At an extremely young age, my mom made the decision to perm my hair. Of course, at the time that was the norm. The idea of having to manage natural kinks and coils was foreign. After all, how does a mother teach something she doesn’t know how to do herself? As a matter of fact, permed, straight hair is easier to maintain than natural hair, right? I suppose that any task seems harder, specifically when you have to learn all the elements of the task. Nonetheless, Netflix’s Nappily Ever After tackles the necessity of straightened hair with its dynamic character, Violet Jones, and her relatability to young African American women.
Violet Jones is played by Sanaa Lathan. Lathan is mostly known for her appearances in Brown Sugar and Love & Basketball. In several of her movies, she always falls in love with the dream guy, however, this doesn’t happen in Nappily Ever After. Her character is a confident, successful woman in the advertisement industry, who has been taught the “proper” way to snag a man all her life. The key component to her confidence streams from her straight hair. Jones explains that every Sunday her mother brought out the dreadful hot comb. As a black woman, the nostalgia of these moments with my mother also came back to me. Simultaneously, I could hear my mother instructing me to “hold my ear down” as she struggles to get every strand straight.
After her doctor boyfriend gives her a Chihuahua instead of an engagement ring, Jones goes insane. She gets drunk, breaks up with her boyfriend, and even shaves all of her hair off. This begins the journey that many African American woman face – detaching a hairstyle from our persona.
We see Jones begin her journey with a support team through a hairdresser and his daughter. The three become extremely close and Jones even goes on to date the hairdresser, that is until her mother intervenes. Having a hairdresser as a boyfriend isn’t the “perfect man” that a mother wants for their daughter, yet, the man teaches Jones to embrace her hair and ignites her newfound confidence. Surprisingly, the two don’t even stay together in the end hence the title. However, her confidence becomes so high that she quits her job. The audience sees a change in her priorities and, ultimately, her dignity. She not only wants to be good at her job but makes a difference with her ads.
Overall, the whole storyline feeds into the stigma of an African American woman’s battle with rewriting her own narrative and the destructive hazards of perfection connected to hair. Furthermore, actress Sanaa Lathan does a phenomenal job portraying her character in its entirety. The plot also has provoked the real question of how hair is valued today in our culture. Perhaps, we still hold the same values from our childhoods, or maybe now we are subliminally teaching young girls how to take care of their natural hair. No matter what, it’s safe to say Nappily Ever After makes us want to embrace every kink and coil, even if that results in facing our own imperfections.