Greetings,
I do not have good hair. I can admit that. It's very temperamental and usually never does what I want it to do. Oh, sure, if I spend an hour on it every morning, it might look decent, but I just don't have that kind of time. But it seems that there are some who would say that I do have good hair. I had no idea. And how was this revealed to me? Well, it was Chris Rock and his hilarious 2009 documentary, Good Hair.
As far as I know, the genesis of this idea came when one of Chris Rock's adorable little girls asked him, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?". The thought of a child asking that seems so sad to me. But that got him thinking about what exactly is good hair. Through many interviews and much traveling, he went to great lengths to find out.
Now as I've said before, I do watch America's Next Top Model, so I know what a weave is, and I know about the pain involved. Same goes for a relaxer, in theory anyway, though I did not know about the exact chemicals. Oh, but I learned. We'll get to that. I actually learned a lot about things I thought I knew.
So Chris Rock visits beauty schools and hair salons to talk to women, and some men, about the things they do in order to get "good hair". What DO they do? Well, first, there are the weaves. I could talk about how painful or time consuming it is to get one, but let's discuss the money issue. I think the cheapest one they spoke of was a thousand dollars. ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS! For hair. Okay, fine. I guess if you have the money, then go spend it. Of course, one shop owner did mention that she had a layaway plan for hair weaves, and that amused Chris Rock very much. Next, we have relaxers, which sound to me kind of dangerous. It seems I am right. We even visit a scientist here who displays the actual harm these chemicals can do. He demonstrated this with, what else, a soda can. It was a soda can that could have simply been sliced by an infomercial knife, but, clearly, it was meant for bigger and better things. Anyway, I can mock it, but what I saw that stuff do was frightening.
As the film progresses, Chris Rock takes other pilgrimages. One of them is to a huge hair convention where vendors sell their products and stylists compete in a show that may as well be a rock concert by the looks of it. And, in this world, those stylists are something like rock stars. He also went to India to find out about their massive hair exporting industry. Oh, yeah, forget GOOD hair. Apparently, India has the BEST hair. And women want it badly. Badly enough to pay a load of money for it.
There were a lot of interviews with familiar faces such as the great Maya Angelou, Raven Symone, Ice-T and Al Sharpton, and these provide some of the most amusing moments. But aren't anecdotes always the best thing?
After I watched this film, I found that I had been entertained a lot, but also informed. I personally enjoy learning about other cultures and the way of life for other people. The thing is that when we think of "other cultures" we tend to think of far off lands and whatnot, but here we realize that these are the cultural ways of people that we know, people who are our friends. It made me remember that we don't always know people as well as we think we do, unless we're really willing to sit down, talk to each other and learn from each other. I think it's always worth it.
So all in all, I give this movie a good rating. I laughed, I learned and those two things go very well together.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
