In today's installment of The Fro-Logues, I want to take you down a bit of a different path. A path that does not directly involve a transformation of my hair, but instead an appreciation for my hair's mythical capabilities. Instead of spending so much time comparing my hair texture to "good hair" - it's not straight enough, it's not long enough, it's not obedient, it takes so much effort, etc. - I decided to pick out the parts of my hair that I liked. I did so the same way I do just about everything else in my life nowadays: I created a superpowered origin story for my hair.
No, not like that bad horror movie Bad Hair which is just... it's bad, y'all. It's in the name. I haven't seen it myself yet but the reviews leave much to be desired, and quite frankly, I got enough hair horror stories of my own to fill an IMDB page.
Gif description: A Black woman says "Hold my wig" while removing her curly afro wig to reveal braids.
No, I crafted a narrative for my hair in the manner of a superhero. Because under the right conditions, Black hair can undergo major transformations like donning a superpowered alter-ego. And under the wrong conditions, your hair can become your biggest enemy, preventing you from enjoying life outside of your dorm room and chunking away at your self-esteem and mental stability.
Speaking of dorm rooms, I want to take you back to the days of wee collegiate freshman Jerica who was just exploring her wig options (another update on that coming soon, I promise). I was in a different city not too far away from home, but far enough from a hairstylist. I was the token black girl in my friend group (not intentionally) and sure I could have ventured out to find other kinky-headed peers to confide in, but like most of us in the high school cafeteria for the first time, I was scared that the cool kids wouldn't accept me at their table.
Gif description: Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls looking up with tears filling her eyes.
It's kind of hard to describe the feeling of being an outsider within the black community when you're nothing but black. I didn't have the excuse of being mixed or of growing up in a different neighborhood. If we want to take the psychological approach, I'm sure I could pinpoint a handful of circumstances that explain how I managed to grow outside of a "traditional black childhood" while still understanding all of the pitfalls and black mom mannerisms that ensure to this day, I don't let all her heat out of the front door or treat her like Boo-Boo the Fool. Somehow, someway, I didn't feel fully connected to the black community, and part of that ties into my relationship with my hair.
Growing up, we had perms, we had hot combs, we had braids - you name it. But these were all practices that I myself never had to do, others did it for me. So I didn't really know how to take care of my hair on my own when I got to college, hence the wigs. The wigs were, and still are, actually a really useful tool in understanding and expressing my identity. As I was one of the black nerds that got really into anime, the ability to change my hair at will was magical, especially since the tools necessary to transform my hair into an anime main character would not be the same process my more finer-haired compadres would undergo. What does this have to do with the superhero narrative, you ask? Well, my university was probably the ideal liberal arts school pushing you to find your identity. In fact, if you landed in the Honors Program, you were literally enrolled in courses about dissecting identity, namely: Who Am I?, How Do I Know?, What is Good?, and What is Power? And yes, these were really classes with real grades and if we wanted to keep enjoying those sweet, sweet Honors program benefits (hello, janky loaner laptop), we had to pass those classes. And what sort of projects does one need to complete in order to receive those class credits? Great question, disembodied voice who's reading this blog for some reason!
Gif description: a Black woman looks around then back to the camera and points to herself while asking, "Who me?"
One of the projects we had to do for Who Am I was writing a paper that explored how we explored our own identity, and then presenting a display of our findings in whatever creative method we felt properly conveyed who we were. One kid played the tuba on command, another kid built a giant plexiglass frame structure. The kid who would one day become my spouse made a multi-dimensional laptop out of cardboard. My roommate crafted a "Mad Hammer's Tea Party," patent pending, where she dressed up honey sticks as the characters she connected with. She had them attend a miniature tea party held by herself, represented as a hammer wearing a top hat fashioned from her pants cuff, since one of our major friend group bonding experiences were Tea Time Tuesdays Tea Parties that she inadvertently started. And I, you ask, dear reader? I became a superhero.
Not the hair-themed one I dragged you in here for. We'll get to that. No, I created two different superheroes in my lifetime. This one was NostalgChick, a supergirl who was able to adopt the powers of any pop-culture crimefighter she saw if the situation demanded it. All I had to do was watch a clip of The PowerPuff Girls or glance at a comic book cover of IronMan and boom, powers downloaded. For my presentation, I drafted an unfinished comic book origin issue, compiled a costume out of my dorm closet, donned my glow-in-the-dark party wig, and took my superhero pose.
The idea behind NostalgChick was that it was my nostalgic leanings that lent me the powers to take on the day. My weapons of choice outside of those powers were a giant crayon and giant scissors, enabling me to craft my own stories with which to draw power from. I could literally write my own endings to battles. But while I put an arguable amount of creative energy into creating this alter-ego, I can't say that I put as much energy into mapping out my villains. Of the three that I scribbled onto paper the night before this was due, I only had one strongly fleshed out, and that villain was Nicki Minaj.
Gif description: zooming closeup of Nicki Minaj blinking with her mouth open.
Okay, so not literally Nicki Minaj? I had a magazine clipping of Nicki Minaj wearing a pink wig rapping angrily into a microphone and I renamed her for my arch-nemesis, but it was basically Nicki. I had beef with Nicki Minaj because she blew into the mainstream around the same time that I started wearing my wigs, so people started assuming that I was copying her. I hated the comparison because I didn't even listen to Nicki's music, and I didn't like feeling like they were only comparing me to her because we were both black (okay yeah we both had pink wigs too, but still). I didn't feel connected to her, and at some level, I didn't feel connected to her music. Yeah, I like rap enough, but not enough to stand up in a room full of people - white or black - and say that I like rap. I just didn't like the association because it didn't fit my identity.
I'd like to extend my apology to vilifying Nicki Minaj in the eyes of my friend group, as I never really had the grounds to do so. Nicki, if you're reading this for whatever reason (seriously, how did you even find this blog), my bad, boo. It was more internal beef with myself.
I eventually came to terms with the fact that literally anybody can wear a wig and I didn't have to agree with people comparing me to Nicki. And I eventually grew my catalog of wigs to include more natural and less pop-star styles that people didn't even realize were wigs. But this was still just a fragment of my hair acceptance. Over time, I strayed from wigs and started seeking natural hair styles because the cost and upkeep of matching my wigs to my outfits on sweltering 90-degree days was just not worth it. But I still didn't have the haircare know-how to style my own fro. During a semester break, I enlisted the help of two of my hometown friends to test out a new style on me: Senegalese twists.
Girl, to say that I was feeling myself would be an understatement. And I'll get into detail about twists as a hairstyle in another post, as this is already running long, but the idea that my hair was long enough to be used as a whip, that it empowered me to not only take more unabashed bathroom selfies but to also put together less complicated outfits and leave my comfort zone a bit more was more empowering than a radioactive spider bite. At the time that I was realizing my hair's potential, I was also realizing the potential of superhero narratives.
I know that I'm a bit late to the game, and by late to the game I mean I should have experienced this in childhood, but I never grew up with superheroes. Yeah, I knew of them but I never had any collectables or saw any of their cheesy cartoons or played their games. The patriarchy didn't help since apparently girls didn't like superheroes until Thor became hot, but even my brothers didn't get the superhero treatment because the nature of their autistic interests did not involve superheroes. So I didn't have an answer to the age-old playground question: who would win in a fight - Batman or Superman? (I now know that the correct answer is Goku). I didn't get the caped crusader hype until college, when I chose to write my academically-mandated, six-post minimum blog about the need for more representation in Metropolis and beyond. The blog itself is lost to the sands of time, which is baffling to me because the internet is forever and I literally have files from high school history reports sitting in my Google Drive right now, but the inspiration to rant about the lack of representation in the pulpy pages was all that I needed to set me on my now graphic novel-obsessed path. The blog begat the forensics/debate speech begat the college history paper begat the college thesis paper begat the three senior thesis projects (One for Honors program, one for my art degree, and one for my history degree before I changed my major for the eighth and final time - don't judge me). And all of that eventually begat Lonnie Lockwood, a.k.a. Hairitage.
"Hairitage, a crime-fighting smart-mouthed tween with enhanced hair that can tangle up any foe. Hairitage is a brainchild of my culture, having grown up hating my natural black hair and how it seemed to always have a mind of its own. I went through my natural hair journey from big chop to thick mop and I’m still coming to terms with self-love. Hairitage is an attempt to create a character that black girls like myself can relate to and feel represented and heard while training themselves to also appreciate their natural beauty."
I pulled some inspiration from Static Shock, who had pulled his inspiration from Spiderman. A scruffy kid from the hood using their smarts to save the day and snap quips? There's a lot of overlap. But what I ended up loving about Static enough to devote my history thesis paper to him was that he looked like me. He dealt with the similar racial struggles, and he rocked a hairstyle that I hadn't had the balls to do. But he was also a nerd. He was just "black enough" to say the slang and try to hang with the gang, but he was also a straight-edge nerd who loved comic books and was friends with a white guy. I could finally relate. And sure, I think that I subconsciously pulled elements from other characters in designing Hairitage, from her ability to weaponize her hair like Sedusa from The Powerpuff Girls, to the Black Power afro pick that stands as her logo, to the Pan-African-inspired color scheme of her outfit, Static was the mold I was looking to fit. And while my friends will tell you how much I hate puns, I accept them in the context of superheroes because that's like half of their identity right there.
I can't pinpoint the exact day that Hairitage was born, but at some point, I sketched her out and fumbled through using Adobe Illustrator on my dying university-issued laptop to create her. And I named her Lonnie Lockwood, after my PaPa, my closest connection to my roots (while also nailing that alliteration requirement of comic book names). Every bit of Hairitage's narrative came from my life and my culture. The way she styled her hair would give her different abilities, her getting in trouble with her teachers for not wearing her hair in a "school-appropriate" manner, the way an electrocuted perm kit gives her superpowers... okay so it's not exactly biographical, but you get the idea. There's even a point in her character arc where she loses her hair, and therefore loses her powers and agency, and struggles to figure out her identity without it. Even her boss battles and background scenes would draw from real world scenarios and scenery that I came across in life. Before I knew it, I’d drafted her 8-page preview issue, written a 33-page first issue origin story, and plotted out much of her plot arc through six chapters in her narrative, which I’ve been holding onto for years out of fear that there wasn’t an audience for her in the mainstream and that I didn’t have the skill to bring her to life.
ISSUE #1 - THE ORIGIN
ISSUE #2 - SHAPING UP
ISSUE #3 - FALLING OUT
ISSUE #4 - TWISTED
ISSUE #5 - EXTENSION
ISSUE #6 - CHOPPED
ISSUE #7 - REGROWTH
Thankfully, there is a lot more representation in the media nowadays, but we still have a ways to go. (I've probably said that exact sentence like 37 times in my life). But I've been sitting on Hairitage because part of me feels like I could never do her narrative justice, and another part of me feels like maybe the time for Hairitage has already passed. I mean we've got so many Spidermen alternates that we've had like two major blockbusters about it and a video game. That's not to say that the world doesn't deserve to get to know Hairitage, but maybe she's not the hero we need right now...
What do you think?
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