good hair

i saw a promo for oprah last week advertising that chris rock would be on promoting his new movie "good hair" . i personally think chris rock is hilarious. i like his observations and how he makes his audiences think about some pretty important stuff-even if its with a humorous twist. what prompted chris to make this movie was his daughter(i think shes 4 or 5 years old)came home after spending the day with her little white, blonde friend and asked "why dont i have good hair?" the clips from the trailer show him trying to get to the bottom of what is going on with women(particularly black women)and their hair. as a white woman with straight hair that wont hold a curl, my experience is the exact opposite of what i saw some of these women going through. chemical straighteners, hours upon hours in a stylist chair getting their hair braided to prepare for a weave, and thousands of dollars spent for the privilege of being tortured. i saw a brief interview with ali wentworth who talks about getting the white girl's weave(extensions)and dying her hair blond because she "just wants to be pretty." the whole "blonds have more fun" and are prettier gets under my skin for a couple of different reasons(and none of them have to do with the fact that i am NOT blond). its fake. how many adults do you know that are natural blonds that dont use any chemical intervention? on the oprah interview, chris rock was pointing out all the blond women in the audience and so many were embarrassed to be booted out of the blond closet and be shown for the fakers they are. faking pisses me off. i was born a blond, but it started turning darker about age 12 and continued to get darker until my current shade of medium brown. about ten years ago i decided i needed a change and started getting highlights. i got so many over the following few years that i was back to being a blond. it was expensive and time consuming, not to mention bad for my hair. my drivers license was taken during this time when i am asked for id they do a double take. it really doesnt look like me. people joke about mormons and their attachment to being blond. the mormon child bride even blogged about how she had dyed her hair a darker color that she really liked, but knew going to her parents for a family get together was going to be rough. there would be stares. judgment. disapproval. its okay to go BLONDER, but to go darker is like....i dont know what. like wearing a t-shirt that says you drink jack daniels everyday or something. i also hate how mothers instill this love of all things blond in their daughters. my friend kelly has 2 kids. both born with beautiful blond, curly hair. her son, the older of the two gets darker the older he gets. she says nothing, but when her daughter started getting darker(around age 10), she starts dying her hair. she is now 16 and recently, in rebellion, dyed her hair red. my friend was so angry and so sad that her "beautiful, blond daughter" is no longer blond. she buys into it. with all the pressures on women to be beautiful, do we have to narrow it down to that extreme? i remember as a child being fussed over because of my blond hair and blue eyes and looking back, i guess it is a striking combination, but its rare and its short lived. just like the black girls straightening their hair or putting their weaves on lay away. chris rock concluded that all of this time, effort and money is put into our hair to impress other women. not men. i see his point,but men buy into it as well. a woman in my ward(bottle blond)decided to go a shade or two darker. she was STILL blond, just a little darker. her husband told her in no uncertain terms that he married a blond and wants to keep it that way. she thought it was the cutest thing ever. i had to bite my tongue from telling her what a jerk i thought her husband was being. on the flip side i know a couple of men who dont care at all what their wives or girlfriends hair looks like. short, long, blond, dark. they dont care as long as their wives are happy. isnt that how it should be?