Post #34
A totally different world of hair
18th October 2003, lunch time | Comments (9)
The delightful Sabrina answered a question of mine:
Can white people grow afros? Can I grow one? Is it just big hair, or does it do something special, like go frizzy?
No, they can’t. No, you can’t. It’s special hair that requires special haircare products and stylists. It’s a totally different world of hair, as white people who adopt black children find out when they manage to break — yes, break — their children’s hair. They go to an afro salon after that.
The subject reminded me of my first few weeks living in Brixton, in south west London.
Brixton, if you don’t know, has traditionally been the major settling ground for Caribbean and African peoples in London. It was the scene of some major riots in 1981 and generally scares the pants off of white, middle-class parents whose kids move into its cheap housing.
Whilst there I got my hair cut by a black barber, in a black barber shop, in the blackest neighbourhood in London.
The barber took an hour to do my hair (it normally takes 15 minutes) and used the clippers on my neck with such enthusiasm that he cut me from ear to ear along my hairline.
It’s not often you visit the hairdressers and end up getting sprayed with disinfectant and going home with a towel pressed to parts of your body to stop the bleeding.
Sabrina’s right, it is a totally different world of hair.
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Blogmarks
A collection of miscellaneous links that don't merit a main blog posting, but which are interesting none-the-less.
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
— George W Bush (9)- What WordPress is doing to combat comment spam. (1)
- Mobile web tools, from Pukupi. (1)
- Pukupi’s top 10 hints for building interoperable mobile Web sites. (3)
- The photography of E.J. Peiker. (4)
Stuff from the intersection of design, culture and technology.
(3)- Some handy tips for advanced Google use. (35)
- Make your own church signs, or view some real ones. (8)
- Michael Heilemann is doing a great job with his new WordPress theme; Kubrick. (1)
- I’m late to the party, but Dan has a book out. (1)
- What a crazy concept for laying out housing estates. (3)
- In San Francisco, I live here. (Try the zoom feature.) (1)
- Spider-Man reviews crayons. [Via] (3)
- Some beautiful images from photographer Greg Downing. (2)
- Lots of links, from the Link Bunnies. (1)
- Nice “when I was a child” sort of post from Stuart. (1)
- How much does SafariSorter cost? (4)
- Some handy maintenance tips for Mac owners running Panther. (2)
- Alex King launches Use Tasks: a hosted service for Tasks and Tasks Pro™. (2)
- Min Jung, Anil Dash, and I get interviewed for HBO’s Real Sex. (10)
Blog-roll
A selection of blogs I read on a regular basis.
- Hmm, the blog-roll seems to be a little bit broken right now (it may be that the blo.gs service is having problems). I’ve sent myself an email about this problem, and will try to fix it ASAP.