White women are classified by their hair. So you’re a blonde, brunette or redhead based on your hair color, along with related features like eye color. Some of these features also define beauty. The standard is a blue eye. These are natural gifts. But there is an entire cosmetic industry that allows white women who are not blonde, the standard, to influence this feature.
Black women do not have these traits, and it is my opinion that they have other defining, lyrical traits. I have been concerned about the elite runners of color, particularly Elaine Thompson-Herah and Shaunae Miller-Uibo.
These women dye their hair gold, blue, green and purple as part of their athletic costume. Nigeria’s Blessing Okagbare, also an elite athlete, also engages in this sometimes, but this is not the norm for African women athletes. You don’t see that among Ethiopian and Kenyan women.
I have seen some local women, including on my way to Arima, with bright and dyed hair. So it must be some kind of fashion.
It is with the greatest relief that I have to say that my niece, nine years old, has expressed concern about this practice, referring to athletes.
Of course, these women are free to wear their hair however they want. They are world travelers, ambassadors and should have the freedom to express themselves as free people of the Caribbean.
I am also aware that I am an old man who has been out to pasture and should not worry about these matters. What do I know about black women’s fashion tastes and why am I meddling in their business?
I must be distant and out of place.
But I’m a conscientious man, something that stirred in 1970, and I think these women should know that their naturalness is good.
It’s not about softening the hair, which I understand, and for which there is sensible technology. It’s about clothing that I don’t see among elite athletes of different races.
Elite white women or women of other races come to the runway with their naturalness.
I am aware that cosmetics is a global industry because women of all races use them as part of their social presentation. For example, there has been demand among white women for an African skirt, and this has been the basis of a thriving cosmetic surgery industry, with JLo as the standard.
I understand why black women have to straighten their hair. It’s just practical. But this thing about a massive blue, gold or yellow wig bothers me.
In the past, there have been major globally important black athletes who have not seen the need to accessorize so much. Olympic gold medalists Wilma Rudolph and Evelyn Ashford did not address the suit. Iconic Jamaican runners of the past such as Marilyn Neufville, Grace Jackson and Merlene Ottey did not resort to this.
Nowadays, prominent black athletes like gold medalists Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela and Malaika Mihambo of Germany don’t resort to it. They decorate their hair, but not in a way that detracts from their expression of Negritude.
Now I am not writing here as some representative of the Emancipation committee, or as some cultural police. But when I see these black athletes going to such fashion extremes as yellow, blue, red, and purple hair, I wonder what if there isn’t something deeply psychological in origin that would cause their appearances weird hair?
What is it that could make these Caribbean women stray so far from what is the norm of the Caribbean streets? Does the black Caribbean woman feel that she suffers a kind of invisibility in the region, which warrants her when she has the world stage to go to extremes to say “here I am, I exist”?
I think if we look beyond athletics to entertainment, we see the same exaggerated self-presentation in the persona of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, who have transformed themselves far from the norm on the street. Unlike, say, Rihanna.
But then again, I’ve seen Rihanna in a costume, singing “Bitch Better Have My Money,” and she would make my late mother blush.
Or is it that these women are doing the exact opposite here, wearing weird wigs? Is it their way of asserting self-knowledge—that they are on top of the world? Is this just some kind of playful arrogance?
Smaller Caribbean athletes should not be seen in strange outfits and that is part of the answer.
There’s no point resorting to extreme clothing if you can’t get through the first heat at an international athletics meeting – if no journalist is going to come after a race to interview you, courtesy of the BBC or some other channel globally important.
It may also be that these Caribbean women, these elite athletes, are very aware that they are from these small islands here in our region and that on a normal day there is nothing of note happening here – nothing remotely world-class . So, once on stage, they perform the Caribbean, drawing attention not so much to themselves, but to the rest of us.
VS Naipaul had said that nothing important is created here. And there is a sense in which he is right. The region is not known for invention, and on the contrary, we may indeed be “copycat men” importing everything, including fried chicken and indeed, police commissioners. But the region produced it, which is strangely ironic.
Again, the region is known for masquerade, dressing up in costume and performing on stage and in the streets, parades and attracting attention. Junkanoo, Canboulay. Freedom. Jamaica, Bahamas, T&T.
This column has been cathartic. I think I understand Shaunae, Elaine, Shelly-Ann, Nicki Minaj and Rihanna better since they wrote it. I think I’m closer to understanding why they need to be “coskel”.
