In Medium:
I remember the moment when I first cut off my shoulder-length, chemically straightened hair to reveal the burgeoning Afro underneath. I was 20 years old and terrified. Would I still be beautiful? How would I answer my Ethiopian family’s inevitable and repeated reproaches? These were the worries in my head as the scissors snipped. The personal is indeed political, and the Afro demonstrates just how true that is.
The music video for Meklit Hadero’s reimagining of Kemekem, an Ethiopian paean to the perfect Afro. The human body has always been a palette of meaning. Fashion and style flash identity outwards, telling others about status, belief systems, politics, and cultural affinities. Hair is a canvas upon which these questions play. In many African and African diaspora communities, straight hair is often called “good hair” and kinky hair its opposite. Intense pressures, easily internalized, urge young black women to conform to mainstream standards of beauty. Multi-million dollar industries then grow up around these concepts, manipulating questions of self-worth and identity. It’s a complicated business indeed...[continue reading]