99% Invisible - 303- The Hair Chart

Episode Date: April 18, 2018

Andre Walker became famous for being Oprah Winfrey’s hair stylist, but he is also known for something else: a system that he created back in the 1990s to market his line of hair care products. The system categorizes natural hair types, and it's often referred to simply as "the hair chart." The chart identifies four hair types and within each of those categories there are different sub-types. The chart spans straight, wavy, curly, and kinky hair. For Walker, the chart was all about selling his products. People could use it to identify their hair type and then buy a complementary product. But the chart has gone way beyond his own hair care line and become a way some African-American people talk and think about hair. Not everyone thinks the categories are helpful, and some of the criticism has its roots far back in American history. The Hair Chart This episode is a collaboration with The Stoop, a podcast hosted by Leila Day and Hana Baba, which features stories from across the black diaspora.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Oprah Winfrey's hair is an amazing and ever-changing object of design. A quick Google image search of her and you can see it in a dozen different styles. But there's a consistency too. A brand, a familiarity. Like if you took Oprah's face out of all those Google images, so that all you could see was a series of pictures of hair You'd still know it was her and even though she's done weaves and braids and all sorts of styles She's also a natural meaning she doesn't use chemical relaxers to try to straighten her hair

And that's actually something Oprah and I have in common that's producer Lila Day from the stoop podcast Which is about stories from across the block diaspora. And since I'm a white guy with very little hair, I'm actually gonna hand this one entirely over to her now. Oprah gives most of the credit for her amazing natural hair to one person. This is Andre Walker who's done my hair for 18 years. And I've been through some really good styles.

And a couple of bad years. But right now we're doing the most of it. They've been through some really good styles. And a couple of bad years. But right now we're doing the most fun. They've been really good. You've done amazing jobs. I think it's a very difficult thing to do. And... That's why you need the same person. Who knows your hair doing it all the time as well.

Audrey, your job is secure. Andre Walker first saw Oprah on her talk show, A.M. Chicago, back in the 80s. I thought she was fantastic. And I was watching her show every morning. And I thought, you know, I want to get to know her. So I sent her some flowers one day, saying, I'm dying to get my hands in your hair.

Please give me a call. He didn't have to do much convincing to get the job. She called me the next day. And I'm thinking, oh my god, that was easy. Andre traveled the globe with Oprah, as she became one of the most important media figures in the world. And he gave her basically every hairstyle imaginable.

Chen Langth Bob, Barry Layard, and Spikey. That was one of my favorites, you know, Flippy. We did a cover with an afro on her magazine with this huge afro wig that was very popular. God, I can go on and on and on. But beyond Oprah's hair, Andre is known for something else, a system that he created back in the 90s to market his line of hair care products. The system categorizes natural hair types, and it's come to market his line of hair care products. The system categorizes natural hair types and it's come to be known as the hair chart.

Andre Walker hair takes your natural waves never gone for. The hair typing chart consists of four hair types. Within each of those categories there are different sub types. Types one is for straight hair. Types two is for wavy hair. Types three is for curly hair. Types four is for kinky hair., and textured hair. Andre's hair chart shows each type of hair drawn out and labeled. From bigger, loopy curls to super tight cork screws, you can actually cut off a small piece of your hair and compare it to the drawings on the chart to figure out which one you are. I'm what's considered a 4B, so I'm on the kinkier end of the curl spectrum.

And for Andre, it was all about selling his products. If your hair is like this, you buy this product, if it's like that, you buy this other one. Your hair will feel so moist and touchable, you won't know what to do with yourself. Obviously. I found Andre's chart after I decided to go natural. Like a lot of black women, I spent years putting chemical relaxers in my hair to straighten it.

It actually never even occurred to me not to relax my hair until I was living in Cuba where relaxers were hard to come by. And so one day in Cuba, I just decided to do the big chop to cut my hair and let it grow back natural. And it felt like a big deal. For a while, I didn't even know how to manage it. Sometimes I felt frumpy with my short, tight hair that I couldn't even comb through. I put on bright red lipstick and big hoop earrings, anything to get through what some people call the ugly face. All of this was a big change. Not just the hair, but how people reacted to me.

In Cuba, I went from being called Mulata, which is more of a mixed girl, to Negra, which is Black Girl. I.E. you look negra now. But somehow Negra didn't feel like a compliment. I felt pretty lost. So I turned to YouTube to find a community of other naturals. And there was Andre's system being referenced all over the place.

What is your caretide? That has to be the most frequently asked question. Forcière is a beautiful creation. You film me and it's most beautiful when you take care of her. The front portion of my hair is 3C. Andres Chart has gone way beyond his own line of hair care products.

It's become the go-to way for many of us to understand and talk about the texture of our hair. But not everyone thinks Andre's categories are a good thing. In fact, I'm not sure they're a good thing. But his chart has definitely got me thinking about the complicated relationship African Americans have with our hair. It's a complicated relationship that goes way back. that goes way back. Thick kinky hair was considered a sign of health and wealth in parts of Africa. But in America, skin tone and hair texture was used to divide enslaved African people. Light skin and straighter hair could mean more privileges, like working in the house and not in the field. This idea of good hair and bad hair all developed during

slavery. This idea that the straighter your hair was or the closer it was to white textured hair, the better it was. Ayanna Bird is the co-author of Hair Story, untangling the roots of black hair in America. And she says the common belief back then was, If you had straighter hair you probably had more white blood than someone who didn't have straighter hair. After slavery ended, these racist beauty standards hung on. In the early 1900s, some people tried

to straighten their hair by putting oil on it and then wrapping it with heated flannel. Mothers were even wrapping their children's hair, often causing burns and a lot of hair damage. There were even black churches and certain cities that would hang a comb on the front door, and if you couldn't comb your hair with that, then you couldn't worship at that church.

In the 1920s, hot combs were used to straighten hair, and then came a hairstyle known as the conk. You can see it on famous jazz musicians, like Cab Callaway and Duke Ellington. The conk was the name of the style, but it was also the name of the relaxer itself, which was made with a harsh chemical called sodium hydroxide or lye. And it essentially just kind of ate away at your hair and at your scalp and caused a lot of serious burns and they were not safe.

Some people made their own conks, sometimes with two white potatoes, an egg, and red devil brand lie, a combo that left many scalps bleeding. The conky eventually went out of style, but relaxers made with sodium hydroxide continued on and became more and more popular. The wash and set and under the dryer with a magazine became a very common image in Black Salons. But then, in the 1960s, something different started rising. We have come to register to vote and you must realize that this is a national issue, it's not a Selma issue, it's not an Alabama issue, this is a national issue. The Civil Rights Movement brought on the beginning of a new shift that was all about embracing

blackness, and this meant embracing your natural hair. My mom, aunties, they all did the big chop, cutting out the relaxers and wearing their afros loud and proud. This brother here, myself, all of us, were born with our hair like this, and we just wear like this. This is an interview from 1968 with former Black Panther, Kathleen Cleaver. For so many, many years, we were told that only white people were beautiful.

Only straight hair, light eyes, light skin, was beautiful, and so black women would try everything they could straight in their hair, lighten their skin to look as much like white women. This is changed because black people are aware and white people are aware of the truth because white people now want natural pig. They want pigs like this. Is it beautiful? Alright. Isn't it beautiful? All right.

Yeah. Yeah. That is beautiful. Natural hair and afros were everywhere. From the fluffy frows of the Jackson Five to white celebrities like Barbara Streisand, copying the fro. It was the first time that the relaxer industry, the chemical relaxer industry was really

taking a hit financially, and not as many people were chemically straightening their hair. Instead of straighteners, for the first time, people were seeing products that were meant to complement their natural hair, like afro-shine, which gave the afro a bit more shine and made it glisten like a halo in the sunlight. Afro-shine, afro-shine. Fine hair, pure products of versatile. Afro-shine made for all the ways we style. Even as afros continue to be an important style, in the 1980s, a new chemical hairdo was on the rise. Just let it shine through. The Jerry Crowe created a bigger, looser curl pattern.

It was a turn away from the political statement of the Afro. The Jerry Crowe was all about fun. So the ads really shifted away from having anything to do with black culture and community building and black identity and more to just neon colors and partying and all of the advertising for Jerry Curls more about this like embracing this fun, easy to go style. Although nothing about the Jerry curl was easy. Jerry curls were the most product, heavy hairstyle that I think any people have ever known.

Black people, white people, doesn't matter. Like to have a Jerry curl, you had to have all of that activator and ain't so much stuff. And you had to use it every single day. The Jerry curl was a very moist dry style. The activator that you had to put it every single day. The Jerry Crowe was a very... moist-dry style. The activator that you had to put in your hair every day was drippy and greasy,

and your pillow would be stained with it. Wearing a shower cap in public was quite normal. I know all of this, because when I was a kid, I had one. I had one. I had one. I had one. I had one. I had one. I had one. I had one. I had one. I had one. When the Jerry Crowe faded out, regular old relaxers were still in option. And I went back to a relaxer too.

Then in 2009, comedian Chris Rock produced a documentary called Good Hair. After his daughter asked him, Daddy, how come I don't have good hair? In the documentary, he refers to chemical relaxers as creamy crack because they're applied in a white paste. And even though they're toxic, some people can't seem to quit them. In one scene, he shows just how harsh the chemicals found in many relaxers can be. He meets up with this chemist who demonstrates how sodium hydroxide can eat through just about anything. Sodium hydroxide will burn through your skin.

The chicken is your skin. Okay. So it'll go from my brown skin down to the white meat. Right. Wow. Now you realize this goes in people's heads, right? Sodium hydroxide? Yeah, people, black people, black women, some men, you know, Morse Day, Prince,

put sodium hydroxide in their hair to straighten it out. Why would they do that? To look white. Okay, I'll put that in. I'm gonna try to keep it. You see how, is some hair come in tighter than this? This is like a maybe like a three, four. Feel it.

Do you mind if she touch your hair? That's Annetta Dinglesmith. And I'm with her and her salon in Boston, which amazingly is called Girlfriend Hooked Me Up Salon. Everybody was saying Girlfriend, you hooked me up. So that's how I came up with the name. up salon. Smith tells me that even though the Chris Rock movie brought up some deep rooted stuff that we need to talk about, it also did actually affect her business.

People used to come in every six to eight weeks to get relaxers. Some women would spend well over a thousand dollars a year on regular treatments and salons. Smith thinks the Chris Rock movie had an effect on all that. For a minute I was mad at her because you know why? Because it was affecting my money. Everybody started going natural. You know what I mean? So that did took an impact on me with me having chemical clients.

Because not everybody wanted to put their hair out. They don't want that creamy crack. Today, Black consumer spending on relaxers is down 30% since 2011. And this brings us back to Andre Walker's hair chart. All of these newly natural people are getting on YouTube for advice and discovering the chart. Unbeknownst to me, I was on the internet one day and I was in a reading some bloggers and they were referring to the Andre Walker hair typing system.

I'm like, did I do that? Is that the one I wrote about in my book? These days, all over YouTube, there are people referencing Andre's chart, which remember categorizes hair from one to four. One A being looser curls and four C being the tightest curls. So I'm just going to be braiding my hair so I can get my afro to be like rounded into the front. So there are videos on the best creams for a 4B twist out, or how many times a week you should wash your 3B hair, or lists of protective styles for your 4C hair, and at first I found this all really helpful and positive. I mean, it's great that more people are going natural,

and it's great that there's a system to help them to do it. But then a few people started noticing that even in this new online community of naturals, a lot of the videos were just reinforcing old bias about straighter hair being better. The videos often instruct women about how to go from very kinky hair to less kinky, straighter hair. So like from a 4C to a 3B without using chemicals. But still implying that straighter is better. You rarely see hair like this dominating hair campaigns, but you do see fluffy bouncy curly hair in all the hair campaigns.

There are people like myself who forcey hair that I literally cannot get my hand through it, so our problems are not the same. We should be given room to speak. There are people like myself who force you hair that I literally cannot get my hand through it. So our problems are not the same. We should be given room to speak. That's a post from Slumflower, a popular blogger, who makes a lot of straight talk self-care types of videos. People like ourselves do not have hair that grows downwards, our hair grows upwards. Even if my hair is a bit rough. hair grows upwards. It feels to slum flower and others, like online natural hair talk, is mostly about how to transform what we have into something else, something a little looser, that's not what our hair naturally does.

And they're using Andre's chart to do it. There's been a lot of criticism against a lot of natural hair websites that they focus too much on quote unquote 3B hair as opposed to 4C hair and that the tighter your curl pattern is and the kinkier your hair is the less represented you are on these sites. One woman I talked to said the chart feels to her like a modern day pencil test which was a test used in apartheid South Africa to figure out if someone was white or black. If you put a pencil in someone's hair and the pencil fell out, the person passed and was considered white. But Andre Walker says he just wanted to make a variety of products for different kinds

of hair. It wasn't at all his intention to create a hierarchy. People have asked me why did I label straight hair as number one in Kinky Hair as number four? I also asked him. But my answer to that is it's going from zero texture to highly textured. So going from one being straight to four being the kinky-yes. And I've had people that have been very sensitive about that because they thought that I was giving kinky hair less importance by putting it in number four and giving straight hair more importance by being number one.

But that just goes to show you how sensitive hair is, hair and texture is for a lot of people. It's true. It's so, so sensitive. And even though a lot more women are going natural, there are still so many who just don't want to. Maybe they like the way their hair looks straightened or find it easier to manage, or just don't want to deal with other people's reactions to their natural hair. Back at Girlfriend hooked me up here salon, the vet Moisa Sungga says she isn't the least bit concerned with Andre's hair chart because she doesn't want to go natural. I don't know that look I feel is not for me.

I don't know, there's just this, should I say fear? Or does comfort, you know, I'm not going, should I say fear? Or discomfort? You know, I'm not going to show up to an interview with Braids on, or a fro, or anything like that. It's, my hair is going to be as straight as it possibly can be, because as much as I like it or don't like it, we still live in a society where our hair is not accepted for what it is, And you have to play the game to win it. There is so much racism and colorism and years of painful history tangled up in all of this. It's deeply personal.

And for those of us who have decided to go natural, it would be nice to see the hair conversation shift away from how to change our hair, and more towards how to manage the natural texture we were born with. Because my hair is still a crown, no Lila Day decodes the proud lady symbol for us, right after this. So one of the things we love to do on our show is decode little symbols that you see out in the design world. And you're here to tell us about the proud lady symbol. What is the proud lady symbol?

So the proud lady symbol is the symbol of this black woman with these long locks behind her and her head is held proud. And you can see the symbol on the back of some hair care products. Oh cool. And I actually grew up seeing the symbol everywhere. I just thought it was part of all the brands. But it's actually not, it has a very specific point. Okay, what's the point?

There was an organization called the American Health and Beauty AIDS Institute. And they were founded in the 80s after a lot of black haircare products were kind of getting lost in the consumer market. There were big corporations like Revlon and Johnson and Johnson and they were sort of taking over the black hair care business.

So they created the proud lady symbol to let people know that it's a black owned business. Oh, okay, so what do you have in your hand there? So I'm holding some Lester's pink therapeutic conditioning hairdress. I haven't used it yet. I used to use Lester's when I was a kid. But there's the proud lady symbol right on the back

near the barcode. And yeah, it says in really tiny little writing, let me see if I can see. It says the proud lady, 100% black owned. Wow, that's great. Yeah. So to this day, do you look for that and make your choices based on that?

I never have, you know, and it was just doing this piece that I was like, oh, that symbol, I grew up seeing that symbol. So I went to the hair care store and I looked for it over and over and over and over again. And I only saw it on a couple of products, you know. So I don't know if it's obviously not used as much as it used to be, but I kind of missing that symbol. So if you want to make informed choices,

look for the proud ladies. Yeah, look for her. She looks proud. She does. Thanks so much. Sure. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, 99% of visible was produced this week by Lealid Day

from the stoop. Mix and tech production by Sharif Yusuf with help from senior editor Delaney Hall. Music by Sean Rial. Our senior producer is Katie Mingle, Kurt Colstead is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Avery Troubleman, Emmett Fitzgerald, Taren Masa, and me, Roman Mars. The stoop podcast is stories from across the Black diaspora hosted by Lila Day and Hanat Baba. It's conversations about

blackness that aren't talked about enough, like is it appropriation when African Americans wear African clothing? Or what it means when people say, you sound white. You can subscribe to this stoop wherever you get your podcasts. 99% of visible is a project of KALW in San Francisco in produced, un-radio row, in beautiful, downtown, Oakland, California. We are a part of radio-topia from PRX, a collective of the best, most innovative shows in all of podcasting. We are supported by our listeners, just like you.

You can find 99% of visible and enjoyable discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me, at RomanMars in the show at 99BIOrk, or on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But our true home on the internet is 99BI.org. Radio Topeo from PRX.