Hair & Beauty
Relax ladies, in this issue I’m not igniting the natural hair vs. weave stereotypes. I want you to join me in finding an answer to this: Is it possible to tell something about a man
by his hair – especially on a date – particularly a Jon B “brotha” haircut?
LIMBO WITH CALAMITY JANE
HAIR AND BEAUTY
What a haircut can say about a man, even a non-black
“brotha”
been testimonial to, but I don’t bring my stories of sorrow to bear at the dinner table with a man I barely know. I’ll save that for when we’re married, much like my appear- ance without make-up and the actual size of my waist without my reducer underwear. My date, by contrast, saw his barber as
I
a stamp of credibility; a testament to his ‘being down with it’ (whatever ‘it’ may be). I should have guessed from the sharp shaped hair-line. Tis guy was clearly a regular at the barbershop, where I im- agined him cracking inappropriate jokes about lager drinking, football crazy white boys, speaking in a dubious accent (cer- tainly not in keeping with his upbringing in the wealthy English suburbs) and using plural when citing his experiences, pre- suming they were the same experiences as the black men cutting his hair. He was a typical Jon B “brotha”… which I should
38 | NEW AFRICAN WOMAN | AUTUMN 2011
once went on a date with a man who cited his barber on more oc- casions than he did his friends and family combined. I’m a big fan of my hairdresser, as my articles have
Over-cropped, over-shaped and over here – the Jon B “brotha” haircut reveals more than he thinks!
have guessed from the over-cropped, over- shaped haircut. Te Jon B “brotha” almost exclusively
dates black women. And unlike many of his black counterparts, who prefer their women a paler hue of brown (Beyonce, Eva Mendes, Te Pussycat doll – can’t recall her name, but she’s the ethnically ambiguous one the camera loves – are the kind of girls they name drop as attractive), for the Jon B brothers, the blacker the better… And preferably with a natural haircut, lots of bangles, rocking the mother Africa, salt-of- the-earth look. Tink Erykah Badu, before she went nuts for the BIG wig. Te books he recommends are black.
Not just written by black authors about universal themes of society, love, relation- ships and loss. Books the Jon B “brotha” recommends are almost always about the black struggle. Te plight of a first genera- tion immigrant in a white man’s land (Sam Seldon’s Te Lonely Londoners is a case in point and a recommendation by a dear Jon B friend of mine) or slavery, or apartheid. His paintings are black. A collection of
hip hop-inspired murals and portraits of some of the most obscure jazz musicians of the 20th century. Indeed he makes it his mission to educate you about jazz. He serves a roast dinner by candlelight
with paintings of John Coltrane adorned on the wall, books by Franz Fanon stacked overtly in the bookcase (spine and there- fore author name and title facing outward) and Malian diva, Oumou Sangare’s dulcet tones undulating from his speakers. His CD collection is the epitome of world music, with West African classic hi life one would expect only the most ardent of Africans to own. Intentional or not, the books, the music, the conversation all seem to embolden his pride and contrived sense of worldliness and tolerance. Te Jon B “brotha” is front row at the
London jazz festival, the African festival at the Barbican, th e Malcolm X book reading at the Southbank and the con- scious hip hop concert at Brixton Acad- emy (think Talib Kweli and Moss Def rather than 50 Cent and P.Diddy) – all this in between appointments at the barber. Is it a front? A fraud? A part of the
bravado? I can’t help but feel that if you scratch beneath the well tarnished, well versed veneer, that you’re bound to find Conservative (with a big ‘C’) suburban, middle England (I’m not being racist but…) staring straight back at you. It’s amazing what a haircut can say
about a man!!
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