Calamity Jane - My Forever Protector

A deeply fulfilling and visceral dream (featuring an indescribably hot man with the lips of Morris Chestnut, the body of Tyson - including the tattoos, and the intellectual swagger of Obama) is punctuated by a narcissistic breeze to the scalp and a strange chill in the bones. Stunned to wake it’s not your partner that you seek but your headscarf surreptitiously strewn to your side.

I’ve heard it referred to in many ways (tights, scarf, do-rag, bandana, cloth). The most offensive being my former flatmate who found it quite the adjustment to move in with me and all my ‘peculiar’ habits, including my ‘nasty head rag’ as he coined it. … Over time (I wore him down by wearing it at every opportunity) he came to accept it and now adds it to the long list of bewildering things he puts down to race (including the copious amounts of cocoa butter that can be found in my bathroom at any one time).

The headscarf is more than a source of preventing the unruly baby hair from fluffing up and cutting short the lifespan of a respectable hair style. It’s your friend, your comforter, your perfect acceptance of yourself.

It’s with you in moments of joy and rage… I recall my friend Yinka on one of her regular ‘nights in’ flicking between My Wife and Kids and the on goings of her street via the strategically positioned gap between her curtains. Taking neighbourhood watch to new extremes, Yinka is prone to sitting on her sofa, headscarf adorned, glasses on for maximum focus in her house clothes (ladies we all know what that means – the holey jogging suit that only the man you are to marry will ever see, the mismatching socks and misshapen, discoloured t-shirt that you can’t bring yourself to bin with I love NY splattered on the front from your trip to America ten years ago) watching the patrons of the Ghanaian restaurant (which they spell ‘restrant’ and has so few customers Yinka has decided is a front for laundered money) and the neighbouring Congolese video store (which evidence I am yet to decipher, has led her to believe is conducting child exorcisms)  leave via her private car park. On one such occasion one patron who was ‘illegally’ parked in her bay (according to the letter she had concocted in the name of her management agent and stuck on the car windscreen), and had the gall to throw litter in front of her home. Blinded by rage Yinka wasted no time powering down ten flights of stairs (still in her house clothes) headscarf as full protection (psychologically anyway) to let it be known that his actions were ‘unacceptable’. What a scene to behold! Lucky she didn’t have her catapult (her words, not mine) or there would have been some serious repercussions.

It’s with you in the moments of pain and anguish…. Or as in this instance it was the lack of the headscarf that caused the pain and anguish. I recall reading an article in the Metro in which a young black woman who was dating a white man was writing in to ask (The Metro of all things) when was the right time to introduce him to the headscarf. I laughed out loud (so of course in compliance with tube etiquette everyone looked away from me in case I was crazy). You can imagine it – the roots starting to grow, the next relaxer not due for another two weeks and you going to bed snuggled up to your man, with your hair lying as flat as the new growth will allow, only to wake up (earlier than him as there’s work to be done before he can see you and recognise you) to find it standing stiff on its ends (as God intended) and no amount of wax, hair pomade or moose will make it rest the way a night of a tightly wrapped headscarf would do. The time for the introduction my friend is now!... If only for an extra thirty minutes in bed.

The headscarf has marked seminal moments in my life….. The pre-pubescent tights my mum would cut up and cover my hair with, insisting I wear at slumber parties amid girls whose limited experiences (Milton Keynes circa 1986) led to comparisons between my braids and caterpillars (cornroll) or weeds (the single plaits). Charming!

Twenty two years later and another seminal moment is marked by the headscarf. This time it’s the morning after Obama’s presidential victory and I recall vividly jumping off my sofa, headscarf flailing, and dancing the running man, with a hint of MC Hammer as a symbol of my ecstasy. Kobi,( a friend) and I would often joke about how well Michelle Obama must wrap her scarf at night as her hair, (even pre stylist) was always perfectly bump free. And if Russell Simmons were to do an ‘Obama’s House’ spin off (of ‘Run’s House’) did we think Michelle would appear in the morning for breakfast in the White House dining room in her PJs and matching headscarf?.. Imagine the furore…Clearly Kobi and I had too much time on our hands.

Ladies it’s time to wear our headscarf with pride and make the people (including men) in our lives accept it as we have. It doesn’t warrant being hidden away like some dirty secret between friends. No more jumping to attention when there’s a knock at the door, whipping it off and stuffing it down the side of the couch before making a bee line for any reflective surface available. Let the brothers see it, they have mothers and sisters don’t they? And for the non black men, for whom this is all new, let it be one of our ‘exotic’ charms.

Calamity Jane