Witching Hour x Fools: Writer Nichole Shaw
Nichole Shaw is currently the Junior Creative Lead for Off-Kilter Media, an inclusive arts and culture company that publishes three magazines: Off-Kilter Magazine, KIZER Quarterly, and Alphabetical Order. She is the Editor-in-Chief of VERVE Magazine, a digital magazine which exists between the space of newspaper journalism and creative arts and culture publications. In the past, she held the position of Opinions Reporter at The Daily Iowan and wrote informed opinions on important, newsworthy, and timely events to spark discussion from an audience from 2018 to 2019. Her mission in life is to not only find and create valuable stories, but to help others craft them as well—for the art of storytelling is a practice that must be developed to ensure those voices that must be heard, are.
Scroll to read Feeling Like a Stranger in One’s Own Home: Being Black (published in Verve Magazine), Mine, and Ashes to White Blackness.
Mine
When I was in the fourth grade, I was out at recess with the rest of my class. I was wearing a “tail” (ponytail piece), because my hair still hadn’t grown back from the botched cut a white European hairdresser made to my mixed hair when I was six. It was zigzagged in length, a chaotic mess of instability not because of the wildness of my curls, but because of the misshapen state it was in after those shears held by ignorant hands cut my foreign hair. My mother told me I always had to look presentable and my mimi told me that nappy hair was unacceptable. We had to uphold an image of respectability and class to battle those social images of the “ghetto” that people associated with our blackness in a white town.
Suppressing the wildness of your natural hair and portraying an image of conventional white beauty—straight and glossy—was just how black women saw hair culture should work in order to elevate ourselves within our already tight societal constraints. I learned that as a toddler, and I’m still expected by some family members to follow this unwritten rule today. It’s how black hair culture still functions today in a lot of ways.
What was more peculiar about that day at recess however, was that a white woman, who was supervising my class at the time, had the ignorant privilege and authority to walk up to me at the age of nine and ask:
“Is that your real hair?”
My momma always told me white people never needed to know anything about our hair, because it wasn’t theirs. So, I just said “yes.” Because it was my hair—I owned it. The woman didn’t say anything, but it was clear she didn’t believe me. Then she reached for my hair…
I was appalled and frightened, heart thumping in my ears. She was about to touch a piece of my being that me and so many other black girls and black women held sacred. She was going to violate the sanctity of autonomy we held over the one part of us we controlled.
When her hand made contact with my hair, she pulled off the tail in the middle of the elementary school playground, surrounded by children who just starred. And I, a little black girl, stood mortified and crying at the center.
I still think about that scene and have to remember it wasn’t just a political statement in a television show like “Dear White People” about the ignorance and bold entitlement of some white people. I have to remember that was something that actually happened to me. It still happens to me. In my classes, being swiped into the dining hall, studying in the library, working out at the gym—my hair isn’t safe anywhere.
“Can I touch your hair?” they say as
They touch my hair.
I used to give them excuses, convincing myself that their ignorance was alright because they were just trying to learn more about my culture or were curious about someone who didn’t look like them. Looking back on the experience now, as a young mixed woman, I confidently state that recess supervisor at my elementary school had no right to take that away from me. Not then, and not now.
In a world today where white people seem to be fascinated by black appearance, they take what aspects they like and want without considering the consequence of their actions, without considering how those actions affect the black community they’ve exploited. And then those white people reap the profits.
And black people are
left with nothing but the
broken pieces of
their identity and a small
semblance of the autonomy
they kid themselves into
believing they had.
Feeling like a Stranger in One’s Own Home: Being Black
An African student at the University of Iowa cut all of her hair off, because nobody could braid her natural hair. A black freshman relies on her mom to drive eight hours round-trip in order to get her hair done. A mixed, queer fourth-year shoves his earphones so far down his auditory canal it rattles his eardrum just to avoid the judgment from other black men in a barbershop.
They tell me this is what it feels like to be a stranger in the place they call home for now.
While their experiences are different, they tell me they want much of the same things: a space in Iowa City that welcomes black people, people of color, and Africans alike in an inclusive space that will service them without judgment. They want to be able to care for themselves, their hair, and not feel afraid—afraid in the sense that they don’t want to be a nuisance, afraid to speak up for what they want or need and be judged as a result, afraid to sit down and trust their hair with a complete stranger that is unqualified, afraid to walk into their classroom or job and be criticized as unprofessional and ghetto.
“After a while, I just decided to cut my hair off because it was just too much of a hassle to go on and find someone who can do that,” Fatoumatra Traore, a junior studying public health, said.
Traore grew up in Mali, a West African country twice the size of Texas, but she has citizenship here in the states since she was born in the states and lived in Des Moines. It’s ironic that her parents pushed her to go to school in the Midwest, telling her she would get more opportunities here, when Fatou was pushed to the point of cutting the majority of her hair off since Iowa lacked accessibility to hair care products and skilled hairdressers she needed. She followed that up by perming her hair straight to escape problems with general hair care and service.
Traore’s ink black 4C curls, tightly wound and too coarse to parse through with a traditional paddle brush, were hidden from passerby under an eccentric gray scarf, bedazzled with plastic flatback rhinestones. Covered for her Islamic faith, she said it’s a relief to shield her coarse coils from the touch of not only her own hands, but those of professional hairdressers who lack the knowledge and skill to perform African braids upon her scalp and charge outrageous prices for simple styles.
In Mali, Traore could go down the street to a neighbor or cousin’s house pay them $1 for African braids. She would get them done every two weeks. In Iowa, she chopped her hair to the scalp to avoid paying $60 for a subpar braid style that caused her embarrassment to walk around with. On top of AWOL hairdressers and salons that can perform the hairstyle she needs to protect her fragile coils, Traore brought most of the hair products she needs from Africa, because Iowa doesn’t provide what she needs to simply maintain a part of her body.
Lack of accessibility to hair care products and salon service doesn’t just affect Traore—it affects other people of color like University of Iowa freshman Lauren Mason who studies computer science and engineering. A black woman from Romeoville, a southwest Chicago suburb, Mason struggles to find adequate accessibility to specific hair care products and hairdresser service in Iowa City for her 4B hair type. Wiry and fragile, Mason’s hair requires delicate maintenance and a plethora of creams and oil solutions to protect her z-shaped curls.
“I struggle mostly with maintenance,” Mason said. “You can try to go to a salon around here. But they don’t know how to take care of your hair. And you don’t want to have them mess it up—I grew [my hair] out for how long? I ain’t having my hair messed up.”
Mason wears a crochet wig in the meantime, going home once a month to get her hair done. All her trips home are planned for the pure purpose of getting hair care products and meeting with her hairdresser to ensure her hair is properly taken care of. The round-trip amounts to eight hours of travel by car, but it’s a necessity for her because the resources in Iowa City are slim to none, with the occasional exception of CVS Pharmacy carrying the conditioner she uses.
When she walks into Target hoping they have what she needs, she’s always struck by how “Other” she is. The company has a small section, usually at the end of the aisle with one shelf, labeled “Ethnic Hair Care.” When she looks to the right, she sees the two aisles full of the hair care products that aren’t identified as “Ethnic” but just “Hair Care” for white people. It’s a slap in the face that reminds her just how different she is from the majority of people in the Midwest.
Over the summer, Mason tried walking into a traditional hair salon in Wal-Mart, one that doesn’t cater to black clients, to get her hair done. When she approached one of the free hairdressers, a white woman, they pointed her to the only other black person in the salon without saying anything, dismissing her and handing her off as a problem to someone else who could deal with her.
“I did it once,” Mason said. “I will never do it again.”
Her experience echoes that of a mixed, queer student named Philip Runia, a senior at the university studying journalism and art. The light catches a bald spot in his fade, the chestnut curlicues atop his head swirling as though a calligraphy pen styled them. It’s from his childhood. His white mother tried to do his hair as a kid and ended up giving him a bald spot that never grew back from possible damage to the follicles, forcing him to wear a buzz cut from elementary school to his sophomore year of college. He sipped on a chai as he told me about the incommodious nature of barber shops in Iowa City and the general Midwest.
“Whenever I go to a barber shop, I kid you not, they’re always talking about like girls and p*ssies,” Runia said. “And so, every time I go there, I just put my headphones in, and I always subconsciously deepen my voice and start mumbling. I’m so quiet there, because I don’t feel accepted.”
It’s a multiplicity thing. Runia struggles in that space not only as a mixed person, but a queer person. He hears people code switch when they talk to him—using their “white voice.”
And it hurts him, because he wishes they didn’t think they had to do that. It makes him an outsider inside of his own community, feeling like a stranger inside the place he calls home.
Ashes to White Blackness
The wind blows over and through my kinky curls. I find it hard to control the chaos that is my head, both inside and out. My scalp prickles with the ogling of passersby and the occasional glance thrown over a shoulder at either my hair or my ass.
Are you fetishized?
My hands are shaking. I feel like a balloon held down by a weight. Fierce light rushes through my veins and I'm left woozy with a dry taste in my mouth. I think it's the fear.
I am organic today, organically Black.
I escaped the darkness of Blackness.
I am shapeless,
Virtuous.
What to pack whenever you leave your home for a night:
Straightener (a tool used to eradicate nappy curls in order to remain in ordinance with White presentation)
Anti-frizz moose (a serum that kills the curls of my ancestors)
A comb and thick-bristled brush (to separate any strands of unity my culture might ever have)
Extensions (imported from India because of their "realness")
Clothes (Black to hide my curves)
Bath Accessories (haircap, ORS Olive Oil shampoo and conditioner—because god forbid you use Pantene or some other White hair product, toothbrush, toothpaste, body wash—for your sensitivity, etc.)
Keys, identification, credit cards, spare change, cellphone, cellphone charger
"I never would've known you were Black by the way you act."
I see a parking lot full of Porsche Capri minivans and White Range Rovers. Ah yes, this is my home bittersweet home. I sure don't miss it. I'm reminded of the unhappiness of living a life of underprivilege. I cry in my jasper green metallic, 1999 Buick Regal, pulling up to the gravel driveway of my so-called home. Looming over my left is the neighbors four-story, stone mansion. I wipe my tears and wave hello, smearing a smile on my face. My lips crack. Blood drips down my chin.
What's a Black girl without the weight of Whiteness?
"How are you?" the pleasant neighbor, the one that owns the mansion, says. She once gave me a hundred dollars for graduation. I had never talked to her before then. She seems ignorantly privileged nice.
"I'm good," I spit say. I resent appreciate her obliviousness politeness. The blood has dried.
This hurt is worse than the one when I burned my hand on a curling iron.
Naperville is a town in Illinois, a boujee part of the western Chicago suburbs, and my hometown. It’s where I grew up. It’s where I got tied in a jump rope for looking different from the other White kids. It’s where every “popular” girl was a skinny, basic White girl with no texture to her hair, except for the occasional beach wave.
Naperville is also where my Black family is. It’s where chocolate momma would drive me to gramma mimi’s to watch her put tracks of hair into her head. It’s where I would get a hug and a cone of ice cream from Dairy Queen if I sat still while they temporarily permed my hair with chemical relaxers—so I wouldn’t cry anymore when I came home from school after getting tied up in jump ropes (Don’t worry. My mom talked to the mother of that girl who tied me up in a jump rope. I never saw that girl or her mom ever again. I think it was because the other mother was so scared of my Chocolate Momma after seeing the blazing anger from someone disrespecting her Black kid).
Naperville championed inclusivity, but that didn’t mean it always has. I was subject to countless fondling, touching, squeezing, molding, poking, and staring of my Black hair. I think it was some fascination others had. They didn’t understand it, so they invited themselves to try. But I didn’t give them permission to touch me, to touch my Black hair.
“Your hair is so fluffy. It’s so cool. How do you handle it?”
Are you ostracized?
My friend asked me if I wanted to use her Pantene shampoo and conditioner at a sleepover once. I didn't know how to break to her that I didn't want to—I can't—without seeming rude. "Sure." I'll just pretend I used it.
Am I rude for lying?
Pantene caters to the White population even though they have advertisements of Black locks with model Demi Grace. It's destructive. I appreciate the attempt, but it will never cater to my hair the way ORS Olive Oil or SheaMoisture does.
I must use "Black" hair products because otherwise, my hair will get dry, coarse, or become unmanageable—more so than it already is. It will still be dirty—to penetrate the layers and thickness of my Blackness, one must do the most, and Pantene is not it—and dandruff will still appear should a non-Black product be used.
Is it this hard to upkeep your hygiene?
I have a love-hate relationship with Heat.
On the one hand, it permeates my skin, consuming my whole being, warming me up.
On the other hand, it delves so deep into me, my hair frizzes up no matter what.
I love it when my skin turns dark, turns Black.
I love it when my hair turns curly, turns Black.
I hate it when my skin turns me out to those around me, turns Black.
I hate it when my hair turns me apart from my White friends, turns Black.
I feel like a zebra.
You know, the White and Black kind, striped with division, united in being. You know, the kind my great uncle saw when he lived in Africa and owned a temperamental Rhesus macaque monkey (the kind that likes to rip off the heads of White Barbie dolls).
Don't ask me who I am.
I don't know.
Heat swelters on the backs of thousands of
Blacks. They struggle within societal constraints,
Swirling around in their grief; hot and dark.
Dark heat drips down the back of their necks, matting Black to their
Scalp. They rage against the construct of
Race, Status, Gender.
He had a dream.
I have a nightmare.
Remember when I was the Jezebel, the Mammy, and the Angry Black Woman.
Remember when they told me how "cool" it was that my Blackness oppressed me—y'know, so I could pay less for college tuition.
Remember when they were jealous of my Black curls, so they pulled on them until my scalp itched with the prickle of restraint against their ignorance.
Remember when I was tied up in that jump rope in fourth grade because my skin didn't look like the other kids—too Black to fit in with the White; White walls, Whiteboards, White people.
Remember when they told me to be proud, because I was a strong Black woman, and then I went home and the salty liquid that secreted from my eyes dripped down my skin in the same streams the showerhead created, flowing down my skin like a babbling mess.
Remember when—
I can't remember the last time someone didn't look at me differently because of my hair, my Black hair.
Do you remember?
In 2017, Mystic Valley Regional Charter School told two Black girls they couldn't wear braided extensions in their hair because it was a distraction. Another Black girl was told her natural fro must be relaxed or chemically straightened if she wanted to return to school the next day.
In 2004, my mother plugged the straightening comb into our bathroom outlet. It burned my right hand when I touched it after she left the room to get the anti-frizz serum. Strangely, the burn didn't hurt as bad as looking in my reflection after my kinks went away.
A February 2017 study shows that regardless of gender or race, most people hold ignorant biases against women of color because of their hair and see it as undesirable and comparable to a sheep's wool. Interesting because the Whiteness of a sheep always made me feel as though they had something I didn't.
In the winter of 2017 and spring of 2018, I learned that sheep are dope. They're soft and resourceful and strong and vulnerable and powerful and...beautiful.
There's Black sheep too y'know?
Black History Month.
February.
Canada, United Kingdom, United States.
Each year, they rise together to celebrate Blackness, history, revolution, evolution, innovation, struggle, success, fight, resistance...
I celebrated this year, more so than I have any preceding year. I educated myself on the history of my ancestors like never before—not just Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, but Guion Bluford, Edward Bouchet, Friiz Pollard, Bessie Coleman, Madam C.J. Walker, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Septima Poinsette Clark...
I wore my hair out in its natural form for the first time ever, despite the hushed whispers mumbled at the back of my neck, or the hole on my left temple that was drilled by the glare of the kid sitting next to me in lecture. My chest heaves with the added weight of this Blackness. It felt terrifyingly awful. I felt entirely Black for the first time.
It felt right.
My coiled curls frizzed up in the humid air, damp with an impending rain. The very existence of my natural fro quite literally took up the size of a large mixing bowl in its girth. It’s loud and bold Blackness demanded attention from the man on the street who did a double-take when he saw me, the girl who quirked her brow at the wildness of my very nature, and the small child who smiled up at me two missing front teeth.
“I am dripping melanin and honey. I am black without apology”—Upile
Chocolate Momma said, “Why does your hair look like that!?”
It was the first thing she said after Facebook messenger connected our video chat. I was sitting on my futon in my dorm room and I had a few friends with me, although they were out of the camera frame.
“What do you mean why does my hair look like that?
I wore it out natural to embrace my Black heritage and our culture, mom.”
“Well I guess. At least you’ll only be wearing it for Black History Month.”
My mother means well. She’s an extremely generous woman and has struggled her entire adult life to give me and my sister a decent, relatively privileged life. She used to go without food for days, so my sister and I would be able to eat all three meals. She has sacrificed everything to give us a good life. But part of the culture she grew up in restrained her ability to embrace Black naturality. She was taught by Gramma Mimi to always have a presentable and socially acceptable appearance. “Never let them see you struggle,” she used to say. I suppose that’s part of the reason why Chocolate Momma was reluctant to accept my bold venture in the world of natural, unapologetic Black hair.
My hair is a part of me—it shouldn’t be controlled, shouldn’t have to be.
Natural hair was distant from the embrace of pride, culturally.
Perhaps because Whiteness was safe, and Blackness wasn’t, still isn’t.
I won’t let the system tame me.
"Oh, your hair, it's so...cool." That's what my old roommate said the first time I came back to our room after having washed my hair. She shook her shoulder in a sarcastic way—y'know, the way that suggests that person is better than you, and she rolled her eyes before flicking her shoulder-length, blonde hair behind her.
My chest heaved with the ache of regret and insignificance.
How foolish of me to come back to my room without taming my hair in a bun first.
"Thanks." That's what I said, even though I didn't mean it. It tasted like blood coming out of my mouth, metallic and bitter, like I had just swallowed broken glass, shredding my insides. Kill them with kindness, they say. They never said how bad it would hurt. I plastered on a smile and hid behind my lofted bed.
That was before.
Before I ever knew how ugly her ignorance was.
Before she moved out because her racist tendencies couldn't coexist with my colored ones.
Before I stopped smiling ugly lies and,
Started saying what's on my mind.
I don’t appreciate it when you don’t look at my mom or attempt to make any sort of conversation with her after she offers us snacks for the car ride. I don’t like it when you scramble to get in your car as fast as you can as if you can catch her Blackness.
That’s what I said to my now ex-roommate a month before she moved out.
She cried and made a blubbering mess of herself in an attempt to evoke pity from me. It didn’t work. I wasn’t going to be the polite little mixed girl anymore. I am a woman who won’t tolerate disrespect towards me or my family, especially if that disrespect is because we are Black.
You can cry all you want,
but it’s not going to change the fact that what you did was wrong.
Yeah, well I don’t appreciate it when you talk shit about me to people in the lounge.
That wasn’t talking shit.
That was telling my friends what you did.
That was telling them you left me stranded on Thanksgiving Break,
That you refuse to acknowledge my mom or give her the respect she deserves,
That you actually have been talking shit about me this entire semester to our mutual friends,
That you make an ignorantly repulsed face when you see my natural curls after a shower.
Silence.
I stroll down Madison Street, through the underpass of the railway, and onward.
My curls are tighter than they ever were, chocolate in color, Black in nature.
The wind sweeps through and messes up the part I had.
I don’t care.
People still stare when I stride into their line of vision.
People still ignorantly make comments or touch my hair.
People still look uncomfortable at my difference.
But I am no longer afraid.
I am free.
Nichole Shaw’s work Mine and Ashes to White Blackness have perviously appeared in Fools Magazine. Feeling like a Stranger in One’s Own Home: Being Black perviously appeared in Verge Magazine.