July 29th 2010

Touch It Baby

Hey baby. Gimme your hand.  Put it right there.  Slowly.  Move it back and forth, back and forth.  Grip it.  Feel that?  You like it?  Put your fingers in it.  Feel it, all around.  Two hands.  Grip it.  Pull me close to you.  Yeah.....

At least that is what I want to say.  Give instructions to a man, so he can finally give me what I've been wanting for so long.  For him to touch my hair.

Yeah, I said it.  I'm a black woman, and I want a man to touch my hair.  My unprocessed, natural, kinky-wavy-curly-nappy hair.

You can push my puff out of my face (or yours) when we are cuddled on the couch watching the tv.  Tuck a piece behind my ear in a tender moment.  Grab a section and watch it spring back when you give it a gentle tug.  And during sex... well, you saw what I wrote above.

There is this big taboo about touching a black woman's hair.  You will hear scores of black women admonish all fingers and hands to stay away from their hair. I know, from my days with a relaxer, about not disturbing or ruining a very expensive hairdo.  Or the shame of your man pulling away a hand shellacked with Blue Magic or some such concoction.  Or worse, having a man recoil from your hair because it grows from your scalp in tight kinks and curls instead of straight and silky strands.

However, I meet an alarming number of men - black men - who are unwilling to explore black hair.  If it ain't permed or weaved, then they don't know what to do.  Especially if it is not contained into some "neat" pattern that they are familiar with (locs, twists, braids).  A full-out fro?  You might as well ask him to go up to a NYC police officer and slap him.

I want my hair touched.  I want you, if we are intimate, to have full access to me, and me to have full access to you.  I want you to look at and touch every part of me, and to find it beautiful.  Acceptable.  How can you do that if you won't even touch it?

I say all this because I find it quite disturbing the lack of appreciation for "Black" hair in the black community.  For past boyfriends to only delight in my hair post pressing comb or flat iron.  For them to be surprised that my afro is surprisingly soft in its nappiest state.  That I don't go nuclear on them post-congress because touching my hair has rendered it into a less than flattering disordered mass.

I'm limiting this discussion to intimate discussions of hair, but that does not mean that men are the only ones scared of the fro.  You have no idea how many hair stylists' eyes have gone wide as saucers when I walk in with my fro.  When I refuse a perm or hard press.  And when I have to walk them through how to handle nappy hair. 

I'm sure all of you have seen "Good Hair" (I hate this movie, for too many reasons), and read the countless articles about struggles young girls and mothers had in styling black hair.  Or maybe you have more personal experiences, having had to go through less than pleasant hair-stories.  Whatever your knowledge of some  - and it is only some - of black women's hairstory, there is an even bigger part that often gets ignored.  Black women are WOMEN first - we have the needs of every other woman.  THe need to be cherished.  To be loved.  To feel that the men in our lives find each part of us attractive.  And while a lot of us will willingly forgo having men touch our hair, there are more women than you think who are just waiting for their man's fingers to get lost in their hair.

So, ladies and gents, be brave.  Let down your guard.  Let the hair pulling commence.