Please Nancy do something with your hair, you look stupid like that, very unbecoming, are you related to Whoopi? at least you have eyebrows. You sure are a Hillary hater ughhhhh.
Hope not to see you again.
A scared Dem.
Ouch.
The above was a thoughtful note sent to me, via this website.
Look, it's one thing to call me a Hillary hater (which I'm not, for the record, having voted for her in 2000, and having voted twice for her husband -- more on that later). But why the "politics of personal destruction?" Why the nasty dig about my hair? "You look stupid like that." (Capitalization and punctuation mine.) Like what? Can't she (I'm sure it was a "she") at least be specific? I'm assuming the writer isn't a black woman, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's one of the two or three black women I see at any given Hillary's rally. Or maybe this is from Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (short-cropped hair, big toothy smile, she just loves Hillary), or that woman with the big coiled braided 'do who speaks through gritted teeth...what's her name? Sheila Jackson-Lee. (Thanks to my dear friend and human Google Portia for coming up with those names.)
(I wonder: should I add a new last name and hyphenate? Would it change me?)
Or could the writer have been that black fella in the audience last night in West Virginia? Applauding and pumping his fist? The guy with the yellow tee-shirt and scraggly teeth?
(Maybe not "scraggly," but it looked like some things were missing on his top row.
Sorry, but it's true.)
Come home, my misguided sisters and brothers. (More on that later.)
Or is this the note of some angry, sixty-ish, white, feminist, glass-ceiling wounded, passed-over in favor of some male underling, worked all day then picked the kids up from day care and made the kids dinner then your husband comes home and says "what's for dinner" woman?Are you one of those women who used to flip her hair forwards, backwards, bent over, combing, flipping, brushing? Curling it behind your ear? Are you someone who sees braids and locks and different black hairstyles and maybe in an elevator you'll say "I love your hair" even if you're really thinking "what the hell is that," but you want to say something to show you're really "with it?" (NOTE: for future reference, it's perfectly acceptable to remain silent in an elevator. You don't have to say "hi" or even have eye contact. Really.)
We all have hair issues, but it's been really hard on us black women. I always wanted different hair, and I have proof: notebook after notebook of my elementary school doodles of Marlo Thomas' "That Girl" bangs and flip. Everywhere. In the margins, in composition and spiral notebooks, on looseleaf paper, even on pieces of graph paper along with various ways to spell my name (Nancie, Nancey, Nancee, Nansi, NanSee, even Nan C). And after seeing a commercial for Tame Cream Rinse (remember "cream rinse?") I grabbed a comb and a clump of hair, sat myself in front of the living room mirror, and started "teasing" my hair until that clump was one giant dredlock (and we didn't yet know about "dredlocks.") And the fantasies of driving in a Mustang convertible, like Mary Tyler Moore, only instead of being on a highway heading to Minneapolis I'd be hugging the cliffs along Pacific Coast Highway, with my hair whipping in the wind behind me. And then the reality of actually driving down Pacific Coast Highway with the windows open and my hair didn't whip in the wind. It blew straight up, and stayed there. Like Don King's.
Having said that -- I've gotten my hair pressed (it hurt); relaxed (why do they call it that? It's tense as hell, and burned my scalp every time); cut it short (and been called "sir," even in a dress); and had braid extensions (my head felt heavy with the weight of the extra hair). These days, I put molding mud on it, braid it, unbraid it, and hope for the best. I have good days when it can hang on to some texture, and bad days (humid, rainy days are the worst) when I look like Linc on "Mod Squad." But I'm okay with it.
And I think "scared dem" is balding out there, somewhere.
