Talkin' 'bout good and bad hair

I have bad hair. I know this because whenever a magazine or television show makes over a woman and her hair has the least bit of curl or wave, the stylist always straightens it and everyone then claps their hands and gushes about how gorgeous she now is. Not like the trollish social-worker look she was rocking before.

My hair is a wavy mess that stretches ponytail holders to the point of breaking but it's okay because my hair is so thick that I can wrap it into a stylishly messy bun without any accessories.

I've been called Cousin It on more than one occasion, and I could strangle grown men with one strand. The picture at right is after putting in intensive leave-in conditioner -- and yet it still looks like that.

I don't go swimming unless I know I've got a few hours to spare afterward to undo the damage caused by the chlorine or salt water, and it's only remotely manageable on a daily basis because I discovered the black aisle at Sally Beauty Supply and stocked up on cholesterol conditioner and olive-oil sheen spray.

When I put effort into styling it, women fall over themselves to compliment me on how "lucky" I am to have such "beautiful" hair, but I'm going to be alive, at best, 80 years and I don't want to waste 10 of them with either a hair dryer, flat iron or curling iron in my hand.

In the black community, there's a constant struggle to achieve "good hair," which equates to the long, silky, poker-straight hair of white women. Well, white women other than me. In his new documentary, comedian Chris Rock explores the the insane lengths that black women will go to in order to tame their hair and to try to fit into a white society that has declared non-straight hair to clearly be "ethnic" and anything ethnic, of course, walks that fine line between exotic and ugly.

In May of last year, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo published an article in which the journalist said that soccer player Ronaldo had "bad hair" because he didn't properly style it before appearing on TV. A proper style would, one assumes, be one that denies his heritage out of shame and conforms to whiter societal standards instead of working the 'fro.

Yes, I know, there is no racism in Brazil (cough, cough), so I'm sure that comment had absolutely no racist undertones whatsoever and was an innocent jab at a celebrity. But when I was living there, I succumbed to pressure from friends who insisted I also had "cabelo ruim" and I decided to have escova progressiva, which is a special Brazilian chemical process to straighten hair that involves a mixture of battery acid, embalming fluid, cobra venom, and the tears of midgets that has been blessed by an Umbanda priestess.

Between the humidity and my hair's rebellious nature, the results lasted all of 3 weeks instead of 3 months, and I'll probably grow a tumor the size of a volleyball in 10 years because of it. By the time my friends started teasing me again and trying to drag me to salons, I'd met a Brazilian woman who had alopecia universalis and had no hair anywhere, except for a lonely blonde mustache that she was oddly grateful to have because, hey, any hair -- even bad hair -- is better than no hair.