When I first heard about Chris Rock's documentary, I was extremely excited. Finally, a (somewhat) big budget film dedicated to intelligently exploring the dysfunctional relationship between Black women and the concept of "good hair." Unfortunately, I was immensely, nay, profoundly disappointed. I thought the title "Good Hair" would be ironic because Chris Rock would explicate why Black women resent their natural (and beautiful) hair and strive to achieve and maintain straight "silky" white hair. Instead, the title is ironic because Chris Rock (in my view) belittles, condescends, and criticizes Black women for spending large sums of money on achieving and maintaining "good hair." Chris Rock fails to realize or he merely disregards the fact that the colonial legacy in North America plays a fundamental role in the way Black women view beautiful hair and beauty itself. Frantz Fanon attributes this phenomenon to two processes - the lactification of consciousness and the epidermalization of inferiority - both of which are the interiorization of an inferiority complex due to socioeconomic depravities, and the desire to "whiten the race as if to become like milk" (pg. 47). Chris Rock touches upon this only a little in that he interviews various Black celebrities and hairstylists who state that Black women want "Fara Fawcett" hair or "Bond girl" hair etc. The problem with this is that Chris Rock does not follow up on this by illustrating that natural Black hair is indeed beautiful and valuable. He does not show that some powerful and beautiful/sexy Black heroines in film do indeed have natural hair, such as Pam Grier's character Foxy Brown. Furthermore, what really disappointed me was that when he facilitated a dialogue in which a group of women told one group member who was sporting an afro that she does not look "put together" or "professional" enough to be a lawyer (for instance), he does nothing to contradict them. He doesn't even give the woman with the afro any screen time to respond to these criticisms. He doesn't even try to find the root cause as to why these women feel this way or try to find out how Black women have come to the idea that to look professional one needs to have straight hair.
In addition, I found "Good Hair" highly misogynistic in that Chris Rock treated the men in the film as rational, as the voices of reason while the women were foolish hair-buying fanatics. The film completely disregards the reality that Black men are just as particular about Black women having "good hair" as Black women are. Many of the Black men in the film did not seem to respect or sympathize with Black women especially since Chris Rock characterizes the men as the breadwinners or as the funding behind the trips to the hairdresser. And when he showed Black women getting their hair done (according to the film, the cost of weaves range from $1000 to $3,500) he felt the need to ask these women what they did for a living, which I found demeaning. I did not find the film to be an insightful text and I truly feel that the film provides white audiences with even more stereotypes regarding Black women. Since the film does not seem to have a point, I think it is a very dangerous possibility that whatever white audience the film acquired will leave thinking Black women are foolish and indulgent, while Black women will leave feeling belittled.
In the end, I found "Good Hair" superficial, insulting, and incredibly disappointing as Chris Rock fails to provide any insight regarding the reasons why Black women are so hateful and insecure about their natural hair. As the film does not problematize the term "good hair" and only the women who try to acquire it, I don't think it does the Black (female) community any favours.
