“Now let’s be honest, Rapunzel’s long, silky hair is not going to work as a rope. Dreadlocks or cornrows would’ve made a lot more sense,” an ASU English professor and dean of humanities for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences said Sunday in a presentation on race, hair and self-image.
Neal Lester’s presentation, “Nappy Edges and Goldy Locks: African Americans and the Politics of Hair,” is part of a new exhibit at the Arizona Science Center called “Race: Are We so Different?” The exhibit focuses on the concept of race and how it is viewed today.
In his presentation, Lester talked about hair and how it relates to race. Specifically, he presented how the idea of “good hair” causes internal conflict in young children whose natural hair isn’t viewed by society as ideal.
Junior English literature student Deanna Stover said the presentation was eye-opening for her.
“As a Caucasian, this isn’t something that I’ve thought about before,” she said.
In the presentation, Lester claimed young children are too often presented with the image of long, straight hair being the ideal.
Disney is one of the biggest culprits of this, he said, citing that even its one African American princess in the movie “The Princess and the Frog” has hair that is uncharacteristic of most African Americans.
Because children are only given one image of hair, Lester said, they absorb this image and come to believe that their natural hair is inferior.
This causes children to go through traumatic and often unsafe treatments in order to straighten their naturally frizzy hair, he said.
Some of the treatments he mentioned include applying lye to the roots of hair, which often causes scalp burning, or using iron hot combs to straighten out kinks.
English literature senior Melissa Tse found the presentation to be informative and smart.
“When we talk about race, we too often focus on controversial topics,” she said. “It’s important that we bring it down to a smaller level. Everyone can relate to a talk about hair.”
Lester, who rocks a healthy head of dreadlocks, said he first realized the differences in people’s ideas of hair 21 years ago when his daughter was born.
Many people commented on how she had “good hair” because it was straight, and he began studying how much of an impact hair has on people’s lives.
In the presentation, he provided examples of the effect people’s hairstyles have on their lives.
He said that if President Barack Obama had an afro or dreadlocks, it is unlikely that he would’ve been elected.
In the business field, people are often told to tame their natural hair as it appears “unprofessional.”
He also pointed out that after leaving Destiny’s Child, Beyonce became more Barbie-like by dyeing her hair blond and straightening it to appeal to a larger audience.
“People’s ideas on race are not going to change overnight,” Lester said. “But if there are more critical discussions on race, people will realize we are all more alike than unalike.”
Reach the reporter at danielle.legler@asu.edu
