Good Hair

Related Content

• The Muslim Is Coming
  September 19, 2012
• A$AP Rocky's New Song Should've Been in CB4
  October 19, 2012
• Chairman Kamau
  November 28, 2012
• "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted": Sensory Overload
  June 6, 2012
• Julie Delpy: She's Taking on Everything That's Wrong with Movies
  August 15, 2012

More About

• Chris Rock
• Don Imus
• Nia Long
• Jeff Stilson
• Ice-T

Don Imus’s hateful, racist 2007 remarks about “nappy-headed hos” underscored the immense fear of and fascination with the hair follicles of African-American women. Chris Rock, the host, co-writer, and co-producer of first-time director Jeff Stilson's Good Hair, never mentions Imus’s outburst; his interest in the political, social, and sexual entanglements of the tonsorial stem from the more personal—specifically, when one of his two young daughters plaintively asked, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” Rock, affable as ever, queries a few black actresses (Nia Long providing the most candid responses: “Weave sex is a little awkward”); visits beauty salons; oversees an experiment by a scientist who demonstrates the corrosive effects of sodium hydroxide, the main ingredient in hair relaxer; travels to Chennai, India, where women sacrifice hair that ends up in weaves costing thousands of dollars in the U.S.; and stares in disbelief at the Paris Is Burning–like competition at the annual Bronner Bros.–sponsored Hair Battle in Atlanta. Rock is certainly a sympathetic and curious observer, though including Ice-T’s remark that “a real pimp can tell what a woman looks like baldheaded” betrays some of the gender politics that remain vigorously unexamined in this breezy, superficial doc.
Starts: Oct. 23. Daily, 2009