Saturday, December 20, 2014

Leave Viola's Wigs Alone!


To many, Viola Davis seems to have appeared out of nowhere as the mammy gone rouge in The Help.  However, I have been a fan since she played the conflicted mother of a Catholic School student in the 2008 film Doubt.  I was also lucky enough to see her act circles around Denzel Washington in the Broadway production of August Wilson's Fences.


One Saturday, Chloe and I were wandering around the J. Crew in Columbus Circle (we must have gotten lost and stumbled into it looking for directions).  I immediately noticed another black woman shopping with a child around Chloe's age.  After a few moments of trying to place her, I realized that it was Viola Davis.  There is a moment in Toni Morrison's novel Tar Baby when the protagonist, Jadine, sees a woman in the grocery store whose self-assuredness and authenticity blow all of her notions of beauty out of the water. This was my experience seeing Viola Davis in person.  She was at once powerful looking and unassuming.  Her skin had a glow that went deeper than one provided by an expensive moisturizer, and her hair was a richly-colored nut-brown natural.  My first thought was "she looks so much better without those wigs."

Although I am not exactly a fan of Shonda Rhimes' post-racial heroine Olivia Pope, I decided to give How to Get Away With Murder a Chance.  I watched the first few episodes preoccupied with how bad Viola Davis's wigs looked.  They sat on top of her head stiff and shiny, and the deep side part did nothing for her face.  Furthermore, in one scene I swore that I spotted lace-front glue at her hairline! (Apparently, Shonda Rhimes doesn't break out the Indian hair until season two).

Do better Shonda!
My mother suggested that perhaps the wigs were a network decision based on the fear that America was not ready for natural hair (unless it is of the "wet and wavy" or multi-ethic curly variety).

Is natural hair only acceptable when it is Blackish?
I preparation for a Fashion and Beauty post (roast?) on How to Get Away With Murder, I began to look at pictures of Davis online.  Gradually I began to have a change of heart.  On red carpets, and at press junkets Davis wears a variety of hairstyles: natural in a diversity of rich bronze shades, as well as, wigs of a variety of shapes and textures.  I'm sure that she takes suggestions from stylists, publicists, and managers, like any other celebrity, but Viola Davis is a grown woman and her hair is a personal choice. Critiquing a character's style is part of the fun of watching television, but when we feel like we have the right to transfer that criticism to the person playing the character there's a problem.  The truth is that we have no more right to tell someone that they need to wear their natural hair than we have to tell them that they "need a perm."

The many facets of fabulous!
Purchased hair has always been accessory, armor, and costume for black women.  Many of us change our hair to suit our mood or our outfit, in the same way we change shoes or bags. Why should Viola Davis be exempt from this freedom?  There seems to be some colorism at work here. Beyonce features a different wig or weave in each new Instagram post and no one tells her that she needs to wear her real hair.  Does she have a greater right to wear straight hair because she's light-skinned? Why is there an assumption that if  you are light-skinned fake hair is an option, but if you are brown it is a symptom of a larger pathology?  In fact, the truth for all black women is probably somewhere in between.  Perhaps we should all stop dissecting, politicizing, and side-eying each other's attempt to feel beautiful in order to mask our own insecurities.

As Toni Morrison says in Tar Baby, "At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough.  You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can."
Perfection!
Post Script!!!!!!!

Professor Keating took the wig (and eyelashes off)!  However, the way that Viola Davis attacked her face with the make-up remover wipe almost made me cry!  Those few seconds of television said more about the inner-lives of black women than fifty books and documentaries!

Photo: People Magazine

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