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The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend:
"a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."

He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior." (CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)


Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).

"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008



Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:

A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist."
(Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)

"A nutty lesbian blogger."
(MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)


Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush


who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
--"Joe"

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An Online Magazine in the Reality-Based Community.


Documentary on the politics of hair

by: Pam Spaulding

Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 14:30:00 PM EDT


I have quite a few posts on the politics of having kinky hair over at my blog.  In the past, people sometimes emailed me to say that they didn't understand how or why hair is political. After Don Imus and the whole "nappy-headed hos" mess, they got a taste of why it is very political. What the former radio talk show host did was touch upon the third rail of race in a way opened up discussions of matters not usually heard in public conversations.

Most black women know what it's like to have an arsenal of hair care products, particularly if you choose to wear your hair straightened with chemical relaxers. [Ironically, most of the Rutgers women's basketball team members had chemically straightened hair, which goes to show you that Imus reduced them to his assumption that black women=nappy hair=unattractive.] I had a cabinet full of "hair product" when I wore processed styles.

And oh, the dreaded hot comb. I am old enough to have experienced the "pleasure" of the thermal hot comb -- you rested it over the gas flame of the stove to heat it up. Then the pressing oil was carefully applied to your hair and that comb sizzled through the kinks till it was bone straight, hissing as you prayed the comb didn't touch your scalp. This is what black women did to emulate straight hair. I say emulate because all it took was water or merely a humid day to revert the hair back to its natural state. But that was the only acceptable style for the working black woman working in the dominant culture.

In 2005 I was interviewed by Heather Barnes, who was working on a documentary project on women and their relationship to their hair from a personal and political perspective. Her blog for the project, Hair Stories, is up and running.

The stories might relate to shaving, first haircuts, having long or short hair, losing their hair, hair and ethnicity, stigma about body hair (either too much or too little), and the cultural and social significance of hair in all its manifestations.
Here's my interview. She's intercut it with photos from my hair journey web page. When you watch it you'll see a tortured hair history in the school photos -- while I'm the product of two black parents, neither had kinky hair; it took a while for my mom to figure out how to take care of mine, particularly dealing with the humidity in NC.

Full freedom for me finally came when I decided in the 90s to toss out the relaxer and cut the dry damaged hair off. I wore a short natural for several years.  I began the process of growing locs in November 2000, a style I wear today. Free from the burning hot comb sizzling my scalp, curling irons, flat irons or other instruments of hair torture.

The status quo is still straightened hair, even though we see more natural styles in vogue now.  Black women are unfortunately still chastised by family and significant others not to 1) cut their hair or 2) let it be kinky. It's one of those "dirty laundry" matters that people don't want to discuss openly, but when you have such poisonous, enabled self-loathing, it needs sunlight upon it. Look at this ad. It implies that the woman got the job because her hair was chemically straightened. The self-loathing is so culturally ingrained, so pathological -- there is nothing wrong with our hair, but nearly every signal received by the dominant culture is that it needs to be "corrected."

The message is clear -- kinky hair is not beautiful -- or good for your pocketbook. And yes, it's still cause to discriminate (Judge Upholds Public School Ban on Cornrows; Dreadlock Lockout: The Dallas Police Department is firing employees based on their hairstyles).  We've got a long way to go.

Heather is looking for more hair stories, you can leave comments at the blog.

Pam Spaulding :: Documentary on the politics of hair
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Teri L. Jewell

Teri, an awesome poet and performance artist, had great dreds and when she died in 1995 she was working on a book about black women's hair that was never published, but I remember looking at photos and essays with her.

It would have been the follow-up to her anthology The Black Woman's Gumbo Ya-Ya.  We used to hang and she'd always have a hair story to tell me, like when sweet young things would come up and say, "Can I touch your hair?" and have their hands on her before she could get out a "No!"  And when Rastafarians would diss her for not covering her hair.  It went on and on.  So, yes, black women's hair is very political.

Here's a taste of Teri's book (which is sadly out of print) and something about her:

http://www.uga.edu/~...

 



"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

i am not my hair

funny, i can tell you that every asian american woman has a horror story of being subjected to a frizzy perm during elementary school or junior high in their mothers' attempt to create wavy hair with body. i recall being chased around the house with a curling iron before important events, and i definitely remember my first perm at the age of 9, where the hairdresser burned my hair, my eyes, and my lungs with stinky chemicals. but in a few months' time, my hair would revert to its natural state: slick, straight, unable to hold a style or a barrette. 

 

i  think women of all races should rise up and reject all forms of hair torture for the sake of conformity.



Oh gurl...

Believe it or not, I know a little of that pain...the pain of leaving a relaxer on yer damn fool white boy head for more than the very clearly written and spoken directed 20 minutes. Just a few seconds more left nasty scabs. Mmmmhmm! That shit is nasty. And it was "Just For Me"...the "gentle no-lye" relaxer for 14 year old black girls and 30 year old white gay men. Not the heavy-duty, this-shit-burn-you up relaxer my gurl Nisi told me not to get. 

Well, Stephen Dorff (who I'd like to play me in the story of me when I'm good 'n' ready) really had a great hairstyle in Blade, and in order for me to get that given that my hair used to get wavy when it got long in the front was to relax it.

Anyway, tried the Just For Me over the course of that year, and whooo, did it straighten. And burn. And scab. And flatten. And kill. My hair was just dead and lifeless the following half-year. Nightmare.

Hardly what I'd call "living the black experience", but well, I do what I can. 



Curses! My million dollar ideas foiled again: "God Bless Your Brand!" http://www.christvertising.com/

ouch
Man, how long did you leave that stuff on your head?

[ Parent ]
Oh...
That would be ~21 minutes. I guess you shouldn't walk away and read a book or watch teevee while the egg timer is running down. Next time I did it, I sat right next to that sink with the hand sprayer in my hand and waited.

Curses! My million dollar ideas foiled again: "God Bless Your Brand!" http://www.christvertising.com/

[ Parent ]
Hair is not power

 The sleek hair sytles of yesteryear glamor girls, Hayworth, Lana Turner, Marylyn Monroe, all had tragic lives.   The ones that make a difference, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, ect., didn't give a shit about how their hair looked.



Make alot of noise. Life is short.

Interesting project

Any kind of black hair hairstyle is fine-looking on the appropriate face shape and personality - except for that ghastly Koolaid RED RINSE. Save that for Halloween costumes or comedy revues, the only time adults over 22 are allowed to wear their hair in an unnatural color. ;-)

I admit to being impressed at the persistence of folks who grow locs to their waists. Unlike the braids, I assume the locs are the real thing.My white-girl hair just peters out at shoulder length - if I grew it to my waist, there would be one hair that long. 



Politics of hair

Yeah, this is a really touchy subject. My African American girl friends all have truckloads of horror stories about having to have the "right hair." And the family pressure can be really intense. I am always slack-jawed with amazement about the time, pain and $$$ they've endured in this crap.

As a white female, I only have had the "baby" version of this crap. Endless curlers and curling irons starting at age 3, moving to perms in high school, moving to streaking in my 30s. And each "treatment" burned the hell out of my head. What I can imagine regarding relaxers and the pain they induce literally makes my stomach turn.

The hair politics have lessened as I get older and am an out dyke. But even within certain lesbian communities there is a "politics of hair." (radical? Shave your head! Professional? better have Straight gurl hair). Bleh. At this point, my hair is short (for conveinence), and graying. Currently, the problem with dying my hair is (besides the chemical burn)... anything besides my natural color doesn't match my face tones. A dye job looks like a wig on me.

I long for the day when women just flush all the hair products down the toilet and celebrate and treasure what our ancestors have given us.



reject hair torture! reject all forms of torture for "beauty."

I long for the day when women just flush all the hair products down the toilet and celebrate and treasure what our ancestors have given us.

 

in other words, shake what your momma gave ya!

 

*Applause!*

 

 my girlfriend refers to her default hair status as "a jewfro." when we met, she used to flat iron her entire head every single day, which was time consuming and detrimental to the health of her hair.  and if it even became slightly humid, her curls would return. she would fret about looking "too jewish" (i mean, WTF?!) so one day i just marched her into a hair salon that specialized in curly hair and which taught curly headed girls to embrace their curls and accentuate them.

 

too asian, too jewish, too black?! i mean, STOP THE MADNESS!

 

hair torture is just one subset of self-torture women subject themselves to in order to achieve some bizarre waspy beauty ideal. among asians and asian americans it is common for parents to pay for eyelid surgery for their daughters, so their eyes will appear rounder. this is a VERY COMMON procedure. the surgery involves slicing your eyelid and then sewing them back in a way to create an artificial double eyelid. i mean, OW! OW! OW!

link: http://www.northjers...=

 

and my girlfriend tells me that getting nose jobs is common for jewish women. no one ever talks about this stuff outside of their community. 

 

PSA: don't hide your natural beauty. they are not flaws. they are nature's gift to you. work with it. (and work it!)



[ Parent ]
Even a white boy understands this

Yes indeed. All the popular guys in my high school, the star jocks, whatever, had straight hair.  Magazines and films glamorized it with models and actors with the "perfect" look.  I fell victim to this as well, thinking that I with my frizzy clown hair was somehow substandard.

Some of the most horrid class photos of me from high school show me with my hair combed a certain way to mimic those with straight hair, and it just looked fucking STUPID as hell.

Off to college I went and tried EVERYTHING to keep my hair as straight as possible.  Relaxers which burned my scalp, gels and whatever.  Once a guy showed me a crimping iron (for him with straight hair it gave him a slight wavy look which I thought was odd), but for me I was able to make mine straight for awhile.  After a few hours of drinking and dancing in a sweaty club, I'd return home horrified at my appearance.

I went through a phase where I just kept my hair really short and that kept the kink out.

I think I was probably 40 though before I finally gave up and decided IT DOESN'T matter.  Oh sure, I still use about 5 different products in my hair AFTER I shampoo and condition, but that's mainly just for control, not a total transformational change.  And I feel it helps condition my hair, whether that's true or not, I don't know.  But my hair is quite healthy for a 47 year old guy.  

Because my hair, when wet and combed thru, hangs about 3/4 of the way to my butt, I don't think going totally natural would make much sense.  But if my hair was shorter, I'd have no problems sporting a nice fro.

And when I see a black woman or man who allows their hair to reflect what comes natural, it's far more sexy and attractive to me than those who strut around with hair as straight as a broomstick.

 



Yes
I admit to being impressed at the persistence of folks who grow hair to their waists. Unlike the braids, I assume the locs are the real thing.My white-girl hair just peters out at shoulder length - if I grew it to my waist, there would be one hair that long.

regenix


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