Hair

“Hair” is an excerpt form The Autobiography of Malcolm X in which he describes his first experience of getting his hair ‘conked.’ The process of conking hair involves gathering various items from a pharmacy and grocery store to make a hair-relaxing concoction. Before conking Malcolm’s hair, his friend Shorty explained to him that it would burn his scalp and if he wasn’t sure to get it all out once the burning became unbearable, he would end up with sores on his head. After the the pain of a burning scalp had subsided and the relaxer was washed out, Malcolm looked in the mirror and was happy to see that he had hair “as straight as any white man’s.”  When he looked back on this experience however, he realized how ridiculous he was to have put himself through such pain just to make his hair look “white.”

Malcolm X’s hair conk shows how far people are willing to go to fit society’s idea of what is beautiful. More current examples of this are fad diets and plastic surgery. Most people consider dieting and plastic surgery to “improve” appearance to be something that only women do, but many men are doing it too. Fad diets, such as the Atkins diet, cabbage soup diet, or South Beach diet result in the temporary loss of weight from unhealthy eating. And once a person stops these diets, they usually gain the weight back, resulting in a constant yo-yo effect. People have become so obsessed with being thin that they will push their bodies to unhealthy limits, even swallowing tapeworms, to reach their “ideal” weight. Not even major surgery is too much for some in order to look younger or more fit. Breast augmentation, liposuction and face lifts are not uncommon for many people, if they can afford it. 

Painful or unhealthy practices to look “good” are nothing new to mainstream society. From hair conking in the 1950’s or tummy-tucking today, people will go well out of their way, and tolerance for pain, to acquire their desired look; or the look that society tells them they should desire.