, blindness if you get it in your eyes, lung damage from the fumes, chemical burns, etc. (Good Hair). In Chris Rock’s Good Hair they show the chemical eating through a pop can after about four hours. (Good Hair). In the play there is not only a mental line between the lighter skinned African Americans and the darker skinned African Americans but there is also a physical line. The lighter skinned African Americans live in town with running water and live a middle class life, whereas the darker skinned African Americans live out of town without running water and in a more impoverished state. There are many other examples of Intra-racial tensions within the play, these are just a few that stood out to me.
ReplyDeleteEarly in the semester we discussed the idea of intersectionality (lecture 1/21). Intersectionality, broadly defined is the acknowledgement that while various strands of identity markers such as race, class, and gender are separate social constructions it is in their confluence that identity is shaped both internally and externally by society. Both Orlandersmith and Rock create works of art that interrogate the issues of race and gender, consequently bringing forward intersectionality and black women once more. In Yellowman we meet Alma whose sense of self-worth is severely warped by the internalized racism and self-loathing she inherits from her mother, Odelia. Alma is not allowed to play with other dark-skinned black children—BUT as a dark-skinned black girl the social strictures against her playing with her dark-skinned friend Alton become even more intense as Odelia attempts to shape her daughter’s life ranging from her childhood friends to her possible future husbands. Many of the skin color divisions within the African American community stem from self-imposed policing and separation (lecture 4/6). Orlandersmith dramatizes this reality of intra-racial division when Alma attempts to confront her mother about her self-imposed racist restrictions asking,“Yeah, but you dark;” Odelia replies: “Dat’s why I know what I’m sayin’—I dark, fat, black, an ugly—Goan outside an play!” (Orlandersmith16). Odelia as a character is easy to despise in Orlandersmith’s story, but as we watch the characters develop in the play we are forced to confront the fact that Odelia like her daughter and even Eugene’s light-skinned mother, Thelma, is faced with multiple systems of oppression and that it is from the reality of being a black woman in a white masculine world that creates the hate she lives with and in turn inflicts upon her daughter. Alma becomes, like the actress Gabourey Sidibe (discussion 4/6), a person who as a dark, short, large, black woman confounds society in the very confrontation of racist and sexist beauty standards that her body physically manifests. The intersectionality of Alma like Gabourey can be reviled or hated, but may also be a site of subversive empowerment and strength in contemporary society, physically echoing the question Alma asks us in Yellowman: “How do you explain a new walk?” (Orlandersmith 50).
ReplyDeleteIn the African American community hair is a very big deal, and Dael Orlandersmith’s play Yellowman is just one story on the popular topic of black folks and their hair. In the story and in our society it is evident what the key element of this issue is based off, the parents. Eugene’s father is the foundation of which their thoughts and beliefs are developed from. Eugene’s father is darker than he is and he’s is often referred to as yellow because of his fair complexion, and you feel the tension between the two men. We seen the same thing in class when we watched the Tyra clip, the parents were the ones instilling these beliefs about what hair should look like, and how your hair defines a person; pertaining to class and how people pass judgment on first sight. Nappy hair being seen as low class and straight hair as being seen as quality and more upscale. You would rarely see a black woman go to a job interview with her in its natural state or in an air fro, because like it or not society doesn’t side with that particular look and black women know that. Therefore, I feel it’s partly influenced by us black people how we view our hair and what it represents and how it makes us feel, and society also plays a big role in judging a book by its cover. This is why as seen in Chris Rock’s “Good Hair” the black women put so much time and effort in getting their hair straightened and relaxed, to obtain that upscale/respectable look in their approach to everyday life.
ReplyDeleteI found yellow man a very interesting play. It just so happened that I saw an episode of Tyra the other day and the show was about black women wanting their skin to be lighter. These women on the show talked about how they would go through drastic measures to make their skin a lighter tone, just so they can feel more beautiful. One even went so far as to pour bleach, the bleach we put in our laundry, on a hot towel and rub it all over her face. Although, Alma would never go to this extreme, this did remind me of her, especially when she said "I don’t wanna be dark an big- make me pretty God- make me pretty” (Yellowman, 22). These were the kind of statements the ladies on Tyra was talking about. As you can see, this kind of thinking is still happening in today's society. As well as, the judgment of what class you are in depending on how you wear your hair.
ReplyDeleteBeing a black woman myself, my hair is very important to me. As long as I can remember it has always been something I have cared about and wanted to pay extra attention to. After looking at Chris Rock’s movie it kind of made me feel like sometimes the things ladies do to make their hair look good is a little too much. In Yellowman you see how racist blacks can be toward other blacks because how light one’s skin can be. From my own experience being in grade school the lighter skinned blacks would be called house niggas and the darker skinned would be called field niggas, but for ones that we felt where extremely darker than others they were called straight off the boat niggas. These saying went on until I graduated and even though we said it as a joke then, I see now as I have grown that blacks of lighter and darker skin had built up animosity for each other since slavery and even after, when blacks started to try and find jobs it was easier if you had lighter skin. Even in the play you see Eugene struggle with the fact as a child that he cannot hang out with the people he really wants to because of their darker skin tone. Just like in the play, light skinned blacks to should superior because their skin is closer to whites who have the ultimate power. Even still in today’s society when people see someone of lighter skin they automatically are beautiful and have beautiful hair, which is not always the case but because of their skin they get this identity. When you have little kids they do not like their own self because of hair and skin color it is then time for the parents to wake up and not be naïve and to make sure each child is comfortable and feels beauty in their own skin.
ReplyDeleteIn Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman, it was very apparent that light skinned and dark skinned African Americans were treated very differently by others and viewed themselves as different than one another. One scene in the play that really stuck out for me was when Eugene goes to meet his grandfather for the first time. Sadly, it seems the grandfather had no desire to meet Eugene until Eugene’s mother sent him a picture and the grandfather saw that he was light skinned. That just breaks my heart because he wanted nothing to do with his own grandson if he was too dark. The grandfather also disowned Eugene’s mother because she chose to marry a dark skinned man. That is just ridiculous to me and it truly makes me sad and appalled. When Eugene meets his grandfather, a passage really stuck out in my mind. The grandfather tells Eugene “If you wanna mess with something dark that’s fine but DON’T MARRY NOTHIN’ DARK.” Eugene replies “Well, sir I don’t really see it that way. Light or dark-it makes no difference to me” (pg 36). The different generations feel completely opposite about the relationships between light and dark skinned people. Unfortunately, by both Eugene and Alma hearing insults about light vs dark skinned African Americans their entire lives, they are forever affected by it and Eugene winds up in prison for standing up against his father’s views. It also hits home for me because my grandmother had told me after giving birth to my son, who is part black, white and Native American, that I should be glad he is light so the family would accept him. It still makes me cry to think about.
ReplyDeleteBeing a biracial male this issue in America has been directed towards me for a while. While growing up with a little sister that had long black hair we were both always told by other African American’s that we acted better than everyone else and didn’t know how it felt to be black. After watching that clip in class on the Tara Show I did not know that people were going to such extremes just for their children to have good hair just because they believe that people with good hair get treated better and have advantages in life. In my own personal experience being light skin with straight hair other’s always associated me with being a pretty boy and I hated that. For some reason I feel like the play yellow man is talking directly to me and it reminds me of some of the situations I have been in when dealing with skin color. I do believe there is a lot of interracial conflict that goes on in America between light skin and dark skin African American’s. At the end of the day even light skinned African American’s are still black skin color or hair does not have anything to do with how black you are. I hope this issues begins to die down or eventually go away in America but by the look of the video we watched in class it looks like more and more people are putting more importance in hair and skin color.
ReplyDeleteI was completely amazed by what Chris Rock discovered about black hair in his documentary Good Hair. I knew that black women put a lot of time, money, and maintenance into their hair, but what he showed took hair care to a different level. When Rock investigated relaxers, he learned that women wanted to have flowing and longer hair much like white women like Farrah Faucet or bi-racial/lighter skinned women. If you had long flowing hair then you have good hair, according to these women. We learned in Good Hair, as long as on the Tyra Show and in Yellow man, that this assumption of good hair begins in childhood. On the Tyra show girls said that they preferred wigs with hair like Hannah Montana rather than an afro wig because they felt ugly with nappy hair. In Yellowman, when Alma was a teenager she showed envy to the lighter skinned girls who had long hair because she had nappy hair. “The girls are always running their hands through, thinking they’re so cute, throwing their heads back to get the hair out their faces…they throw their heads just to show how long their hair is, just for show, (Yellowman 26). I was also amazed in Good Hair how Chris Rock showed that black women of all shades have insecurities about their hair and will alter it in some way if they don’t like it in its natural form. For example Nia Long, a darker skinned woman had the same reasons for putting weave in her hair just as Raven Symone and Lauren London, two lighter skinned women. Some would think that Raven and Lauren don’t have weave or get perms because they are lighter skinned but in the film both confessed.
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