To be woman
My blog post this week is an attempt to wrap my head around the choices that we black women make in regard to sprucing up externally. We rack up an incredible amount of hours, days, and funds plucking and grooming!
To illustrate this, Naw Magazine has broken down how much time black women spend on grooming in days per year. Let’s start with moisturising ourselves so that we do not end up being grey and ashy. This done for a few minutes everyday adds up to up to 44 days of the year (Naw 2016). We are told that it is important not to sleep with any make-up on otherwise we will get blemishes and age faster. This sums up to about 52 days a year and this does not include actually putting on the make-up (Naw 2016). Most of us women probably know that good quality make-up is really expensive but this article is not about cost, so I will not go there.
In recent years, there has been a thick and bushy eyebrow fad. We have been assured that a good thick pair of eyebrows really frames our face and opens our eyes. Drawing them on is a craft that takes time if one is to get it perfectly right. Consequently unless your brows are microbladed, we can approximate that grooming our brows takes up to 30 days (Naw 2016). A loss of an entire month each year of our life on tweezing and shaping eyebrows.
Whether we choose to hide greying roots or prefer to turn heads with a crown of colour, the fact of the matter is that we spend a month of our lives dying our hair. We black women have divergent views on whether hair removal is necessary or not. Indeed it’s up to the individual – but for those who do, that is 72 days on legs, underarms and other body parts that I will not mention here. A manicure communicates a lot about you - but this is another 20 days in a year (Naw 2016).
The narrative around black women’s hair care has changed more recently. More women are embracing their curls, however tight and coarse. Whether or not we have chosen the natural hair route or not, there is still a lot of work, time and money that goes into it. Installing a weave usually takes between 3 to 6 hours – carrying snacks is advisable - braids can take anywhere from 4 to 8 hours and if one chooses to keep hair out, a “wash day” involves detangling, washing, conditioning and styling our hair in preparation for the week. We take up 294 days of our lives every year faffing around with our hair (Naw 2016).
At what point did we decide that our body was no longer acceptable in its natural state? Understanding the root cause of the cover up in an objective way feels important to me. When and where did we embrace the “not enough” story? That we are not enough as we are. That we are not loved enough in our natural state? That we cannot have enough without dolling ourselves up. When did we take it on, develop it and wear it with pride – no actually with shame? Did it begin whilst in the womb, submerged not just in amniotic fluid, but additionally in our mother’s own anxiety of not feeling enough? Is it here that we learned that survival is indeed for the fittest? Or did we respond to the challenges of inattentive parents and caregivers with the belief that we are unsafe and unloved, ingraining in our subconscious mind that the world is not safe and there isn’t enough love.
So to keep safe from harm and to feel loved we are following rules – I wonder whose rules though. Doing so ensures that life is more pleasant and enjoyable, less threatening and less difficult – a harmonious existence.
Should we wear clothes? Of course. Should we wear nice and expensive clothes? Why not - it’s a form of self-expression. Should we use clothes, skin lighteners, wigs, weaves, false eyelashes? Should we wax every part of our body to lose hair in order to conceal perceived flaws and imperfections? Not if it’s because we feel that naturally we are not enough. TO BE WOMAN should not require us to spend a humongous amount of resources on changing what we are.