Hair

Wherever I’ve been in Africa, hair is important, very important. Hair comes in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes: wigs, weaves, braids, locks or – occasionally – natural. With the exception of subsistence agriculture and childcare, I would not be surprised if the hairdressing sector is the largest informal employer of women on the continent, such is the frequency with which many women visit their preferred salon. Allied to frequency, the labour-intensive nature of African hairdressing, where it is not unusual to find three stylists simultaneously braiding one head of hair in a process which can take the best part of a whole day, necessitates high numbers of low-paid workers.

The sheer size of the hairdressing industry, and associated beauty care products and services, provides evidence for one of the great mysteries in life: the female budget. Exactly how women can afford the level of investment in personal appearance is baffling, but the results are, more often than not, spectacular. The premium price for human hair (as opposed to synthetic hair) has also led to another business opportunity. Most human hair is apparently sourced from China and India, where many poor women annually “harvest” their hair and sell it for processing, packaging and export to Africa and elsewhere.

Nor is hair by any means a feminine issue. African men, too, pay considerable attention to their hair, the general rule being the less the better. Certainly, most city-slickers sport perfectly shaven heads, requiring weekly attention, though a few free spirits wear braided locks or carefully-sculpted afros.

That’s not to say, of course, that this emphasis on appearance is in any way uniquely African. Hair, for instance, is so important in the USA that Time magazine’s August 2009 edition screamed the headline Why Michelle Obama’s hair matters. For many African-Americans, hair styles have become a subject for debate. Does wearing straight European-style hair compromise Black identity? Given America’s history, this is a sensitive subject, but one I think that does not reward excessive deconstruction. It is universally acknowledged that human beings have a strong desire to look different, to stand out from their peers, and that for many women this desire is most easily satisfied through hair colour, cut and style. I would therefore prefer to think of hair styles as a celebration of diversity, in which the issue is not really about loss of identity, but an emphasis of the importance we attach to the care and decoration we render to our bodies.

Regrettably, this desire can often cross the line into self-harm, either through obsession or physical damage. For white people, this is most clearly seen in the growth of tanning studios, where large amounts of money are spent on the privilege of exposing skin to damaging UV light for the elusive golden-brown colour redolent of tropical beaches and high incomes. Africans face different threats. First is the damage to hair caused by using hair-straighteners – either chemical “relaxants” or super-heated combs. Second, and much worse, is the use of lotions to lighten skin colour. Many of these vile lotions contain not much more than bleach and can cause permanent damage to facial skin with serious long term health consequences, all in pursuit of that same golden-brown skin of the tanning studio.

Liverpool Football Club’s most famous manager, Bill Shankly, once famously said “Football isn't a matter of life or death, it's much more important than that”. He could easily have been talking about hair.