Nappily Ever After & Getting Free

Sanaa Lathan played a role that many of us can identify with.

Along with the first kiss, first dates, and fallouts with friends, what seems etched in the minds of Black women is also the first time they cut their hair. In Black culture, there is an attachment to hair that has seemed to last through generations. At times there are tears, anger, and even full-on emotional breakdowns as the scissors approach our crowns to do their work. This is why, for so many Black girls, Nappily Ever After will easily resonate.

In watching the film, it was easy to identify with Sanaa Lathan’s character Violet Jones and the complicated relationship that Black women often have with their hair. Short of the Mommy Dearest character of Lynn Whitfield — my mother wasn’t that insane about hair — I was able to see so many aspects of my own growth as a black girl managing nonmainstream hair and the unhealthy connection we often have to standards of beauty that were never our own.

Violet is “perfect.” She says the right things, she looks the part, and she thinks that’s the key to getting everything she wants in life until her boyfriend of two years, the doctor, turns up a dud when he doesn’t propose but offers her a Chihuahua named Lola.

This, of course, sends her reeling and on a journey of self-discovery while beginning to challenge everything she’d come to know about what her identity was and what her relationship was with her hair. The most touching scene may have been her drunken tryst with a pair of clippers that resulted in her shaving her head completely bald. That connected somewhere deep inside of me. That process of letting it all go and most certainly was one of the most captivating scenes in the film.

They say that a woman that cuts her hair is about to change her life, and the movie is a visual representation of that journey. Our hair is often an outward expression of the internal. Whether that’s our joy, uncertainty, or turmoil.

I know in my own journey, it really took some time to accept who I was outside of the perfectly relaxed, long hair. I didn’t even feel the attachment until I cut it and felt like I was free of a burden I didn’t know that I was carrying.

It started for me when I decided I wanted to do something more exciting with my hair. I wanted to dye it. But what happens when you highlight your hair and then relax it too close together? Let me help you, it falls out. That’s what happened to me in 2008 in my last year at Temple University. See, I got these amazing highlights at the salon around my birthday and when I left with my press, my hair was a beautiful coif of highlighted perfection. But it was for my 21st birthday and I had a party coming up. And we all know, there’s no faster way to sweat out a press than a party.

So, I wanted my hair to continue to look just as fly as the day I walked out of the salon and thought I’d waited enough time to touch up my relaxer. It wasn’t like you see in the movies or that episode of Martin where Gina ruins Myra’s hair at Sheneneh’s salon. But in a few days, everywhere there were highlights, my hair was gone. Thank God for not getting a full process because my comb-over game was strong.

This was the beginning of my natural hair journey. For many of us, we simply come to a moment where enough, is enough. For Violet it was a man, for me, it wasn’t necessarily about loving my natural kinks or being a part of a movement, I was tired. Tired of scabs, the burning sensation, new growth and all the other normalized pain that went with slapping harsh chemicals on my head every eight weeks.

When I was transitioning my hair back to its natural state, I kept asking my mom, “But what is my hair like?” I had some type of process in my hair probably since I was about 5 years old. I had no idea what the true texture of my hair was like outside of the wild new growth that we were constantly combatting.

“It’s very curly,” is all she would say, but the way she said it didn’t make me think it was the coveted ringlets that I was hoping for and began to see on all the YouTube girls. I was apprehensive and even resolved, in all transparency, “If it’s too nappy, I can always relax it again.” That’s what I said to myself. That was my relationship with hair at the time.

For months, I would braid the front that was becoming unruly and then put the rest of the permed hair into a ponytail. It was such an awkward time when you are so used to having your edges laid and slicked. But I was powering through and still trying to see my beauty through it. Then, I came to a point where my hair was literally half-fro, half amazing and my boyfriend at the time who was trying to help me detangle was like, just cut it!

So, I did.

I made an appointment at the salon and said, I’m done. And that was the shortest my hair had ever been in my life. She straightened it still and I didn’t mind at all. I didn’t have the emotional breakdown in the chair or anything like that. But it was the moment that I washed my hair that all of a sudden I had these rebellious curls and the shrinkage was real that I thought, “How exactly do you manage this?” The super cute tapered cuts of today, weren’t really at the forefront so it was just short kinky curly hair.

I’ll never forget the first day that I had to go to work with my new tiny fro. I was so nervous. I worked with a ton of guys and all we did was crack on each other and I just knew that I would be the butt of some of their jokes. But I had to own it. Much like the woman in the film at the cancer support group encouraged Violet to do. There is this whole process of learning how to walk into a world looking how God intended that you have to master. Learning how to say without saying, this is who I am, you will deal.

You have people approach you as if you’re so brave. Like “wow, you actually walk out the house like that? I could never.” I often want to say to them, I never thought I would but the way my hair falling out was set up.

It made me a braver person. When everything else in the world is telling you that your hair should be straight and long to be attractive, it’s difficult to go against that. It’s hard to re-discover your beauty. I even worried if men would still be attracted to me. But rocking my fro anyway, regardless of those fears and insecurities, gave me courage.

Representation matters and for so long, it didn’t exist for Black women without processed hair. Most of my girlfriends all have had relaxers since they can remember. Black women have been under the pressure to present their “best selves” to the world for so long.

We’re so used to beating our hair into submission, the moment that we accept ourselves, it’s like the war is finally over.

That’s what we saw for Violet. That’s what we saw for Momma (Lynn Whitfield) when Hubs pushed her into the pool. Carefree Black Girl is this term that I always envied. Because for so many of us, that wasn’t a reality. But the good news is, things are turning around, and as Lena Waithe put it, we are all getting free from something. For many of us, it’s our hair, among other things and that’s why Nappily Ever After was a breath of fresh air.