Still, I struggle with the questions: Does this wig mean I’m not comfortable in my blackness? If I wear my hair natural, do I somehow become more enlightened? It is interesting to see the qualities ascribed to women who wear their hair in braids or in natural hairstyles, even among black people. We have so internalized the self-hatred and the demands of assimilation that we ourselves don’t know how to feel about what naturally grows out of our head.
Being in an all-black production is no guarantee that your hair won’t be a source of drama. Recently, I was in one and there was pushback about getting a natural no-heat hairstyle. I thought it would be an interesting option for my character.
“Well, we want her to be like, really pretty . . .”
“Honey, my face is where the action is,” I said. “Natural hair is pretty, but my face is the moneymaker.”
When I did Top Five with Chris Rock, the character needed to have her hair blond. I knew that if there were paparazzi photos from the set posted online, it would start an avalanche of “Gabrielle Wants to Be White” blog posts. So I got in front of it and posted a selfie on Instagram captioned, “New day, new job . . . new do.” I thought the message was clear: This is for a role. Don’t come at me with your @’s. I pressed Share and that was that.
Well, that didn’t work. “Why did you do this?” was written over and over again. I felt judged. A person I never met wrote, “What happened to my baby?” I felt completely outside myself in a way that was not comfortable at all. There is an idea that if you choose to have blond hair as a black woman, you are morally deficient. I didn’t just have to read it on social media, I could feel it in interactions I had away from the set.
It would be naïve of me to say that hair is just an accessory. I recognize that black hair has been politicized, and not by us. We have since reclaimed that politicization. We have ascribed certain characteristics to people who rock a natural look versus weaves and wigs. If you choose to have natural hair, or even to promote the idea of natural hair, you are somehow a better black person than someone with a weave or someone who straightens their hair. You have transcended pettiness and escaped the bonds of self-esteem issues. But I have traveled around the world and I know this to be true: there are assholes who wear natural hair, and assholes who wear weaves. Your hair is not going to determine or even influence what kind of person you are.
GROWING UP, I WAS ALSO OBSESSED WITH MY NOSE—AND NOSE JOBS. I still kind of am. I first became aware of rhinoplasty when people started making fun of Michael Jackson getting his first big one. I was on the playground and a kid asked, “How does Michael Jackson pick his nose?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. “From a catalog!” he yelled.
I paused. “Wait, that’s a thing? I don’t have to live with this nose if I don’t want it?” It wasn’t just Michael. Growing up, it felt like every black star, people who you thought were beyond perfect the way they were, changed their nose. The successful people, who used to have noses like you, suddenly didn’t. It only made me more self-conscious. I would stare into the mirror, thinking about how as soon as these people got the chance to fix their mess of a nose, they did.
Like them, I wanted a finer, more European nose. I used to call my nose the Berenstain Bear nose, because I thought it looked exactly like the noses on that family of cartoon bears. As a kid I tried the old clothespin trick. I would walk around my house with my nose pinched in a clothespin, hoping it would miraculously reshape my nose. I had a method, attaching it just so and mouth-breathing while I did my homework. It didn’t work.
There was a whole period of time in high school where I would do this weird thing with my face to create the illusion that my nose was thinner. I’d curl my upper lip under itself and do a creepy smile to pull down my nasal folds. I thought I was a nasal illusionist, but I ended up looking like Jim Carrey’s Fire Marshall Bill on In Living Color.
The reality is that growing up in Pleasanton and coming up in Hollywood, nobody ever said one word about my nose. I imagined people talking about my nose, but it was really just noise that originated in my own mind. People have since accused me of having a nose job, however, which made me even more convinced that people thought that I had a nose I should want to fix.
So here is the truth: I have never had a nose job. I am, in fact, the Fugitive of nose jobs. Like Dr. Richard Kimble, blamed for killing his wife, I too stand accused of a crime I didn’t commit. It’s a constant on social media. Catch me in the right light, or after a contouring makeup session some might deem aggressive, and the comments section lights up. “Nose job.” “Fillers.” “She fucked up her face.” The next day I’ll post another shot with my nose fully present and accounted for and people will literally say, “She let the fillers wear off.” It takes everything I have not to write these people and say, “Do you have any idea how fillers work?”
Okay, I will admit I have researched. I have even fantasized about putting myself in the able hands of Dr. Raj Kanodia, Beverly Hills sculptor to the stars. A white friend went to Dr. Raj, and afterward I took her chin in my hand, literally holding her face to the light like it was a beautiful work of art. We actresses talk and share secrets, so I know people who feel they owe their careers to his work. But that won’t be me. I can’t even get the slightest tweak, because I will be slammed. I am stuck getting all the flack for a nose job without any of the benefits.
Maybe one day, when I’m a real grown-up, I will wear my hair natural and I won’t contour my nose. Hell, I’ll just be me. And hopefully people will accept me the way I am.
four
THE BALLAD OF NICKIE AND LITTLE SCREW
Here I am, three decades later, and it is as if I am seeing him for the first time. He just suddenly appeared, striding across the massive fields at Sports Park. It was the summer before ninth grade, and those of us who played sports year-round hung out at the park constantly.
He wore a yellow polo shirt that matched a stripe in the plaid of his Bermuda shorts. And of course he had his baseball hat on, with sandy blond-brown hair sticking out from underneath. Now, that wouldn’t be a color anyone would want. You would sit in the salon chair, take in its dullness, and say, “Get rid of this.” His teeth weren’t at all straight, with gaps dotting his crooked smile. Everyone else in Pleasanton got braces in elementary school—I was considered late to the game in fifth grade—so his gappy grin made him special. He walked bowlegged, a Marky Mark swagger to every watched step.
Lucy laid claim to him first. She was “the Mexican” in our group of friends. As he walked, she told us everything she knew about Billy Morrison. Everyone called him Little Screw because his older brother’s nickname was Screw. Screw looked like someone had put a palm on his face and turned it counterclockwise, ever so slightly. The rumor was he’d gotten hold of a bad batch of drugs when he was a kid, and as a teenager his face just grew that way, but that was probably just a stupid rumor. Screw and Little Screw’s parents had a tire store franchise and had just moved from Fremont. They were flush enough to move into the Meadows development, but saying “Fremont” in Pleasanton was an insult, so they had baggage. You heard the imaginary organ play a sudden “dunh dunnnnh” behind that phrase. There were a lot of Mexicans in Fremont, people said, and maybe even Filipinos. And poor white people. Little Screw had gone to a private Christian school before his family moved up and moved out. And over and over this is what I heard about him: