Categories: Descriptors

I’ve always been amazed at the power given to hair in some cultures.
In my Latin/Creole culture, hair texture serve as a definitive social marker, determining,
among other things, one’s race/ethnicity, education, charm, beauty and so on.

In my own family, the women, until this day, on my mother’s side,
revel about “pretty hair,” which, usually, means wavy, or bone straight.

As a kid, I was the one teased often for having “bad hair,” as if it didn’t match
my other facial features, creating some sort of phenotypical discord.
I never heard them refer to dark brown folks with “bad hair,” and I suspect that
it is because, in their minds, this is who is supposed to have “bad hair.”

And instead of dealing with my coarse hair, my mother had me always closely crop it.
I wore it like that until late last year.

There are two memories I’d like to share to better illustrate what I’m getting at.

1)

I was eating dinner in Bâton-Rouge with a friend last year sometime.
He is of a similar hue as I, except perhaps with more yellow overtone and undertone.
His hair, which he wears relatively short (about 1 inch, not longer), is light brown, naturally
and on the wiry (frizzy) side.

He and I were talking about phenotype and perception.
So, to prove my own point, I involved the server.

I asked her where she thought that he and I were from, or what we were.

She replied that Lance was “probably Black and something else.”

Then for me, she got stuck and asked me to take my baseball cap off.

She then said “that’s no fair! I can’t tell cause your hair is cut too close.”

So, I said, forget the hair, but she could never quite articulate a race/ethnic group for me,
I suspect, because she couldn’t determine my hair type.

2) About a month ago I went to a Kebab Shop immediately neighbouring my apartment complex
in England.

The guy behind the counter, a charming guy from Bangladesh, had previously asked me where I was
from. And, as part of my many social experiments, I had told him that I was from Saudi Arabia, after which he said that I couldn’t be, because I didn’t “look” Saudi. I had to school him, of course, that most Saudis look exactly like me, but he couldn’t know if he’d never been to Saudi Arabia.

So, this time, I told him I was from Louisiana.

He then, as he studies my hair texture, tells me: we don’t have black people where I’m from.

I said, but your skin is almost black, it’s the darkest brown I’ve ever seen.

He replied, but we don’t have normal black people (still looking at my hair).

So, I asked what were these normal black people.

He could never articulate what black people were, nor what normal black people were, but I reminded him, rather authoritatively that in Bangladesh and all nations in its immediate environs, had people with dark skin like his and with all kinds of hair textures and facial features.

I promised him that next time I’d bring him documentaries on so-called (in English, of course) Black Indians, Afro-Indians, Black Bangladeshi, etc.

These are only two of the many encounters in my 31 years of globetrotting and observing cultural norms, traditions, visions, and perceptions.

It became clear why in certain urbanised cultures, a premium had been placed on hair types.
The value in the texture, at various points in the U.S. history, literally made or broke you.

To imply that hair texture, or “quality,” is purely a phenomenon for browner-hued folks would be irresponsible of me.
Anyone who goes into Grocery stores, promenading along the Beauty Products corridors, will see products as far as the eye can see
for hair; dyes, oil treatments, shampoos, conditioners, deep conditioners, permanents, relaxers, Jerry Curl, dreadlocks, big tooth and fine tooth combs, brushes of all feels.
And hair stylists will confirm that people with naturally fine hair (“pretty hair”) want curly and wavy hair; folks with curly hair want fine hair; people with dark brown hair often dye it blond or highlight it.
According to Global Industry Analysts, hair care products reached $4.2 billion USD globally in 2010.
That makes the hair care industry one of the most lucrative, with continuous growing trends, worldwide.

What I have observed throughout the world is that geographically, certain hair types seem more prevalent in specific environments than in others. I’ll break those up into Hot, Cold & Dry, Hot, Cold & Humid (tropical), Moderate, Moderate-Dry, and Semi-Tropical. Because this is a particularly convoluted topic, I will only zoom in on 4 or 5 climates out of which, I theorise (and likely others), some hair types emerged.

Hot & Dry, Cold & Dry

So, for example, in intensely hot and dry climates (i.e. desserts), I have observed that straight but wiry, dense and often dry hair types are most abundant. Women “tame” it with products, so it is most obvious in the men. And when the men embrace it, it makes a nice puff hair style.
I imagine that wiry hair acts as a protectant to imposing and damaging UV-rays.
This hair type is found not only in hot climates, but also in cold environments, as well.

Hot & Humid, Cold & Humid

Populations who’ve remained in tropical zones (saturating humidity) usually have water-repellant, dense, coarse hair.
When I say water-repellant, I mean that when swimming and exiting the ocean, the water simply beads off of the hair as if never penetrating it.
And one often sees water droplets remaining on the surface of the hair.
Perhaps this hair type protects the hair roots where it meets the surface of the skin by naturally preventing dryness at the surface from water/humidity, thereby retaining natural moisture from the oils the body secrets at the root and surface of the follicle.

Moderate to Mild

When I think of moderate temperature, I think of the Mediterranean basin, and mountainous regions.

Within this region and others of similar moderate to mild climates, hair types often are dark in color and either wavy or slightly loosely curled.
Because UV-rays in these regions tend to be less damaging, and we certainly see less cases of skin cancers here, as well, this hair type that evolved in these areas must then use more UV-rays than the previous two hair types.

So softer, finer hair seems to allow for sufficient penetration of those rays that actually play an active role in building, among many other functions, a strong skeletal and immune system.

In the Mediterranean basin, some parts of the Caribbean, Asia and Europe, this type seems to wave or curl which I attribute to the proximity to the sea, from which the inhabitants make a living.

The diets of this region includes lots of vegetables, fruit and meats, rich in vitamins like Biotine and proteins like Keratin.

Semi-Tropical

This is the hair texture that people in many cultures, particularly in the Occident, label as “black people hair.”

Semi-tropical environments hot, very hot and humid at various periods of the year.

The inhabitants of semi-tropical regions of the world, unlike our tropical relatives, live in close contact with both water and powerful sunlight emitting fatally damaging UV-rays.

I suspect that the human genome’s natural adaptation to this environment prompted the emergence of a densely, impenetrable, tightly coiled hair, aka “nappy” or “kinky,” hair.

What this hair type does is, I suspect:

1) Protects the scalp from damage from imposing and potentially fatal UV-rays.
2) Protects the scalp from dryness as a result of close, daily contact with water (e.g. rivers, streams, humidity, rain, etc).
3) Provides only moisture sufficient for the follicle level only, nourished by sebum excreted from the sebaceous gland beneath the skin.

CONCLUSION
This means that hair has a very specific biological function which merits serious enquiry, specifically as it pertains to epidemiology (science of the origins of diseases), because if we alter hair that is responsible for important biological processes, then it may be the cause of diseases we may not imagine connected to hair.

But there’s no denial in it, functionally, all hair is good hair, because it keeps us alive and healthy.

Bad hair should be all airs treated with products to achieve a goal, because while it’s good for your sex appeal and self-worth, it is not good to the hair.

Learn as much as you can on your diet, how to involve more proteins and vitamins rich for the hai and nails and how to NOT process, dye, change it.

It has a real purpose; we’d to decide what it is!