One Swim Cap Please

Hello all, welcome back to the continuation of my autoethnography! This story picks up from my last post so if you need to refresh your memory, please head over to that post. The story I tell here is one that I still hear about to this day, when reading it over and over again I cannot help but to laugh. So please join me in part 2!

I had two best friends in Middle School. We called ourselves the United Nations because I'm black (surprise!), one was white and the other Korean. We hung out most days and weekends. One had a pool that we swam in in the hot months. Every two weeks myself, mom and sister would go and get our hair done. If my hair was not pressed it was in braids or in an awkward in between. The process of getting my hair done was not fun. Sitting in the chair for hours, getting burned by either the hot comb or flat iron, and then having to maintain it for the coming weeks; “for many blacks, memories of early hair-care rituals are unforgettable, for reasons both bad and good” (Byrd 131). This maintenance included wrapping my hair every night. I never saw a problem with this until I had to whip out my scarves at sleepovers. Once again the questions poured in and I had little answers. I did not know why I could not just sleep like everyone else and wake up with straight hair. So when girls would ask me I said my mom made me. This answer was clearly not sufficient enough because they asked at every sleepover. A moment that I distinctly remember is when I was at my friend's house with a pool and she asked if we wanted to swim. I got nervous because my mom just did my hair; the first time I had to explain my hair to my non white friends is

an unforgettable memory for me and many other black women (Byrd 136). Clearly if I did not have a bathing suit with me that is a good enough reason to not be able to swim right? Wrong. My friend had one that I could wear, feeling comfortable enough to say yes to the bathing suit I assumed that explaining why I could not fully get in the water with them would be sufficient. Her mom asked if I was going to get in the water, I answered yes but said I could not get my hair wet because I did not want ghetto hair. They all laughed, I laughed along and was relieved because they all understood that I could not get my hair wet. As my mother came to pick me up, everyone was just so amused by my joke that they wanted to let my mom in on the fun. When they told her the joke she did a shocked chuckle and said “really Shelby?” I was confused as to why she wasn’t as amused as everyone else. Perhaps she didn’t hear it in the tone I delivered it in so I decided to repeat myself. She immediately shut me down and proclaimed that we were going home. In the car ride she asked why I thought that was an appropriate thing to say. I told her that it was just a joke. She sadly asked me if I thought my natural hair was ghetto. I lied and told her obviously not but I thought that would get my point across the best. My answer did not seem to satisfy her and I felt bad for the rest of the night. Melissa Harris Perry emphasizes the idea of shame within the black community, “personal shame brings a physical desire to hide and flee,” (Harris Perry 120) this was my first attempt at my friend's house but instead I resorted to channeling my feelings through a joke. This did not work either. It’s actually ironic that I felt this shame with my best friends, two friends whom we called ourselves the United Nations because we were made of different races; “America was built on the myth of the melting pot, but despite the efforts of the powers that be, the ingredients never fully blended” (Byrd 128). The environment in Michigan was very oppressive of my blackness. I internalized what others were saying, the ways I coped with it as a form of reclamation but I cannot reclaim something I do not understand.

Childhood memory can very well be skewed by later experiences; but it did not feel as though I was ever surrounded by black women who seemed to value their natural hair. Sure we never had a perm but it was still always straight. Before I was able to participate in having straight hair, I consistently had braids. Many of which my mother did herself. I hoped every time that when she sat me down it would be time to have it straight just like her or my older sister. She often told me that wearing my hair straight would make me look too grown, “before we reach the appropriate age we wear braids, a symbol of our innocence, youth and childhood” (hooks 1989). I desired to be like the other women around me, they did not wear braids, and if their hair was straight it was flowing, no kink. Thus when my classmates would question my various hairstyles, in the back of my mind I thought to myself that I just wanted the hair of my mother. The relationship between white supremacy and our obsession with hair is so strong that it took years for me to realize these desires were internalized oppressions (hooks 1989). My feelings of confusion concerning my hair easily date to the areas that I have lived in throughout my life.