The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep love. — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
The thing about history is that it repeats itself, maybe not in exact replicas, maybe with slight modifications but history often repeats itself. This is especially visible in Fashion. Clothes that had their shine in the ’80s are now rebranded as vintage, every alte kids seems to be rocking different shades of bell bottom jeans and colored lens. More appropriately, people are starting to return to their roots. Although it is becoming common to see girls wear at least one cowrie on their hair, the negative connotations endure as one of the many scars on our social consciousness created by colonialism. Our culture deserves to be preserved, celebrated and updated to suit our times. For one, cowries are not only used in rituals. In our last article, we discussed the origin of cowries and the diverse ways that it has been used and how we can use them today.
Today, we look through the history of our style, and the visual identity of Africans before western influences corrupted our sense of beauty.
Standards of beauty around the world differed vastly before the imperial rule of the Europeans enforced a “universal” idea of beauty that is still being peddled across the world till today. For instance, in Nigeria where the sun gets as hotter than 84°F (29°C) for almost half the year, we still wear suits as official wear. In April, the spokesman of the Lagos state Police Command, Bala Elkanah said that tattoos and dreadlocks are strange to our culture. Which is an absurd thing to say because African hair is the only hair type with texture naturally suited to locking.
Beauty is not one face, one body, one attire. Beauty is fluid like water, changing to fit the shape of an object. Before colonization, the idea of beauty in Africa differed from tribe to tribe. Tribal marks were once considered to be beauty staples. They were used as a means of identification and also to represent royal families. Each tribe had a different inscription pattern from the next. They varied in shapes, sizes and even location. Tribal marks could be etched on the face, lap, arms, butt, even on the breast. The position and location of a mark depend on the tribe and culture of the people. In Ile-Ife, they draw three straight lines on the cheek while in Owu, they drew six short vertical lines on each side of the cheeks. In Nupe, their marks were in curves on the cheeks. The Igbos drew two straight lines on the sides of the eyes. The act of drawing tribal marks has however been abolished. Knives, blunt blades were often used to inflict this marks on the faces or bodies of children. A dark pigment may be applied to the cut to create a more beautifully pigmented scarring and prevent infections. Tattoos are a modification of these tribal marks. They used the same procedure of carving the layers of the skin to leave lines or in the case of tattoos drawings of animals, men or even inscriptions.
Africans also used hair as a way to express beauty. Hair could represent a person’s tribe, spirituality and family background. From the 15th century, a person’s hair could tell their age, financial status, their rank on the social hierarchy of a community or tribe. To represent royalty, elaborate hairstyles were worn. During mourning, hair left alone to wit. It signified the state of things. Thick, long hair was considered a symbol of fertility and clean hair symbolized a women’s ability to bear healthy children.
In Africa, Spirituality is one thing that is infused in everything. Hair was seen as a tool for divine communication because it is the part of the body that is closest to the gods. It is why hair was only ever manipulated by close family members because it was believed that if strands of your hair fell into the hands of your enemies, they could invoke harm to you. Like tribal marks, hairstyles and their meanings varied from tribe to tribe.
The Fulani women had five long braids that hang on the sides of their faces with a big braid in the middle of their heads. Sometimes, beads and cowries are used to adorn these braids. Some family had special silver coins that were sometimes used to adorn the hair. It was an expression of heritage. Meanwhile, in Himba of Namibia, the women styled their hair using a mix of ground ochre, goat hair, and butter. This formed locs that varied from woman to woman. A teenage girl can have her dreads hanging above her eyes but a young lady ready to get married ties her locs back. It was easier to see her face like this. When these women got married they wore an Erembe headdress- made from animal skin over their heads. Men were not left out in the hairstyling culture of Himba. Unmarried men wore their hair in single plaits to tell women that they were ready to be cuffed and when they got married they were to cover their heads with turbans, never to be taken of, except during funerals.
Similar to Himba, Afar of Ethiopia people locked their hair with butter. This butter protect the hair from damage the sun causes and gives it an ashy appearance that is an actual vibe.
The Mumuhuila women of Angola have a different perspective to hairstyling and beauty. The women coat their hair in oncula, a red paste made of grinded red stone. Sometimes they mix oncula with oil, tree barks, dried cow dung and a variety of herbs. The hair is adorned with beads and sometimes dried food. Their foreheads were shaved because it was considered to be beautiful. They also wore dreadlocks, which is called nontombi. Women usually wear four to six nontombi on her head but they wore three, it meant that someone had passed away in their family. Hair was a way to communicate without having to say words.
Dreadlocks as a hairstyle, has been around for as long as African hair has existed. It is so sad how disconnected with our roots we are as a country and a continent that they are often considered dirty, unkempt, or evil. Really? Given the times, knowing that a large part of our culture was eroded by colonization is not an excuse to make such statements. Even in the bible, Samson wore his hair in locs that held his strength. The audacity of displaying such ignorance. Well, that’s why JuJu is here.
According to The Encyclopedia of Hair, a cultural history, the priests of the Ethiopian coptic religion wore dreadlocks as early as 500 BCE. Jamicians.com attributes the origination of dreads to the massai tribe of Kenya. Their locks started from braids that were never loosened. The warriors in this tribe wore dreads that they sometimes red with root extracts. The Akan, Namtus,Peul, Bono, Galla, Oromo people wore their hair in locs. Only kings in Wolof, Senegal wore their hair in locs.
In earlier times, standards of beauty were unconventional in contrast with today. For example, the Massai women and men of Kenya wear heavy earrings made of stones or elephant tusks to stretch their earlobes. The wider the hole, the more attractive the woman. The women wore bright colored beads on their ears to bring attention to it. The Mursi women from Ethopia wore lip plates to signify that they were ready for marriage. To insert the disk, they must first remove two lower front teeth then a piercing is made to allow a wooden or clay disk to stretch the lip. In the same manner, as ear stretching, bigger disks are inserted over time to further stretch the lip. As the girls grow older, they take pride in carving out their plate, even adorning it.
As we dig deeper to find our roots, perhaps our perception of what is beautiful can be recalibrated to be more inclusive of our natural features, natural hairstyles, and native styling. Culture is something that we can create, face tattoos are nothing to gawk at in modern times, and the rave of freckles had some ladies tattoo spots on their faces, perhaps the practice to tattooing tribal marks will come back soon. Through tribal marks, without any shame, we can say this is who we are, this is where we are from, without once uttering a word. Isn’t that something of great beauty?
Art credit: Olusayo Ajetunmobi (@artofajet on social media)
