Issue date: 11/5/09 Section: Features

Media Credit: Courtesy Chris Rock talks to participants at the Bronner Bros. Hair Show in Atlanta. The show serves as the setting of Rock's documentary "Good Hair," in which he explores the absurdities and sources of black women's obsession with changing their hair. [Click to enlarge]

While images of proud black pageant queens and '80s runway divas of yore are presented on screen at the beginning of "Good Hair," comedian Chris Rock recounts the day his daughter Lola asked him: "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" The question hit a nerve and led the funny man, along with director Jeff Stilson, on a trek across the globe in order to gain a better understanding of the meaning behind hair in the African-American community.

Billion-Dollar Babes

Rock uses the annual Bronner Bros. Hair Show in Atlanta as the film's main structuring device, which essentially serves two purposes. First, the audience gets an inside look at the remarkably strange and entertaining Bronner Bros. "hair battle." It consists of otherwise talented Atlanta hairstylists cutting hair upside down, underwater and in every other awkward position. The purpose of this competition is still, well, unclear to me since the work the stylists did in their salons appears to be of a higher quality. However, it's hilarious and a total must-see.

Secondly, it allows the funnyman to cut away from topics - such as some black men's preference for nonblack women because of the texture of their hair and the predominately Asian and Anglo monopoly on the black hair market - when he begins to get uncomfortable going any further, which quite frankly, he does too often in "Good Hair."

In the documentary, it states African-Americans account for only 12 percent of the population, and yet black consumers account for 80 percent of the hair industry's profit. Rock meets middle-class women in black beauty salons who are willing to spend up to $3,500 on a weave even though they have to skip rent payments to do so. What does this mean for blacks? Why should the community care? How can I launch a weave business because clearly I've been fooling myself with school?

Continued...

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