The myth of the curly-haired wild woman
In the Eye of the Beholder: The Politics, Culture, and Economics of Beauty
By Malavika Parthasarathy
As a child, I was embarrassed by my frizzy hair. I was routinely subjected to unflattering haircuts that bestowed me with the dreaded triangle-head. I would have done anything in the world for silky, smooth, straight hair and wished that it would one day magically turn straight. All those years ago, all the 'good' hair role models on television had straight hair — shampoos like Pantene, Garnier, and Meera Shikakai were special culprits.
It was not just on television that straight, smooth, silky hair was idealised. Friends were teased for having 'Sai Baba hair.' My well-meaning mother would rub my scalp vigorously with oil, brushing my hair fiercely yet somewhat hopelessly, trying to get it to behave.
A few years ago, I got a keratin treatment done in furtherance of my perennial quest for straight hair. In a matter of hours, I had my 'dream' hair. I couldn't stop touching it, amazed as I was by its smoothness. However, the novelty soon wore off, as straight hair did not quite suit me.
Now that I am in my mid-twenties, accepting that my hair will forever remain thick, wavy, and rough, I have begun to interrogate the larger structures that determine our ideas about 'good' hair. Why did I find my frizzy, otherwise healthy hair — ugly? Is there a link between institutional structures such as gender, caste, colonialism, and our ideas about hair?
Colonialism, patriarchy, and eurocentrism are responsible for a gendered and racialized construction of the ideal hair type as smooth, straight, and silky. Frizzy, kinky, or coiled hair is regarded as inferior. Women are significantly affected by these standards. As a form of resistance, many Black people embrace their curly, kinky, or coiled hair. This is not a recent phenomenon, with natural hair long-serving as a symbol of Black power.
Curls, frizz, and darkness are undesirable and especially treacherous on a woman's body. Free, voluminous curls indicate a woman who is at once both sensual and liberated — a looming threat to social propriety. European ideas of neatness, cleanliness, and elegance pervade our social consciousness. Eurocentric notions of beauty construct straight, long, and light-colored hair as the ideal.
In the Indian context, the colonial construction of ideal hair thrust towards denigrating the physical characteristics of natives seems like a reasonable explanation for why silky, straight hair is deemed desirable. This colonial construction intersects with the patriarchal emphasis on suppressing 'wild' women.
These colonial ideas intersect with the Indian patriarchal construction of an untamed woman. Contemporary depictions of Hindu female mythological characters associate 'neat' hair with chaste virtue and 'unruly' hair with anger, raw sensuality, physical uninhibitedness, and violence. In art depicting women in Hindu mythology, domesticated goddesses such as Lakshmi, Sita, Saraswati, Parvati (and sometimes goddess Radha) are pictured with hair that falls neatly down their shoulders. Demonesses such as Taraka are portrayed with big, unruly curls, while the goddess Kali's hair is voluminous, long, curly, and frizzy. Kali is closely associated with Tantric sects and is most commonly depicted on the battlefield destroying demons. She is a wild, sexual and violent goddess. Surpankha, a demoness who is unabashed about her lust for Rama, has similar hair.
Interestingly, the Mahabharata also refers to hair. At a crucial point in the story, Yudhishtira wagers and loses all his possessions and family members, including Draupadi, to the Kauravas in the famous dice game against Duryodhana. Dusshasana, a Kaurava brother, drags Draupadi by her hair into the royal court to disrobe the Kauravas. Angry and humiliated, she kept her hair loose and unwashed for thirteen years. She vows to tie her hair only when she can wash it in Dusshasana's blood. At the battle of Kurukshetra, Draupadi is finally able to achieve this when Dusshasana is killed. Loose, unkempt hair is associated with the humiliation of Draupadi. My googling of Draupadi initially threw up images of her with neat, combed hair, but some art depicts Draupadi post her disrobing with flowing, unkempt hair.
Apart from European colonialism and the patriarchal emphasis on suppressing wild femininity, could our distaste for loose, curly hair further be influenced by society's discomfort with all that is Dravidian?
Colonialism is usually understood in the Indian context as European powers' occupation and is characterized by white supremacist assumptions of brown inferiority. However, colonialism may not have been such a recent phenomenon. As per the Aryan invasion theory, there was large-scale migration from Europe to Central Asia and then to India thousands of years ago. The invading Aryans conquered the native Dravidians and pushing them to the South. There is some contestation among historians about whether the Aryan invasion did take place.
There is some contestation among historians about whether the Aryan invasion did take place. However, dark skin, a more common feature in Dravidian people, is regarded as ugly. Could our distaste for loose, curly hair further be influenced by society's discomfort with all that is Dravidian? Dravidian people are more likely to have curly or coiled hair. Certain tribes in India that are believed to be of African origin, such as the Siddis, have curly hair, as do the 'original' Indians, the Jarawas. There could be a link between the denigration of certain Adivasi features with our societal distaste for curly hair. While I have confined my analysis to gender and colonialism in India, factors such as caste, class, and regional variations play a role in determining our beauty standards. A closer examination of these factors will be carried out in subsequent posts.
Writing this post made me think more deeply about my hair. I remembered that when I was in Chicago, a Chinese friend had asked me how my hair was so thick and if I could give her any hair care tips. When I complimented her on her curls, she said that her hair was permed and that my natural curls were more beautiful!
Writing this piece and my conversation with her taught me a few things.
To paraphrase a famous phrase, beauty is political. Our attitudes to beauty are shaped by structures larger than us — patriarchy, colonialism, casteism, and neoliberalism — which determine our attitudes to our bodies. Perhaps the internalisation of these structures was responsible for how I viewed my hair.
I also learned that we sometimes yearn for unattainable things, becoming so fixated on what we cannot have that we fail to appreciate what we already possess. My thick, frizzy hair is probably someone else's standard of beauty.
After much deliberation, have I finally made peace with my hair? I think so. At the salon a few weeks ago, after my haircut, I asked the hairstylist not to blow-dry or temporarily straighten my hair. She was slightly surprised — did I want to remain a frizz factory? I smiled broadly, gave her a firm yes, and felt like a fierce demoness.
References
- Chante Griffin, How Natural Black Hair at Work Became a Civil Rights Issue, https://daily.jstor.org/how-natural-black-hair-at-work-became-a-civil-rights-issue/.
- Jocelyn Caraballo, History of Natural Hair and How it Reflects Black History, https://www.naturallycurly.com/curlreading/curls/history-of-natural-hair-and-how-it-reflects-black-history.
- Hindu Goddess Kali: Should You Be Scared of Her? https://east-asian-cultures.com/hindu-goddess-kali/
- Abhilash Rajendran, Surpanakha: Nose Cut and other Stories of her in the Ramayana, https://www.hindu-blog.com/2016/02/story-of-surpanakha.html
- Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri, The Guide that Explains How Leaving Your Hair Untied Brings you Sexual and Evil Thoughts, https://scroll.in/magazine/834091/politics-of-hair.
- Tony Joseph, How Genetics is Settling the Aryan Migration Debate, https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/how-genetics-is-settling-the-aryan-migration-debate/article19090301.ece.
- Khesraw Majidi, Norms of Beauty in India Fair is Beautiful: A Legacy of Colonialism and Globalization, http://thelionandthehunter.org/norms-of-beauty-in-india-fair-is-beautiful-a-legacy-of-colonialism-and-globalization/.
About the Author
Malavika (she/her) is a lawyer and researcher based in Bangalore. She is an Associate Editor at the Supreme Court Observer and is a graduate of the University of Chicago and National Law University Delhi. She has worked in the areas of judicial reforms, criminal law, and reproductive justice. She is currently the recipient of the National Gender Fellowship on Labour and the Digital Economy, where she is studying how Indian social media influencers engage with platform capitalism to attain financial independence and autonomy. In her spare time, she likes to read, write short stories and poems and take photographs. She is also a pet mom to five dogs.
