Allison Samuels Is A Big Fat Idiot
October 14, 2009
Samuels apparently takes issue with the fact that apparently the Jolie-Pitts don’t subscribe to the same hair tyranny that makes life for many little black girls a living hell of hot combs, relaxers, braids, twists and barrettes so tight they take your hair out. In the photo the child’s hair looks moisturized and well-tended, yet somehow Samuels has a problem with the fact that it’s not braided or up in twists, or in one of the elaborate do’s that mean a black child’s hair is “done”. God forbid her hair should revert or puff up. That’s what African hair does, and who says there’s anything wrong with it? Why is puffy hair somehow unruly, unless you’re enslaved to a European hair aesthetic. Sasha and Malia Obama have beautiful well-groomed hair as you stated, but guess what their hair would be just as beautiful out of braids and twists. They’re children for God’s sake! Why are we carrying this holdover from slavery and Jim Crow and trying to impose it on others? Ms. Samuels, your shackles are showing. And get this, she supports her bullshit thesis with posts from Media Takeout and other blogs. She’s supposed to be a reporter and this is where she gets her supporting evidence?
I am so tired of this box, this obsessively fucked up mindset that says that black women/girls have to have their hair “fixed” like it’s a fucking cleft palate. She’s four-years old can she not grow up believing her hair is perfectly fine just the way it is? Does she have to believe that her hair is a birth defect so she becomes like Tyra, a beautiful, talented woman who was AFRAID (her word) to show her own hair? Or like the young women/girls I knew when I worked at Job Corps who spent every dime they earned at some wig shop where they were treated like crap buying hair that no self-respecting Barbie doll would be caught dead in?
It’s time to draw a line in the sand, somebody has got the be Gandalf. Leave black women/girls and OUR hair alone. We are not zoo exhibits to be examined and dictated to by some crazy bitch at Newsweek. The unmitigated gall of these people just takes my breath away.
I read that article yesterday and it is ridiculous. Zahara’s hair looks clean, moisturized and groomed. It doesn’t have to be anything else. And AS has the nerve to say she wrote this article so Z wouldn’t have to be embarrassed when she goes to school with other black girls. Apparently the way to prevent embarrassment is by humiliating a little girl over the hair that grows out of her head.
Girl, you said everything that needs to be said. Samuels is a self-hating house negro. She needs to have her ass kicked for venting all her insecurities on the head of a little four year old I double-dog dare her to go back on that Newsweek blog and read all the comments. I’m not buying another issue of Newsweek until they fire the bitch.
[...] there you have it, and for further reading allow me to recommend Roslyn Holcomb’s take, and Gina of What About Our Daughters, who titles her post Leave Zahara [...]
Fucking yeah, Roz!. What a bloody, freaking, stupid arse of person, whoever the heck she is. Non-human dirt feces!
Like you, I’m tired too of this obssession and Roz, we’re doing it to ourselves!!!!!!.
Forgive my “French”. I too get real riled up with reading blogs and people focusing on this child’s hair as oppose to the wonderful work for humanity Angelina Jolie’s doing.
Co-sign 1000%, this is also a great post. I came here from WAOD. The “it doesn’t look moisturized, it’s dry” crowd kills me with their hair expertise. I guess a child’s hair has to be dripping wet, weighted down with grease, shining like the sun and then slicked down into submission to “prove” that somebody “styled” it.
Wow. It hurt me to read that article but it reinforces my belief that when I get married and if I have a daughter, I cannot raise her around damaged, hurting people who hate themselves and would project this kind of hatred onto my daughter.
People like this jackass who was hired to crap all over the pages of Newsweek are like mercenaries. With their poison pens they are paid to spread and promote misinformation, misery and, yes, death throughout targeted communities. I don’t know how these people sleep at night. Yes, it’s that deep.
And you made a good point about the racism angle on the part of Zahara’s parents. Since these poison pen-types believe they are the go-to experts on all-things-black, they think they can now show the white folks “how we get down”. She knows full-well Jada Pinkett Smith would smack fire out of her mouth in the streets if she disrespected her children like that, so they wouldn’t dare “go there”.
I COMPLETELY agree with you. It wasn’t until I was 18 that I finally accepted my hair in it’s natural state, and chopped off the perm. I’m so happy, because now when I say I love myself, I can actually MEAN it, because I’m 100% natural. I *wish* my fro could get like Zahara’s, lol=o) I am so glad that Angelina is letting that child’s hair grow beautifully, and naturally. My next goal is to get my nieces’ hair grow into lovely afros. My fave niece has pretty much a bald-fade, and that girl WORKS it. I love seeing natural hair on black women, and it’s past time that we accept and love our natural beauty.
Now my hair is relaxed and I hope I won’t be called satan because it is, LOL. But nothing is wrong with Zahara’s hair, it’s beautiful just as the little girl is. I have no idea who Alison Samuels is but she sounds like a ninny, who hasn’t realized that the best thing about being a black woman or girl is that we can do 50 million things with our hair including just keep it natural and we look good in all of them. That’s her mama carrying her and that’s her daughter and she can do her hair anyway she likes, cut it all off and make her bald as a cue ball if she wants too. Why would that be anybody else’s business. In the ongoing hair debate, which should have stopped long years ago but black women keep beating that dead horse. It’s her daughter’s hair, it’s your hair, do what you will with it, you don’t have to explain to anybody or give excuses. She’s a kid, a baby of all things and adorable and fiercely loved by those parents of hers, now in the realm of things that matter, hair is like really low on the list.
You certainly won’t get beaten up here for being relaxed. That’s the whole point; everybody do what works for you.
Allison Samuels comments stunned me, the little girls hair looks healthy and beautiful. That kind of low self-esteem and self hatred is pathetic.
Fug Allison Samuels and the horse she rode in on.
Thanks for your post! Check my Heart & Soul blog post on Chris Rock’s “Good Hair,” and read my story on how to attain and maintain good hair, i.e. Healthy hair no matter how you wear it, in the Oct./Nov. issue of Heart & Soul: http://www.heartandsoul.com/2009/10/good-hair-is-pretty-good/
Keep up the good work!