Book Review - Don't Touch My Hair By Emma Dabiri

As a white man my hair was always just hair and nothing more. My thoughts about my hair never went much further than some vague concerns that I might one day feel the sting of male pattern baldness. I didn’t even know what my own hair type was until looking it up while writing this review. I never had to engage in any protracted legal battles to be able to wear my hair naturally in school, and I don’t have to consider whether or not my hair will be deemed ‘professional’ as an adult. This is yet one more aspect of my privilege which became glaringly obvious to me when I started reading all the books I have reviewed. The topic of Black hair came up enough times that when I found out about Don’t Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri, I decided to read it immediately. Having read it I realised that while I knew hair discrimination was a thing, my understanding was surface level at best. Dabiri uses a combination of memoir, and history to give a detailed exploration of the cultural and historical significance of Black hair, and the ways it has been used for oppression, resistance, and inspiration.

Dabiri’s relationship with her own hair is complicated, going from embarrassment at her natural type 4 hair as a child, to love for it as an adult. She opens the book writing about her struggles and challenges with her hair, growing up as a mixed-race child racialized as black in Ireland in the 90’s. At the time, the internet wasn’t really a thing yet and black haircare products were practically non-existent in Ireland. Dabiri’s main source of information regarding her hair was her mum’s Black friends. She viewed her hair as something she had to fight against rather than work with using every chemical and hot treatment she could get her hands on to straighten it and achieve so called ‘good hair’. It wasn’t until she became pregnant with her own child that she stopped using relaxing treatments and learned to embrace her natural hair because she didn’t want her child to grow up with the same insecurities she had. Dabiri’s excursions into her own past are sprinkled throughout the book and paint a portrait of a woman who had to decolonise her mind in order to be able to accept and love her natural hair.

Decolonisation of the mind, and the rejection of Eurocentric standards are important undercurrents running through the book. This can be seen with how much of the book is devoted to uncovering the history of Black hair. Dabiri explicitly challenges and refutes the notion expressed by historian Hugh Trevor-Roper that “Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little”. She continues the work done by many Black academics of unearthing Black and African history, and saying it was always there but western historians just chose to ignore it. When writing about the history of Black hair she goes far back describing how pre-colonial Africa was populated by kingdoms such as the kingdom of Benin. According to Dabiri the walls of Benin City were the world’s largest earthworks constructed before the mechanical age, and it was one of the first cities in the world to have public streetlights with lamps that used palm oil. In describing in detail these technological achievements, Dabiri not only reclaims a history whose existence is often denied by Eurocentric history, but reclaims pride in that history and those achievements too. Dabiri continues her tour of African history detailing some of the myriad indignities and horrors Black people were subjected to during the slave trade and on plantations. The significance of Black hair comes up here as she notes that the shaving of female slave’s heads was one of the most common punishments, and that the shaving was usually done by white women. The idea seemed to be that to take away a Black woman’s hair was to render her less attractive and further dehumanise her in the eyes of slave masters. This was especially the case for more visibly mixed-race slaves whose hair tended to be less textured. Dabiri notes the animosity these white women felt may have stemmed from the similarity between their own hair and that of these enslaved women. As we see throughout the book, Black hair is about more than just hair. To the white wives of slave masters, it was a threat to their position and the ability to remove it against Black women’s will was a signifier of power. Black hair, and hair texture continues to be a focal point as Dabiri brings the reader through the Harlem renaissance, and the rise of Black power all the way to the modern-day natural hair movement. In doing so she emphasises the importance of Black hair and of decolonising the mind, as this history can only be properly told by avoiding the Eurocentric lens.

Just as she challenges the Eurocentric view of history, Dabiri also pushes back against Eurocentric beauty standards that favour white features such as a small nose, light skin, and most relevantly given the subject of this book; long, straight hair. She does this with an examination of the offspring of these beauty standards: colourism. Dabiri shows how much damage colourism has had on the Black community and how much it has affected Black men, and Black women’s perception of themselves and each other. While colourism was primarily about a person’s complexion, Dabiri shows it walked hand in hand with hair discrimination. She demonstrates this with the New York Interstate Tattler. The Tattler was a 1929 African American celebrity gossip and entertainment paper which had a lonely hearts column providing insight into what African-Americans at the time were looking for in a partner. Dabiri found while there was variation regarding complexion there was a strong preference for “good hair” among the writers. With the increase in the mixed-race population in America, hair even overtook complexion as a signifier of race. Dabiri points out there were Black churches where a comb would be hung on a string at the entrance. The comb had to pass smoothly through a person’s hair for them to be allowed inside; any snags and admittance was denied. While charting the history of the development of Black hair care products, Dabiri also charts the development of the marketing of those products and the colourism they trafficked in. Rather insidiously, a lot of the marketing came to focus on associating straight hair with “cleanliness”, and “naturalness”. Straight hair was sold as “natural” with the implication being that Black people had to chemically alter their hair from its true natural state in order to meet this standard. This is the trick Eurocentric beauty standards plays on people, which Dabiri exposes. They falsely hold white people, and white features as the “default” against which everything else should be measured. This is a dangerous, and damaging way to think, and as Dabiri herself puts it, “we need to reject many of the beauty standards we subscribe to, those that privilege lighter skin, thinner noses or ‘good hair’.”

I could continue writing about this book having only scratched the surface of what it has to offer but I want people to read it, so I will conclude this review here. Dabiri comprehensively shows throughout that Black hair, particularly Black women’s hair in the context of this book, is a deeply complex subject. Depending on what is done with it, Black hair can be a political statement, a connection to the past, or a signifier of status to give but a few examples. This is a book that should be read by as many people as possible, particularly anyone who has dismissed Black hair as “messy”, or “difficult.” There is a multitude of meanings, history, and culture woven into every follicle, infused in every kink or curl. It is an eye opening, and enlightening read from beginning to end taking the reader on a journey from the cruelty and terrors found on slave plantations, to the safety, and refuge of the modern-day hair salon.

You can buy this book here: https://tinyurl.com/ycyx6fv9