Media picks up video of the girl getting her hair brushed !!!

[ajoyfuljoy]

This is the main story on slate.com and they linked to this article:

Beauty, the Brush and Black Girl Pain

How one troubling YouTube video brought out the screaming little girl in all of us.

• By: Teresa Wiltz | Posted: July 27, 2009 at 7:19 AM

Getty Images

When Black Hair, Child Abuse and YouTube Meet


How one troubling YouTube video brought out the screaming little girl in all of us.


teresa.wiltz
How one troubling YouTube video brought out the screaming little girl in all of us.
<p>How one troubling YouTube video brought out the screaming little girl in all of us.</p>


07/27/2009 07:19


At first blush, it looks like a familiar ritual in many black homes: A little girl with abundantly gorgeous, kinky-curly coils sits down with her mother/caregiver for a little grooming. Like most little girls, she’s none too happy to be participating in said ritual. So she lets her displeasure show.


And that’s when a harmless little ritual morphs into YouTube infamy, sparking a furious debate about black parenting styles and the difference between hair care and child abuse: We watch the mother/caregiver as she proceeds to “brush” the girl’s hair, pulling at it with a ferocity, yanking and yelling and telling the little girl to move her “god**** hand.” “I’m trying to get these f****** naps out of your head so you can look like somebody,” she tells her.


It’s hard to listen to the little girl scream. It’s also hard to watch her try to escape, and to watch her mother—if it is indeed her mother—run after her, pinning her down with her thighs, “brushing” her hair with a vengeance, cursing her the whole time. You can see clumps of hair floating about.


The anonymous girl’s big sister—who posted the event on YouTube under the heading, “My Lil Sis,” and “Nappy *** Hair 2,” films it all, laughing so hard that sometimes she can’t film straight: “America’s Funniest Home Videos!” she chortles.


Most of the viewers watching it on YouTube didn’t find it funny. It was flagged for child abuse, taken down from the site and then posted again. And then it went viral, cropping up on sites like Naturallycurly.com, Longhaircareforum.com and Cafemom.com. Some bloggers played detective, tracking down the provenance of the video and reporting it to authorities. (It looks like the video originated in Detroit.) Hell hath no fury like bloggers on a mission to save a child.


The video serves as a Rorschach blot for the female sector of the blogosphere, be they black, white or other: They see the little girl, and they see themselves. There’s cynthiarf, who posted her own reaction video. She saw unrepentant child abuse:


“The stuff that she’s putting into that child’s psyche is gonna be irreversible. I’m d*** near 40 years old, I ain’t forgot ****. …. It’s been a long time since I was 5, and I remember it like it was yesterday. … If you ever see this ****, say something. … I just hope this ***** is in jail.”


Then there are those who watched the video and saw a little girl with a little too much attitude, a little girl who, above all, needed to calm down and submit to the brush. Their mothers brushed their hair with similar force, so what’s the problem? Says beauttty07 who re-posted the video on YouTube after it had been taken down by site administrators:


“its just a trip how the girl is actin all that screamin and stuff and throwing stuff cuz she dont want her hair brushed the little girl is actin way over the top and the mother means no harm.”


Let’s just say that I disagree with that assessment: The mother seems to be getting sort of grim pleasure from the girl’s pain. There’s no reassurance: there’s no soothing; there’s no attempt to be gentle. When the little girl, who looks to be about 5, screams, “I want my daddy,” she is told, “You ain’t got no f****** daddy.”


Then, in another video—it comes in three parts—her sister, the videographer tells her, “You’ll be pretty, baby, again.”
As if.


The message she’s getting, the message too many little black girls get: Your hair is ugly; therefore you are ugly, too. To be beautiful, to “be somebody,” you need to have your hair smoothed into submission. There’s no room for spirited hair—or spirited little girls.


Some note that the anonymous little girl appears to be of mixed race and that her mother is dark-skinned and appears to be wearing a weave; therefore, the reasoning goes, the mother must be jealous and is exacting her revenge on the little girl’s head. We don’t know these people; we can’t ascribe motives to their actions. Their actions are troubling enough. A whole lot of psychological mess is getting played out in that little 5:46 video.


Hair is such a loaded issue for us; the legacy of 400 years of slavery and brainwashing, good hair vs. bad hair, wannabes vs. the jigaboos, yada, yada, yada. I’m not trying to minimalize the impact, because our wounds go deep. Really deep. I’m just tired of seeing it played out again and again.


Talking about it doesn’t seem to help. Books have been written about our issues with hair; Spike did a movie about it; Oprah’s talked about it; India.Arie sang about it; Chris Rock did a documentary on it; and we still can’t seem to get beyond it. True, in the blogosphere, there’s a whole natural hair revolution going on, with scores of sisters resolving to love the hair they were granted and documenting that love—and obsession—in countless videos, blogs and online organic hair recipes. (Part of the horror generated by the video is the fact that someone in the girl’s environment is savvy enough to upload a video to YouTube but isn’t hip to the fact that brushing kinky or curly hair is a recipe for disaster.)


But even beneath the love for all things “naptural,” we’re still stratifying and categorizing black hair, ascribing numbers to assess the degree of kink and coil, with “4b” being the ultimate in Negritude.


So we talk, and talk, and talk some more. Maybe one day we’ll talk ourselves into a healing place. I’m not so sure. Talking about it is akin to picking at a fresh scab, again and again and again. In the meantime, there’s another generation of little girls, little girls like the girl in the video, who are listening, and taking notes. And running when we reach for the brush.

Teresa Wiltz is The Root’s senior culture writer.






http://www.theroot.com/views/beauty-brush-and-black-girl-pain

 

[msa]

I have mixed feelings about the media attention on this. Somehow, I feel like it'll only feed the negative stereotypes.

Good article though.

 

[QueenHav]

Pretty deep...

 

[Mandy4610]

OMG....I almost cried when I watched that video.
That little girl will never get over that kind of trauma.
That was straight abuse.
WOW.......I can't think of what to say. That woman needs to be locked up and educated She did not even try to make it less painful for the poor little girl.
Unbelievable, just unbelievable.

 

[Mandy4610]

I have mixed feelings about the media attention on this. Somehow, I feel like it'll only feed the negative stereotypes.

Good article though.

I was thinking the same thing. No wonder people think us black women have no idea what the heck we are doing with our hair

 

[♦K.O♦]

Did someone from LHCF write the article? It sounds like everything that was posted here.

 

[ajoyfuljoy]

my bad mods about the cursing. I posted without reading the whole way through. I am fixing it now.

 

[msa]

Did someone from LHCF write the article? It sounds like everything that was posted here.

I don't think it was someone from lhcf. It looks like the writer did a good amount of research and read lhcf, naturallycurly, nappturality, and other boards/sites.

 

[Caramel Hottie UK]

wow, thats the first time i saw that video. Its sends a cold feeling down my spine. now i know kids can get a bit funny about getting their hair done but there is a better way around it. This is just going to make it harder for the mother to comb it again because the little girl is going to fear the comb. The poor girl is going to end up hating her hair as she is going to associate it with negativity, she is going to believe her hair is unmanageable. what makes it sooo much worse is the language this woman is using. I try my hardest not to judge but... This woman im guessing she could of have had the same thing done to her to cause her to resent her hair.she's unnecessarily aggressive

tut tut

 

[ajoyfuljoy]

I had mixed feelings about the article too. But we will definitely be getting an increase in traffic b/c this was linked as the main story on a MAJOR news site.

 

[HeChangedMyName]

that was rediculous. What exactly what the mother doing by snatching the brush through and over the little girls hair? If I were that girl getting my hair done that way, I'd act that way even now as an adult. The mother needs her head treated like that for a minute. Also with her language toward her kids it's no wonder the little girl is out of control


I wish I would have spazzed out like that as a kid getting my hair done. . . chile booo.

 

[ClassicBeauty]

Poor baby...

The cycle continues.

 

[JustKiya]

I had mixed feelings about the article too. But we will definitely be getting an increase in traffic b/c this was linked as the main story on a MAJOR news site.

She didn't link to LHCF, though, did she? I see a link to naturallycurly, but not here.

ETA: Oh, durrr, she didn't link, but she offered the URL. Pay me no mind.

 

[bablou00]

This video just made me so sick and I couldnt sit thru all of it. I dont care if anyone thinks that little girl had attitude or was acting out, that is a grown a$$ women who looked to be 150+ lbs bigger than that little girl. There are ways to get her hair brushed and that shouldn of been one of them. I know I had some unruly hair but my mom never acted like that!!! Just sad and I hope that little girl doesnt grow up with a complex about herself.

 

[Supergirl]

That was a good article IMO.

 

[naijamerican]

That was a great article. I especially like the point about the hair typing and how it can be used to assign degrees of "negritude." I believe that hair typing can be constructive with respect to determining which products to use. But I also believe that there's an aspect of it that, in the wrong hands/minds, can be destructive, reinforcing the "good hair" vs. "bad hair" mentality.

 

[msa]

That was a great article. I especially like the point about the hair typing and how it can be used to assign degrees of "negritude." I believe that hair typing can be constructive with respect to determining which products to use. But I also believe that there's an aspect of it that, in the wrong hands/minds, can be destructive, reinforcing the "good hair" vs. "bad hair" mentality.

And on that same note, there are a lot of little girls and boys whose view of their hair is being shaped by negative comments every day. No they're not as shocking as what happened in this video, but they're just as bad. Considering the way some folks talk on this board (and others), I'm sure they're doing it to their own kids.

 

[Reinventing21]

I thought it was a decent article. The only part that bothers me is this :

But even beneath the love for all things “naptural,” we’re still stratifying and categorizing black hair, ascribing numbers to assess the degree of kink and coil, with “4b” being the ultimate in Negritude.


I think people misunderstand the typing or categorizing of hair. The author seems to think that it is about "degrees of Negritude" rather than the real purpose of hair CARE. I always thought the typing was done GENERALLY for the purpose of finding out what works best for your hair and to find others with similar hair to you so you can revel in both its challenges and beauty. Case closed.

 

[runwaydream]

Good article. i like how she didnt completely bash the woman. in some instances i DO think that child was being a bit extra.
the mother could've went another way about it but when you know better you do better, when you don't you don't.
she was probably treated the same way.
and i really resent the fact that some ppl think her child should be taken away from her

 

[yaya24]

I think the article was well written. When I saw the video a few weeks ago, I was so angry. That mother was wrong PERIOD.

 

[venusd]

Good article. i like how she didnt completely bash the woman. in some instances i DO think that child was being a bit extra.
the mother could've went another way about it but when you know better you do better, when you don't you don't.
she was probably treated the same way.
and i really resent the fact that some ppl think her child should be taken away from her

ITA: I felt very bad for that child. Having four children and one daughter with very similar hair to the child in the video, I could only relate to the hair type, however, she almost seemed to enjoy it. I would never snatch at my daughters hair or continue if it's too painful. The mother switched from a brush and whatever spray and then when she took out the pick I was like come on lady. Why oh why do we do this to ourselves. I am aware of abuse of children, but to videotape it seems criminal. I see a lot of mothers in public cursing their children, then follow up with the all time fav. "I don't play", it makes my skin crawl to hear it. All I could think was, wow this little girl has no one there to help her, and man the little boy is next.. All I can do is pray for those I can't help.

 

[ClassicBeauty]

I thought it was a decent article. The only part that bothers me is this :

But even beneath the love for all things “naptural,” we’re still stratifying and categorizing black hair, ascribing numbers to assess the degree of kink and coil, with “4b” being the ultimate in Negritude.


I think people misunderstand the typing or categorizing of hair. The author seems to think that it is about "degrees of Negritude" rather than the real purpose of hair CARE. I always thought the typing was done GENERALLY for the purpose of finding out what works best for your hair and to find others with similar hair to you so you can revel in both its challenges and beauty. Case closed.

Unfortunately, one particular hair board that I tried when I first went natural did have that tone.

 

[nappystorm]

That made me want to cry. I'm speechless

 

[Reinventing21]

Unfortunately, one particular hair board that I tried when I first went natural did have that tone.

Oh wow, really? I have always been a LHCFer only. That is sad then.

 

[Soliel185]

I thought it was a decent article. The only part that bothers me is this :

But even beneath the love for all things “naptural,” we’re still stratifying and categorizing black hair, ascribing numbers to assess the degree of kink and coil, with “4b” being the ultimate in Negritude.


I think people misunderstand the typing or categorizing of hair. The author seems to think that it is about "degrees of Negritude" rather than the real purpose of hair CARE. I always thought the typing was done GENERALLY for the purpose of finding out what works best for your hair and to find others with similar hair to you so you can revel in both its challenges and beauty. Case closed.

It's true though. For some folks anything that "spirals" instead of "kinks" is not as natural as their natural. I think hair typing is helpful in that it gives me some examples to follow. If someone with the same hair type as myself has a good experience with a product or procedure, then I know that my odds of also having a good experience go up.

There are varying levels of outcry across the internet against things like "shingling" or the "curlisto" method b/c some naturals are adamant that it's just another way of people trying to make their hair "good" or "acceptable" We've had debates on this board about whether or not coloring you hair means you're no longer natural - or whether or not using Henna to loosen/color your hair means you don't really love it. erplexed

 

[Soliel185]

I have mixed feelings about the media attention on this. Somehow, I feel like it'll only feed the negative stereotypes.

Good article though.

Unfortunately - it is a stereotype for a reason. It came from things like this.

I used to HATE having my hair combed. I would cry and beg cheat and steal to avoid detangling. But I was fortunate that my mother may not have known much about hair, she wanted to keep mine long and healthy. She went out of her way to try to be as gentle as possible.

This little girl's mother is setting herself up for YEARS of these kinds of episodes. If you make something that tortuously unpleasant you think that little girl is ever just going to sit quietly and play with a toy while you comb her hair? Why are you ripping through it with the strength of your entire arm using a paddle brush and a few squirts of detangler? She could have done that job in half the time with way less trauma if she'd go buy a wide tooth comb and go through that child's hair in sections.

 

[MonPetite]

It's true though. For some folks anything that "spirals" instead of "kinks" is not as natural as their natural. I think hair typing is helpful in that it gives me some examples to follow. If someone with the same hair type as myself has a good experience with a product or procedure, then I know that my odds of also having a good experience go up.

There are varying levels of outcry across the internet against things like "shingling" or the "curlisto" method b/c some naturals are adamant that it's just another way of people trying to make their hair "good" or "acceptable" We've had debates on this board about whether or not coloring you hair means you're no longer natural - or whether or not using Henna to loosen/color your hair means you don't really love it. erplexed

This is very true.

Heaven forbid you actually have curls and give advice to someone who doesn't. Very suddenly you'll be "schooled" that you don't "understand their struggle".

Use AVC or baking soda on your mane and you're really "not there yet". You'll be psychoanalyzed by the nappier-than-thou.

It's amazing how even when trying to embrace who "we" are...we still manage to divide ourselves.

Back to topic:
I'm glad that the mother is getting NEGATIVE attention. I just hope she sees it as such. She needs to know this is not "funny" (which she clearly thought it was allowing her other daughter to post the video).

TORTURING CHILDREN IS NEVER FUNNY AND IS NEVER ENTERTAINMENT.

As for negative stereotypes...sadly, yes, this solidifies many. However, almost anything "we" do as women of color can do that.

When we don't...we're the exception that proves the rule.

This too shouldn't be accepted, along with that mother's behavior, but this one video isn't going to make or break perceptions that have been around for decades.

I find it more important to help this child, in the long run, IMHO.

 

[Jaxhair]

Pants! Why didn't she stop and do it gently? And why did they have to film it and post on YT? Even MY supposedly traumatic childhood memories of my nappy hair being combed aren't that bad at all! Poor kid.

So sad. So embarassing. So sad!

 

[msa]

and i really resent the fact that some ppl think her child should be taken away from her

Seriously? That didn't look like physical and emotional abuse to you?

At the very least that mom needs someone to intervene and let her know that her parenting techniques are inappropriate and unacceptable. But what I saw was straight up abuse. And, I bet it's even worse when the camera isn't on.

Some people should not have custody of their children, it's a simple fact of life.

 

[vainღ♥♡jane]

that was a great article. i wonder what happened to the mother.​