The Root of It All: 'Good Hair'

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FOR AS LONG as I have been self-aware, I've had a love/hate relationship (heavy on the hate) with my hair.

Look at pictures of me as a child, and there it is: Phenomenally frizzy, waist-length, black corkscrew curls that were impossible to comb and far too easy to tangle. The kind of hair that overwhelmed me — and anyone else standing next too close to me — in school portraits. The sort that got caught in the zipper of my jacket (before school one morning) or my nicest velvet dress (before a big family party). Or, in my proudest moment, the hair that dipped into the hot fudge bowl at Sizzler's ice cream buffet, making the restaurant's employees roll their eyes in frustration while they cleaned the whole line and causing my mom to practically buzz of all my locks to get the chocolate out.

Needless to say, going through third-grade with a boy's haircut and Coke bottle glasses was pretty rough.

But as harrowing as my adventures with hair have been — and, at 22, I hope my worst days are behind me —- my current cut (shoulder-length, with some bang action) is pretty low-maintenance. The corkscrew curls disappeared as I grew up, and though my hair is still really thick, I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on upkeep, dye it regularly or straighten it. I wash it, (sometimes) I brush it, and I go. No worries necessary.

For black women, though, it's an entirely different story — one that Chris Rock explores with charming insight in his latest documentary, "Good Hair." Inspired by his daughters Zahra and Lola — especially the latter, who he says asked him one day, "How come I don't have good hair?" — Rock tries to get to the bottom of the black community's relationship with their hair and its related products. From attending the famous Bronner Brothers hair show in Atlanta to chatting up salons and barbershops in Harlem to even trekking to India, Rock attempts to fully understand the black hair industry, why women spend so much on it and what "good hair" really means — both in the literal and figurative sense.

And Rock doesn't go it alone - much of the documentary includes the comedian talking to various celebrities and notable figures in the black community (such as Maya Angelou, the Rev. Al Sharpton, actress Nia Long, rapper Ice-T and model Melyssa Ford) about their experiences with their hair and why it's such an important part of both how they —- and others — view them. For example, when Ford (who is sporting a chic, long ponytail that she later admits is a weave) describes her European mother's silky blonde hair and bluntly says, "That is what I looked at as good hair: White hair," you get a solid introduction to the conflict at the heart of Rock's film: How much of the community's infatuation with relaxed, shiny, bouncy hair is really an identity crisis of epic proportions — with a $9 billion pricetag?

As a result, some of the best moments of Rock's documentary are those that look at the health hazards and costs associated with the relaxers, weaves and extensions black women use every day. When he travels to North Carolina to visit Dudley Products Inc., one of the world's only black hair care companies actually owned by a black family, Rock is obviously proud of Joe Dudley and Co.'s achievements — including its $35 million chunk of the industry — but shocked by the dangers associated with sodium hydroxide, the main chemical used in lye-based hair relaxers. Though he jokes about how a 7,000-pound vat of the stuff would only "last Prince about a month," Rock sobers up when a drop of the chemical in its purest form burns a hole straight through a chicken breast in minutes and disintegrates an aluminum soda can in four hours.

It's strong stuff, sodium hydroxide — and T-Pain isn't kidding when he muses, "The burn of a perm — I think it's hotter than fire." Ice-T, however, gets much laughter for his hilarious memories of how "really gangsta" guys in high school used to come to school "with rollers in your hair." Impressive.

The film's most interesting part, though, may be when Rock tries to learn more about weaves, the hair extensions that black women sometimes weave (get it?) into their own hair. He's dumbfounded when a salon owner in Harlem matter-of-factly tells him her pieces can cost between $1,000 and $3,500, and even more surprised when he travels to India and learns that most weaves (which are usually so expensive because they are actually human hair) come from the Hindu practice of tonsure, in which people shave their heads about twice a year as an offering to the gods. (He's at a loss for words when watching Indian women take razors to their waist-length locks without a second thought, and for Rock, that thunderstruck silence speaks volumes.) The temples sell the hair; it is sorted, washed, cut and brushed in Indian factories; and eventually shipped to Los Angeles, where men like "transporter" Vijay Gupta wheel about thousands of dollars worth of weaves in small suitcases, selling them to the finest boutiques and hair salons for mad profits.

And that's just the legal side of the Indian hair exporting industry — when Rock speaks to A.L. Kishone Kumar, a "black hair market expert," he's told that those on the other side of the law cut women's hair while they're sleeping or in movie theaters and sell that, too. But only a minimum of 10-inch-long hair will do, Kumar notes — and he serenely nods when Rock cracks that it's "like porno."

It's that kind of humor which keeps the film's 95 minutes going, as Rock tries to sell black hair to stores in Crenshaw (in one, a black woman tells him black hair just "isn't the fashion" anymore), asks music executive Scott Harrell his opinion on how to have sex with a woman wearing a weave ("Keep your hands on the titties. That's your best bet," Harrell insists) and asks Angelou how old she was when she got her first weave (her answer of 70 seems to please him almost as much as her point that, "If you have [hair] on your head, it's good; if your hair is growing between your toes, it's not a good thing").

Overall, "Good Hair" serves up insightful social commentary with Rock's trademark smirk - except for when Rock is dealing with children, such as when he politely asks a 3-year-old girl named Jaylen why she got her first perm so early and she innocently/depressingly answers, "You're supposed to get a perm."

Thanks to "Good Hair," though, maybe that social norm won't seem so normal any longer.

Written by Express contributor Roxana Hadadi
Photo courtesy Roadside Attractions