Inaugural Hair

We have just inaugurated the first African-American president of the United States. RantWoman could wander around our nation's history, civil war, slaveowners and slaves. RantWoman could venture into heady topics like demographic shifts in the US, apartheid in South Africa, and global finance. RantWoman does not rule out tackling any of those topics in the future, but today she really wants to talk about hair, specifically hair behavior, hair expectations, and mostly inaugural hairdos.

One of the paradoxes of how RantWoman interacts with television is that using screen enlarger software, she often sees details that would be totally lost at normal size and normal TV-viewing distance. Today's item of note in the greater detail is the Obama women's hair. for the swearing-in ceremony, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia all have their hair straightened and down. Some of the time one of the girls has braids, but today every one of them has their hair down.

First of all, this is one of those "the universe just is not fair" topics. People who have straighter hair go to elaborate lengths to make it curl and stay curled. People who have kinky hair take equally elaborate measures to straighten it and to make it stay that way. Now that our First Family is African American, are we as a nation going to get to the point that we can talk honestly about these contrdictory yearnings, say by complementary advertisements in the same publication or in day-to-day conversation?

One of RantWoman's college roommates was blind. She went to public school in New Jersey and she used to tell a story of her teacher slapping her hand after she for the first time brushed against an African-American student's hair and just exclaimed how different it was. Roommate said she liked the texture; she was just vexed to have her hand slapped for something she would have had no other way of finding out.

Once upon a time RantWoman went to Finland with some young professionals, including several African Americans. One of the duties of foreign exchange participants is to make gallant efforts to participate in local customs. In Finland, this includes the sauna, steaming one's naked self in a bathhouse with one's hosts. Sitting around naked among strangers with only clouds of steam for cover is, well, one challenge. The other of course is hair especially if one's hairstyle wilts at the first whiff of steam. A couple members of the group just bagged the sauna after the first couple days because of the time it took after the sauna to do their hair.

RantWoman and her sister are the other end of this tale. RantWoman as a child would have loved to have cute little ringlets. RantWoman was never really willing to put up with endless curling and mostly just enjoyed reasonably thick, slightly wavy locks. RantWoman's Little Sister was at times disconsolate. She has always had thinner, straighter, wispier hair and craved curls, ringlets, any form of curl that last more than about 3 seconds.

RantWoman thinks she remembers an episode of Little House on the Prairie involving rag curlers. Somehow the Rantsiblings discovered that in RantMom's childhood, wearing rag curlers to bed was they preferred way to wake up with curly hair. RantWoman remembers thinking that was darned utilitarian and remembers getting quite satisfactory results a time or two, though RantWoman lost interest much sooner than Little Sister.

But thinking about the requirements of inaugural parades in the COLD, RantWoman finds herself wondering what happens to straightened hair when one goes in and out of cold air. RantWoman is used to glasses steaming over anytime she goes from cold to warm places, and she wonders whether big temperature changes have any ill effects.

At this point, RantWoman wandered off to a different topic: hair care products aimed at African American women. Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, here are a couple links to info about really cool figures, MAdame C J Walker and her granddaughter Alelia P. Bundles. One of these days RantWoman promises to write about how she even learned of these figures.


MadamCJWalker.com


Madame C J Walker and business ownership


Madame CJ Walker in Wikipedia