Second Opinion : OTHER MEDIA : RAFU SHIMPO : Ethnic Correctness Can Be Its Own Prison

Even Malcom X had his bad hair days, suffering from the primitive methods of “conking” his hair to make it straight. That was before he became proud of his blackness and broke through the prison of trying to be white. What makes his story most touching is that men are not usually required to suffer for beauty.

For some women, bad hair days lasted months, then years and sometimes centuries. Across the Pacific Ocean, not even samurai daughters were free from bad hair days. As Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto recounted in her 1927 book, “Daughter of a Samurai:”

Even after all these years I feel a bit of pity for the little girl who was myself when I remember how many bitter trials she had to endure because of her wavy hair. Curly hair was not admired In Japan, so although I was younger than my sisters, on hairdressing day, which came three times in 10 days, I was placed in the care of the hairdresser as soon as she came into the house. This was unusual, for the eldest should always be attended to first.

As her mother explained to her, “Do you not know that curly hair is like animal’s hair? A samurai’s daughter should not be willing to resemble a beast.” But hot tea and scented oils could not tame those wayward curls. At her seventh year celebration, her aunt said, “It’s a waste to put a beautiful dress on Etsu. It only attracts attention to her ugly, twisty hair.”

For Japanese women like Etsu and my maternal grandmother, the opening of Japan in the 1850s by Commodore Perry was indeed a blessing. Curly or permed hair was first considered scandalous, but in time became more acceptable, although even today more conservative women still find straight hair more “Japanese.”

My cousin in Osaka, whose kinky, mocha-brown hair dares to give a new dimension to the word Afro, and I rejoiced that we were born today and not in pre-Meiji Japan. Another cousin opts to add more curl, but my aunt in Kyushu uses oil to downplay hers.

Here in America, my mother and cousins envied my Azuma hair--so like my maternal grandmother’s. But there have been strangers--Japanese-American women--who have urged me to straighten it, either chemically or with a blow-dryer. I was also cautioned against certain hairstyles that would make me look too Chinese.

For some, it is a problem of looking enough like their own ethnic group. My very light-skinned but very PC African-American flat-mate in England secretly permed her hair to look more Afro. Another Black West Indies British woman dyed her hair black, making it more “African-looking” because she was so often questioned about her naturally light hair color.

Sometimes I wonder if ethnic groups go beyond PC and build fences around ourselves with EC--ethnic correctness.

When arguing about the problems of Western constraints upon our respective ethnic groups we seem to forget that those traditional values also marginalized some people. We exchange a prison for a jail. Either way, governed by Western values or Eastern ones, someone is marginalized.

For women, historically the focus has been the whimsy of fashion, figure and face. Asian values or Western ways--neither has given women their due. In a step in the wrong direction, men have come under the same scrutiny lately, but I doubt that it will ever reach the same fevered pitch that surrounds women. In any case, we are beyond perms. Now, we have entered the age of plastic perfection. In Japan and the U.S., women can refashion themselves. Now how shall ethnic groups define our EC? If we worship the knife, are we submitting to Asian ways, white beauty standards or universal narcissism?

I am not so eager to blame the Anglo-Saxons and Eurocenticism. After all, Causcasians are just as susceptible to fixing physical frailties. It runs from being the correct height to having the right nose or the right hair. And because of them, after centuries of bad hair days, for my family on both sides of the Pacific, having wavy hair is the best revenge.