.adventures in hairland.

As the youngest daughter of traditional Dominican immigrant parents, certain things were expected of me. I was always to obey my parents and never, ever disrespect them. I was to study hard in school and stay away from the tecato* element that hung out in front of our building. I was never to get an ankle bracelet, piercings other than the two in my ears, a belly ring, or a tattoo, as these were all marks of whoredom. I would move out of the house only to get married – “¿Que roommates ni que roommates?,” my mother would mutter – and on the day of my wedding, I would be a virgin, proudly and purely walking down the church aisle to meet my (hopefully Dominican) husband, for whom I would keep house and produce babies. And, like my lady ancestors before me, I would always maintain a mane of lustrous, long straight hair.

Well. I still respect and obey my parents out of a Pavlovian fear of incurring my mother’s wrath. But I went off to live in France without any parental supervision at age 16. I got my nose pierced and am planning on getting a tattoo very soon. My civil marriage ceremony took place on a beach and lasted all of five minutes. I married a Puerto Rican, with whom I share laundry and meal duty.  Six years after our wedding, we remain defiantly child-free.

But where I really fall short on the Ideal Dominican Daughter scale is my hair. Oooohhhhh, my hair. Ave Maria Purisima, my hair. While it is sometimes healthy, it is rarely, if ever, lustrous, long, or straight. Most of the time, it looks like a crazy lions head.

I'm so sorry, Mami.

Dominicans’ love affair with straight hair is well known: Dominican women work hard to get it, Dominican men demand nothing less of their women, both in willful ignorance that we do not come by it honestly. We are a mish-mash of European, African, and Native American, all of which has created in our hair multitudes of undeniable waves, boucley curls, kinetic kinks. And yet there is an entire industry dedicated to eradicating this genetic inheritance – dozens upon dozens of tratamientos meant to make your hair silky soft, trusted desrizados that will kill the curl on command, salons of varying quality on every corner, weekly visits to get one’s hair done. Straight hair equals sophistication and professionalism; it’s an outward sign of pride in your appearance, no matter how poor you may be. It’s the beauty ideal. Curly, natural hair stands for the exact opposite: descuido, a reckless rejection of the social norm.

A fat, dirty-blonde ball of a baby, I started out with such promise. I’d inherited my light skin and soft, straight hair from my father’s side of the family – descendants, I firmly believe, of European colonialists who settled in the mountains around San José de las Matas and didn’t come down until sometime in the mid-20^th century. 

By the time I was in the 1^st grade, I had long, light brown hair with only a hint of wave to it. My mother refused to braid it, claiming that all the twisting and turning would damage the follicles; instead, she rubbed olive oil on my scalp and my hair to keep it shiny and healthy. My aunts played with it for hours. Family members back in the Dominican Republic would praise my pelo bueno – literally, “good hair” – when I went back to visit. I also never, ever brushed my hair, but that’s a story for another time (I've provided you the picture at left as evidence. Those are not curls you see - those are snags, my friends).

The happy state of affairs with my long, straight-ish, light brown-ish hair continued up until I reached puberty, whereupon the curl would no longer be denied. The Nuñez-Pepin side of the family – my mother’s darker, curly-haired, city-dwelling clan – had come to stake its claim in my genetic make-up. Sadness and confusion abounded. “Why had this happened?” my parents wondered.

I don’t know that puberty was a concept they understood beyond boobs and menstrual cycles.

Out of the watchful eye of my father, I convinced my aunt Nani to cut my hair. Oh, my not-in-any-way-a-hair-professional Aunt Nani cut my hair alright. She also gave me bangs. Bangs. I had curly hair and she gave me bangs. My dad took that haircut personally. I swear I remember him doing the eye-roll-teeth-suck when he first saw the results; poor Aunt Nani was the target of his stinkeye for quite a while. Do you blame him?  

That was the beginning of the end. As a pre-teen I was more interested in seeing how crunchy and crispy I could get my hair than I was with getting it straight. (Thank Jeebus for Dep/White Rain/Finesse/products!) Thanks to an unrepentant lazy streak and some hand-eye coordination problems, I never learned to blow dry my hair straight; whenever I tried, I looked more like a poofy poodle than anything else. Exhibit A: This stellar picture from the early 1990s.

I was away at school from the time I was thirteen to the time I was twenty-one, so it was impossible for me to replicate my mother’s Saturday afternoon ritual of washing her hair, putting it in rollers, and sitting under a hard-hood hairdryer while reading translated Barbara Cartland novels. Oh sure, I went to get my hair cut every six months, which involved a blow-out, and whenever there was a special family occasion my mother would drag me to the salon to fix up my hair so I wouldn’t “embarrass” her with my pajón, but I was far more interested in single-processing dyeing my hair various shades of “auburn” (read: orange, Ronald McDonald red, almost-fuchsia, henna red) than I was in maintaining a beautiful melena. I also once shaved off the entire bottom half of my hair because my friend Harley suggested it. True story.

I tried, sometimes, to give it a go – to be all that I could be as a Dominican-American female.  After college I decided it was time to woman up and become a professional, so I found a hairstylist I liked and went for my weekly appointment. This lasted about three months before my hair returned to its natural state. My mother despaired, asking me why I didn’t take better care of my hair, was I happy walking around the street like a loca, and when was the last time I brushed my hair, and…sighs, many many sighs of lamentatious disappointment. Thank God I wore makeup, otherwise she really would have lost it. She was forever ordering me special tratamientos from the Dominican Republic, as if those would magically make my hair straight again. I’m not sure, but I think she likes me a teensy tiny bit more when my hair is straight then when in it’s in its natural state. She’s still surprised my husband decided to marry me despite my unkempt hair (and the prickly disposition that I inherited from her side of the family). I didn't look that bad, Mami, damn.   

My last lap around the straight-hair track was last summer. Frustrated after seeing me go around with an un-styled mop of hair for almost a year, and a Latino man through-and-through what with his unnatural obsession with the state of his woman’s hair, my husband, Kim Jong-Illmatic, begged me to “do” something about it. He even found me a neighborhood salon he said he knew for a fact did nice work. I half-suspect he ran a recon mission outside the Sunset Beauty Salon – standing across the street to assess how well they styled hair. 

And so I went. And got a *great* haircut. I looked more glamorous than I ever had in my life. My blunt bangs made me look edgy. I looked hot. The world rejoiced at the turn my coif had taken. (This pic is of my younger brother and I being uncharacteristically affectionate. His face has been deleted because he doesn't like to be associated with me in any way. I embarrass him, and I don't know why.)

But damn, y’all. Keeping up that haircut required me to visit the salon every Sunday, (and sometimes on Wednesdays) and to do some serious maintenance work during the week with a straightening iron and hair dryer, lest the dreaded curl creep back in. But, Christ on a cracker, I don’t think people realize how lazy I am – certainly too lazy to keep up with this high-maintenance lifestyle.  Lining up in front of the Dominican salon before it even opened to claim your place in the first-come-first-serve line; spending all day there, trying to hide your irritation at all the little kids running around; enduring first the hair dryer and then the blow dryer, and then getting yelled at by the hairdresser about sometimes letting your hair go curly during the week; waking up with dents in your scalp from all the pins needed to secure your tubi; being on permanent humidity and wetness look out; scared to work out lest your hair get too sweaty.** It simply got to be too much, and took away from my heavy schedule of reality TV watching and celebrity gossip site-surfing. 

“Ya basta!” I exclaimed on January 1, 2009. No more of this nonsense. And so I said goodbye to the straight hair and reverted back to the way God and my African ancestors had intended. 

My hair's a little battle-weary, though, after the six-month battle with the blow dryer and straightening iron. It hasn't quite yet forgiven me for that torture - it's settled on this half-wavy, half-curly mix that is doing no one any favors. It's alright, hair! I can take it! Gimme what you go!t Mea culpa one thousand times over - just pretty please go back to the way you were (and while you're at it, take back the gray). 

But listen, I'm no hypocrite. I know that for the rest of my life I will go get my hair "done=straight" whenever there's a special family occassion. Sometimes I covet the effortless follicular elegance of my hair idols - Darlene Rodriguez, I'm looking at you (even though you're Puerto Rican). The dream of being a Mirta de Perales model lives on, if only semi-consciously. 

I suppose, then, that it's not yet time to turn in my Proper Dominican Lady card.

Once I get that tattoo, though...

 

* A Dominican hybrid of hoodlum/thief/drug addict/n’er-do-well.

** Yeah, that’s the ticket. Yeah. That’s why I stopped working out. Sure, why not? Perfectly plausible excuse.

 

© Chommo, 2009.