Chimera Lesson #3: White Hot and Good Hair

Chimera Lesson #3: White Hot and Good Hair

 

Essay is worth 200 points and due as an upload on November 19.

In essay 3, you are comparing two works that address similar qualities of a chimera.

What is a chimera?

A chimera is an obsession or a brain hijack in which people pursue a false idea or a false principle that they think will make them happy, whole, and complete when in fact the chimera is a false substitute for what they need: real change of their inner character. Rather than work on building their character and virtue, they follow a chimera. For example, a guy with low self-worth thinks he can become a "somebody" by going to UCLA and buying a Tesla, but UCLA and Tesla are merely cheap substitutes for what the guy really needs, self-confidence. The examples I gave are somewhat trite and basic, but they clarify the notion of the chimera. 

To understand the chimera in more detail, here are some of its distinguishing characteristics:

1. The chimera gets deep inside our heads and becomes an obsession.
2. The chimera has a drug-like effect on us, intoxicating us and making us forget the real world.
3. The chimera is addictive. We will use other people to get our fix, so to speak.
4. The chimera never delivers, so we’re always disappointed. In this regard, riding a chimera is a hellish bipolar trip with high highs and low lows.
5. The chimera often becomes a substitute for basic human needs we have that aren’t being met such as power, love, belonging, purpose, meaning, creative distinction, success. In the case of Howard Ratner, he suffers from wounded masculinity and he seeks power in the black opal.
6. The more the chimera grows inside us, the more unhinged from reality we become.

The Assignment

Choose one of the following "Chimera Pairs" and write a comparison essay in which you analyze the causes and effects of the chimeras revealed in the stories, movies, or documentaries:

Comparison One: In “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King, Dexter and Hasan go on a futile quest for the Great White Princess as a way of achieving status and belonging. The Great White Princess is a racial myth or chimera that Dexter and Hasan pursue in the hopes of achieving status, belonging, and self-worth. 

Comparison Two: In White Hot and Good Hair, the documentaries address how cultural and racial ideals brainwash people into conforming to the “perfect look.” The white aesthetic becomes an obsession that reveals much about the racial mythology, hierarchy, and beauty standards that inform American culture. 

Comparison Three: In Fake Famous and LuLaRich, the enticement of the easy life--Hakuna Matata--and celebrification impede people from living a real, authentic life. 

Comparison Four: In Uncut Gems and Private Life, a black opal and the promise of a baby serve as a chimera for happiness, fulfillment, self-control, and status even as the characters’ lives unravel into more and more self-loathing and chaos. 

Comparison Five: The Millennial Lifestyle Dream: consumerism and working from home: Read Derek Thompson’s “How a Recession Could Weaken the Work-From-Home Revolution” and “The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy.” The chimera of the cool urban life in the digital age in which employees enjoy working from home, using Uber, and receiving gourmet home-cooking meals like Blue Apron seems to be more of a chimera or a fantasy in the face of the economic realities they face in a recession and a volatile stock market. Also see the YouTube video “Why Bosses Won’t Let Offices Die.”

Comparison Six. The Chimera of “The Dream Job” or The Dream Job Myth in which we study the following: Arthur C. Brooks’ essay “The Secret to Happiness at Work”; Tiffany Gee Lewis’ “The Myth of the Dream Job”; Cal Newport’s “Danger of the Dream Job Delusion”; Alison Green’s “Your Dream Job Is a Myth”; Jordan Peterson: Dream Job video on YouTube.

 

The Method (Outline)

In paragraph 1, your introduction, define the chimera and give a salient personal example.

In paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a comparison thesis that shows 4 common points between the two works you're analyzing. 

Here are a couple of examples of comparative thesis statements:

Example #1: 

The protagonists in Uncut Gems, Howard Ratner, and Private Life, Rachel and Richard, seek wholeness through a gemstone and a baby respectively when in fact their chimera quest reveals their emotional impoverishment, which entails a lack of self-worth, a sense of a squandered life, an addiction to "the hunt" rather than enjoying the present, and the sickness of comparing their achievements to others. 

Example #2:

Whereas Dexter Green's pursuit of The Great White Princess results in the squandering of his entire existence on a cipher and a chimera so that his whole life is that of a lost soul floundering in a private hell, Hasan Minhaj's similar quest ends in time for him to be reborn out of the ashes of his grotesque obsession and move forward with post-chimera wisdom. 

In paragraphs 3-6, support your points. 

Paragraph 7, your conclusion, is a dramatic restatement of your thesis.

Your last page, your Works Cited, is in MLA format and has 4 sources. 

 

Further Explanation of the Chimera:

Let us look at 15 characteristics:

1. A chimera is a seductive mirage that gets inside our head and feels so real to us that we love it more than life itself. 
2. As we pursue this chimera with greater and greater intensity, we at the same time reject the people around us. In this regard, we are like drug addicts who prefer our drug to people. 
3. A chimera is never real. It is always a mythical creature that fills our minds, yet it becomes for the person harboring the chimera the Ultimate Reality that casts all other considerations aside. 
4. Sometimes we can be afflicted with a chimera and know it, want to be cured of it, but feel helpless to do anything about it. In this regard, we are dealing with the realm of an incurable obsession. 
5. As our obsession with the chimera progresses, we deteriorate: We retreat into solipsism. For a short definition of solipsism, let us say we are afflicted with solipsism when the delusions of our imaginary self cut us off from reality.
6. When our brains are hijacked by a chimera, we follow an addiction cycle as acute as any narcotics addict in which we have highs and lows, ascents and crashes, a sort of bipolar life journey.
7. Some people pursue the chimera with no self-awareness, what is sometimes called metacognition. An absence of self-awareness or metacognition makes free will or free agency impossible.  
8. Sometimes a chimera hijacks our brains without warning. It’s an unexpected obsession that hijacks the brains of even productive, sane human beings.
9. The chimera is often a substitute for some unfulfilled basic human need like love, companionship, meaning, connection, belonging, maturity, independence, freedom, creativity, etc. A chimera is always a cheap substitute for the real thing. For example, the excitement some people have when they attend a YouTube Mukbang is the substitute for human connection, belonging, and intimacy which is painfully lacking in their lives. 
10. As the chimera grows over time, the person’s original sense of self fragments, decomposes, and becomes smaller and smaller as a new persona grows, typically an angry persona that resents not getting what he or she wants.
11. When people do acquire a chimera, they find they are not only disappointed but confused because the actuality of the acquisition pales compared to the obsession-fantasy of their imagination. 
12. Often people replace one chimera with another, over and over as their lives are defined by cycles of self-destruction without any self-awareness. The motivation for constantly seeking a chimera is probably an empty life, a life without meaning, or what Viktor Frankl calls in his book Man’s Search for Meaning “the existential vacuum.” The chimera is a feeble attempt to fill that vacuum.  
13. The chimera is an inflamed passion that grows like a weed inside our brains and strangles our powers of reason. The endgame of a chimera is insanity. 
14. Some people are freed from the bondage of their chimera only after long-term excruciating suffering that creates a crisis of such intensity that these people are forced to exorcise the chimera demon from their brain and start their lives from scratch and create a sound foundation that won’t allow for the invasions of subsequent chimeras. 
15. Many people live disconnected from reality and navigate their lives inside a hall of many mirror-like chimeras, which define their existence as a perpetual illusion and somehow they muster a facade of being productive members of society even as their souls rot deep inside. 

 

 

White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch

 

In this 88-minute Alison Klayman documentary, we see that CEO Mike Jeffries and his lieutenants impose a sort of white aesthetic on the employees and cultivate an “All-American Classic” or WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) old money look combined with chiseled abs to make “the rich white look” part of an exclusive club that all consumers should aspire to.

 

The “preppy all-American look” is code for white. And we’re not talking just any white, but a particular kind of white: old money upper class white. 

 

“All-American Classic” or The Rich White Club

 

The White Rich Club mentality informed company practices. They put idealized white people in the front of the store and people of color in the back. Work hours, promotions, and visibility were all race-based with “All-American Classic,” that is, white, being the company ideal, not just for the employees but as the actual marketing tool: consumers who buy Abercrombie and Fitch are gaining acceptance into an exclusive all-white country club.

 

Of course, admittance into some kind of White Club is complete BS, but that’s the point. It’s a chimera.

 

Colorism

 

Advertising leverages chimeras, and in this case, the chimera is based on aesthetics, race, and colorism.

 

What is colorism? Colorism is discrimination within the same racial group based on skin color, looks, and aesthetics. 

 

For example, Tyler Perry said his dad abused him in part because he was dark-skinned. 

 

In the white world of Abercrombie and Fitch, slender, muscular whites with the old-money chiseled look are in a higher-tier category than whites whose physiques are more corpulent and “blue-collar.” 

 

Class Hauteur Conflicts with Diversity

 

Abercrombie and Fitch not only exalted a very specific kind of upper-class whiteness and a slender muscular aesthetic, but they wanted to intersect race and class into an exclusive kind of club or what we could call snobbery. 

A fancy word for snobbery is hauteur.

 

To exhibit hauteur is to display an obnoxious sense of superiority over others. Based on “whiteness” and old-money wealth, the Abercrombie and Fitch aesthetic developed an ideal that worked for a short time in the brick-and-mortar shopping mall world of the late 90s and early 2000s, but during the rise of the Internet when young consumers became more interested in diversity and social justice, hauteur and racial exclusivity became repulsive and toxic.

 

Mike Jeffries was too full of himself and too drunk on his rapid success to see the conflict between his racially exclusive fashion brand and the world changing around him. 

 

Racist Graphic Tees

 

Abercrombie sold grotesque racist graphic Tees, which were supposed to be funny, but glorified racial stereotypes. They were highlighted by Phil Yu of The Angry Asian Man blog and discussed in Regina King’s article “How Abercrombie’s Racist T-Shirts Motivated a Generation of Asian Americans.” 

 

Exclusion was the Point

 

Abercrombie prided itself on racial exclusion. That was the whole point of its marketing chimera. It’s discussed in a YouTube video titled “The Incredibly Satisfying Death of Abercombie.”

 

What was cool became toxic. The backlash was intense and Abercrombie with Mike Jeffries at the helm would fall swiftly. 

 

Mike Jeffries is another uncouth business person who flew too close to the sun. His fall was inevitable. 

Zeitgeist and an Outdated Chimera

 

American youth were transitioning in the late 90s and early 2000s, getting away from conformity and having some adult figure like Mike Jeffries tell them what was cool to more inclusion and more individuality. 

 

Jeffries was so intoxicated by his own Kool-Aid, he didn’t even see what was happening to youth culture. 

 

Here is someone whose bread and butter is on knowing who is target audience is and he has no curiosity or inclination to listen to his target audience--their wants and their values--he’s only interested in his own personal fantasy, so being disconnected from his audience, he was doomed to fail. 

 

Writing about Abercrombie’s snobbery and fall from grace, Owen Gleiberman opines in his essay “Abercrombie and Fitch Review: How Youth Fashion Turned Fascist”:

 

The brand was unabashed in its insider/outsider snobbery, but the problem with it — and there was a major problem — wasn’t the clothes. It was the fact that not just the company’s advertising aesthetic but its hiring practices were nakedly discriminatory. Abercrombie & Fitch was selling neo-colonial jock chic infused with a barely disguised dollop of white supremacy. Like the models, the sales people who worked on the retail outlet floors all had to conform to an “all-American” ideal — which meant, among other things, an exclusionary whiteness. At an Abercrombie boutique, the text was: We’re white. The subtext was: No one else wanted.

***

Gleiberman continues to analyze Abercrombie’s fall as part of the crumbling of mall culture and the rise of social media, which would have no tolerance for Mike Jeffries’ racist employment practices and marketing:

 

Klayman shows us records of the store’s guide to The Look: what was acceptable for its sales people to wear and, more important, not to wear (dreadlocks, gold chains for men). The company employed very few people of color, and those it did have were mostly confined to the back room, or to late shifts where their job was to clean up. These practices were so overtly discriminatory that in 2003, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Abercrombie. The company settled the suit for $40 million, admitting no guilt but entering into a consent decree in which they agreed to change their recruiting, hiring, and marketing practices. Todd Corley, who was hired to oversee diversity initiatives, is interviewed in the film; he made a few inroads but in other ways was the symbol the company needed to try to change without changing too much.

 

***

 

Body Shaming, Abuse, Harassment, Assault

 

As Abercrombie promotes this chimera of idealized white youth, Victoria's Secret does something similar with its “Angels,” anorexic supermodels, an industry also rife with shaming, abuse, harassment, and assault. 

 

This is chronicled in the 3-part docuseries Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons on Hulu. 

 

Review the Downward Spiral of Abercrombie

 

• Mike Jeffries is drinking his own Kool-Aid, getting high on his own supply.
• Mike Jeffries is drunk from the rapid success of his company.
• Mike Jeffries enjoys dominance in a shopping mall retail universe while being blind to the oncoming Internet juggernaut. 
• Mike Jeffries is imposing racial exclusion on a generation that wants the opposite. 
• Mike Jeffries is creating a chimera of the slender white body, “White Chic,” to a diverse consumere base, which becomes more and more toxic over time.
• The toxic themes of racial exclusion bleed into company hiring policies and even racist graphice T-shirts, revealing the company’s racism and hubris. 
• The toxic work environment leads to harassment, abuse, bullying, and body shaming. 
• The company becomes so obnoxious, racist, and toxic that to see it fall is to enjoy a giant slice of schadenfreude. 

 

 

The Chimera in Good Hair

 

“Chris Rock explores the private mysteries of beauty salons” by Roger Ebert

 

"Good Hair" is a documentary about black women and their hair. Chris Rock, the host and narrator, is a likable man, quick, truly curious, with the gift of encouraging people to speak openly about a subject they usually keep private. He conveys a lot of information, but also some unfortunate opinions and misleading facts. That doesn't mean the movie isn't warm, funny and entertaining.

The film got its start for Rock when his little daughter asked him, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" He wonders how she got that idea. He discovers that some children even younger than his daughter are already having their hair straightened -- and that for children that is a bad idea. He talks to a great many black women about their hair, beginning with the matriarch Maya Angelou and including such celebrities as Nia Long, Eve, Tracie Thoms, Salli Richardson, Salt-n-Pepa and Raven-Symone.

 

He discovers that for some black women, attaining "good hair" means either straightening or using extensions. Straightening involves the application of products containing sodium hydroxide, which a dermatologist and a chemist describe as potentially dangerous to the scalp and even to inhale in quantity (your lungs might get straightened). Leave it on too long, and your scalp or face can be burned -- something that has happened to some of the woman featured in the film.

I imagine a good many black women would tell Chris Rock that having "good hair" simply means having hair that is healthy, strong and abundant. Why must it also be straight? Yes, many black women enjoy their straight hair, whether natural or by way of extensions. They look great. But often they go back and forth among hairstyles; that is the way of women, unlike us male clods who settle on a hair style in grade school and stick with it like Rod Blagojevich.

Extensions involve braiding long swatches of hair to existing hair. Think Beyonce. Where does this hair come from? India, mostly, where some women cut off their hair before marriage or for religious purposes and can sell it for amounts that mean a lot in a poor nation.

What about the hazards of straightening? Rock shows a hair-raising demonstration of an aluminum Coke can literally being eaten up in a bath of sodium hydroxide. It may help to recall that another name for sodium hydroxide is "lye." God forbid a woman should put that on her head! What Rock doesn't mention is that few women do. If he had peeked in Wikipedia, he would have learned: "Because of the high incidence and intensity of chemical burns, chemical relaxer manufacturers have now switched to other alkaline chemicals." Modern relaxers can also burn if left on too long, but they won't eat up your Coke cans.

The popularity of Afros in the late 1960s and '70s asserted that natural hair was beautiful just the way it grew (and was styled, cut and shaped, of course; Angela Davis didn't look that good without effort). Classic Davis-style Afros have grown rare, but another "natural" style, braiding, is seen all the time nowadays. Many black women and some men use braids and dreads as a fashion statement.

The use of the word "natural hair" is, in any event, misleading. Take a stroll down the hair products aisle of a drugstore or look at the stock price of Supercuts. Few people of any race wear completely natural hair. If they did, we would be a nation of Unibombers.

Black hair is a $9 billion industry. Rock plunges in. He visits Dudley Products in Atlanta, a black-owned hair-products empire, and is fascinated by the Bronner Bros. International Hair Show, an annual convention in Atlanta. Here a vast convention hall is jammed with the booths of hair-care companies, and there's an annual competition to name the hairdresser of the year. The contest is fascinating, not least because it seems to have little to do with actually taking care of someone's hair. Would you want your hair done by a stylist hanging upside down from a trapeze? Or joining you inside a giant aquarium? Showmanship is everything; one of the four finalists is a young white man who is treasured by his clients.

What Rock does is help create a film, directed by Jeff Stilson, with much good feeling and instinctive sympathy for our desire to look as good as we can. He asks direct questions, but doesn't cross-examine; he reacts with well-timed one-liners, and he has a hilarious, spontaneous conversation with some black men in a barbershop that gets into areas that are rarely spoken about. The movie has a good feeling, but why do I know more about this subject than Chris Rock does? Smile.

***

 

“Good Hair? Hardly. How Chris Rock Gets It Wrong” by Alynda Wheat

 

Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, opened Friday to mixed, but frequently positive, reviews. I’m going to take the painful stance of suggesting that’s because there aren’t a lot of black women in the film reviewing community. Good Hair is often funny, fascinating, and raises a few key ideas. What it doesn’t do is offer a cogent, relevant analysis of why black women relax their hair or wear hair extensions — which was supposed to have been the point.

Some background: Rock says he did the film because his daughter came to him one day, upset, that she didn’t have “good hair.” This apparently prompted the comedian to begin an odyssey that took him from the hair salons of New York City to a hair show in Atlanta, from Indian hair-shaving ceremonies, to the Beverly Hills salons that buy the Indian hair. But in all that conversation what you never hear are opposing viewpoints. Nearly everyone in Chris Rock’s movie seems to agree on a few critical ideas (that can happen when you limit your sample). Frankly, as a black woman, I sat through Good Hair with one dominant thought: Who are these people? Their opinions rarely represented my own, or those of anyone I know. I am but one voice in this vast, complicated community, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say something. Here, a few of the ways Good Hair gets it entirely wrong.

1. Black women do not want to be white.

Sure, you can find some poor soul who pops up on Oprah with deep-seated issues, but for the most part, black women are perfectly happy being black women. A brief history: The idea of “good hair” is one that, historically, has been fraught with racial stigma. For various reasons, black people who looked whiter, like their slave masters (read: frequently, their fathers) had advantages over those who looked more like their African ancestors. The preference didn’t die after slavery, however, in one sense surviving as the debate over “good hair.” “Good hair” was that which was easy to comb, long, and silky.

Like many cultural idiosyncrasies, the notion of “good hair” never died completely, but there isn’t anyone in the black community today who doesn’t see the term as dated, self-loathing, and patently foolish. There isn’t a black woman I know who sits down in a stylist’s chair to get a relaxer because she, as Rock posits, wants to look white. Not one. I have a relaxer. I have one for the same reason that I don’t wear makeup, don’t have a gym membership, and can usually be found in jeans and a Gap tee—I’m lazy. I like getting out of the house in a reasonable amount of time, and don’t cope well with a lot of hassle over what I consider superficial things. So why bother fighting my naturally nappy hair on a daily basis when every 8-10 weeks I can pay someone else to do it? Which brings me to my second point…

2. $1000 at the salon? Get real.

The actresses and singers in Good Hair freely admit to spending a fortune on their hair, which was expected. Wildly unusual was the handful of working-class women willing to pony up a cool grand to get a weave. Again, who are these women? The cost of relaxer varies widely, from, say, $50-$200, depending on what zip code you’re in, and weaves go up significantly from there. But no one in the working class (in their right mind) spends rent on their hair. Anyone who does has way bigger issues than what’s growing out of her head.

3. We don’t all have weaves or relaxers.

As I mentioned, I have a relaxer, but I have several friends and family members who don’t. And for every 10 black women I know, maybe two have weaves. It’s a common hair-maintenance style, but it certainly doesn’t extend to everyone. So before you assume you know what’s going on with a black woman’s hair, understand that we’re as diverse and varied with our style options as everyone else.

4. All this is none of your business.

Unless you’re really good friends with someone, it’s rude to ask what’s in their hair, whether relaxer or weave. We’re not anthropological subjects, and we don’t like being treated as curiosities.

5. White women do it, too.

Approximately 94 minutes of Good Hair is spent exploring ideas of why black women relax their hair (so damaging!) or wear weaves (so delusional!). There’s exactly one minute spent on the fact that white women do it too. White women frequently chemically treat their hair to make it straighter or curlier, and dye it so regularly they don’t even know their natural color. Does this make them culturally insecure? Hardly. Those “extensions” that lots of white women in Hollywood (and elsewhere) sport? They’re the same as weaves. Some may be clipped on or glued in, but as anyone who’s ever watched the make-over episodes of America’s Next Top Model knows, white women wear hair enhancements too. Which brings me to another point…

6. Women of nearly every culture want long, thick, luxurious hair.

For every black woman who’s ever wanted to look like Beyoncé, there’s a white woman who desperately wanted hair like Farrah. Long, fabulous tresses seems to be an ideal in many, many cultures, and black women shouldn’t be criticized, ostracized, or psychoanalyzed for wanting the same thing.

7. The whole idea of “good hair” is pretty moot these days.

If “good hair” is that which is silky and manageable, what’s the difference if you’re born with it or your hair dresser gets you there? In its natural state, my hair is kinky and difficult to comb. With a relaxer it’s long and holds curls pretty nicely. So do I have “good hair,” or not? Here’s the fabulous, freeing, culturally uncomplicated answer: I don’t care.

Look, I’m not saying that Good Hair has no purpose. The film introduces a conversation that’s so important, it reached the White House. (Check out the viciously racist commentary on Malia Obama’s twists, or the New Yorker cover with Michelle Obama in an afro and tell me black women’s hair isn’t a political issue.) But there’s rampant misinformation and theories that just don’t hold up. And no one ever seems to really address the cultural roots of Rock’s daughter’s question.

Neither the director nor any of the writers on Good Hair are women. It’s no surprise that a group of fellas got together and came up with a film that, while well-intentioned, just doesn’t get it. But tell me what you think, PopWatchers? Will you see the movie? Have some stories of your own you want to share?

UPDATE: I love the debate here, and please keep it coming! I just want to point out (since a lot of people are addressing it) that I have absolutely no problem with natural hairstyles. I don’t think of the word “nappy” as pejorative (as some people apparently do), and I don’t associate any negativity with natural hair or natural hairstyles. (There is, in fact, an actress in the movie whose natural hair I’d love to have.) I simply said that MY natural hair is difficult to manage. I don’t begin to suppose that everyone’s is. My whole point is that people should be free to do whatever they want with their hair, without feeling like it has some grander cultural or political point. Cut it, curl it, dye it blue. As my mother always tells me, “Do you.”

***

 

“Look but Don’t Tough: It’s All About the Hair” by Jeannette Catsoulis

 

When one of Chris Rock’s young daughters asked, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?,” the comedian decided to investigate the complex, often troubled relationship between African-American women and their crowning glory. He had no idea what he was in for.

Embarking on a journey that would take him from beauty shops in the United States to a Hindu temple in India, from a hair show in Georgia to a product-manufacturing plant in North Carolina, Mr. Rock unearthed a world of physical, financial and psychological hurt. But though “Good Hair” embraces the pain, digging gingerly into wounds both political and personal, the film feels more like a celebration than a lament. Spirited, probing and frequently hilarious, it coasts on the fearless charm of its front man and the eye-opening candor of its interviewees, most of them women — including the actress Nia Long and the hip-hop stars Salt-n-Pepa — and all of them ready to dish.

In fact, one of the happy consequences of “Good Hair” should be a radical increase in white-woman empathy for their black sisters. Whether in thrall to “creamy crack,” a scary, aluminum-dissolving chemical otherwise known as relaxer (what it’s really relaxing, observes Mr. Rock astutely, is white people), or the staggeringly expensive and time-consuming weave (often available on layaway plan), the women in the film bare heads and hearts with humor and without complaint.

For the Rev. Al Sharpton, though, that’s part of the problem. “We wear our economic oppression on our heads,” he says, wryly bemoaning the migration of the multibillion-dollar, black hair-products business from African-American to predominantly Asian manufacturers. Oppression takes on a darker hue, however, when the film travels to India to unearth the unwitting — and unremunerated — suppliers of all that weave- and wig-ready hair: poor, devout women who offer it to their priests in a religious ceremony known as tonsure.

 

Competently directed by Jeff Stilson, “Good Hair” employs humor as a medium for insightful and often uncomfortable observations on race and conformity. The film’s only misstep is its fixation on the competitors in a flamboyant Atlanta hair show. Far more entertaining are the barbershop conversations in which ordinary men jovially gripe about their honeys’ hairdos; they’re a brotherhood joined in financial commitment and — thanks to hands-off-the-head decrees at home — emotional frustration.

On a recent “Oprah Winfrey Show,” Mr. Rock ran his fingers excitedly through his host’s luxuriant, natural tresses, unloosed in honor of the visit. “I’ve never done that to a black woman!” he marveled, while Ms. Winfrey, who used to threaten to shave her head when she reached her 50th birthday, giggled delightedly: at that moment, she was just happy not to have followed through with her threat.

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Sample Thesis Statements

 

They must be the following:

 

Demonstrable: The information in the thesis generates body paragraphs or “reasons” for supporting your thesis, which will be the bulk of your essay.

 

Defensible: You can defend your thesis with logic, reasoning, evidence, facts, statistics, and credible sources, and as a result, achieve logos, pathos, and ethos. 

 

Debatable: Your argument has two sides; therefore, you are not presenting a claim that is so obvious and self-evident as to be fatuous. 

 

Sample #1

Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, promoted a chimera based on “whiteness,” a pernicious myth based on a fantasy body aesthetic or the anorexic “chiseled look”; an upper-east-coast WASP lifestyle, exclusiveness or snobbery, and a retroactive society based on a racial hierarchy. 

 

Sample #2

Former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries doomed his company to failure by unwittingly clashing his pernicious white mythology with a young generation that was repelled by social exclusivity based on race, economic class, and body shaming. 

Sample #3

For former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, the chimera of whiteness was all about cruelty: The cruelty of a rigid racial hierarchy; the cruelty of a rigid economic class stratum; and the cruelty of an anorexic body aesthetic. 

Sample #4

The documentaries White Hot and Good Hair successfully illustrate that  the chimera of whiteness is all about cruelty: The cruelty of a rigid racial hierarchy; the cruelty of a rigid economic class stratum; and the cruelty of an anorexic body aesthetic. 

Sample #4

Whereas White Hot is about the cruelty of the whiteness chimera and all of its contingent pathologies, the documentary Good Hair is less about the chimera of whiteness and more about how hair in black culture is a place of communal connection, self-expression, self-care, and big business. 

Sample #5

In Alynda Wheat’s insightful essay “Good Hair? Hardly. How Chris Rock Gets It Wrong,” she persuasively argues that black women are not chasing the chimera of whiteness; rather, they are embracing various hairstyles to celebrate black culture, communal connection, self-expression, self-care, and black business.