Gorilla Glue Aint Gorilla Snot
Written By: Dr. Donna Oriowo
Yall, in case you missed it our girl is finally out from under the gorilla glue helmet, thanks to Dr. Michael Obeng who did the pro bono surgery to help her out. If you have been living under a rock, Tessica Brown took to TikTok not to talk about the cuteness of her hairstyle and how she achieved the look, but was instead talking about how her style, laid to the gawds, was a product of gorilla glue and had been her style (of not her choice) for well over a month!
So, after this happened, many of my friends were reaching out to me about my opinion on Ms. Glue. Here it is: white supremacy is insidious! Meanwhile, while we ALL have done (and still do) fucked up things to our hair and bodies to meet the demands of white supremacy, too many folks had not one shred of sympathy for our girl who was suffering. It doesn't matter if she did the shit on purpose or on accident (my money is on accident/ignorance, because who knowingly places glue that will hold till Jesus comes, on their head?!) We lost sympathy for her and so many people wanted to talk about how she was chasing attention with a “and that’s what she gets” sort of attitude following the sentiment.
When your hair broke off from chemical relaxers, was that what you deserved? When you had little bald spots because your braids were too tight, did you rightfully earn that? When your skin looks extra rough because of the products you have been using to “tone” (read: lighten) it, was that what you deserved? Knock it tf off! White supremacy has made us all feel like we are entirely less than adequate and do some downright desperate things to “fix” ourselves or otherwise get to a certain look.
We are out here laying down edges, some are using texturizers, others are using heaps of gel and tying scarves so tight around their heads that their eyes are bulging from the strain. The point is, we go through it to meet a standard. We have been told our entire lives that naturally kinky hair is not where it’s at. We have been told that to be attractive we have to have a looser curl pattern, or be willing to put in the extra work so that others will find us attractive. We forget that it's also so that WE will find OURSELVES attractive. Too many of us have been called names or had our looks disparaged while we were young to not feel a way. We have learned to see ourselves as ugly, and thus less worthy of time, attention, or love. We think we have to earn the right to be seen as a whole human being with all the value that comes along with that. We think we have to maintain a certain look, at a certain weight, with a certain skin tone, with a certain hair texture in order to be worth something. Someone that will be chosen. Not just by romantic partners, but someone that gets picked out of the litter of kids as beautiful and smart by family members, as a person to be friends with by our peers, and as someone worthy of having a job by companies. We measure our worth by the very people around us and what they think all the time. Then we had the nerve to judge her for what she did to achieve a certain look?! Mmmmk! We forget the lengths we also go through. We forget that most of the desires we have to look a certain way aren’t ours, but rather the people around us and the kool aid of white supremacy that is constantly being sipped from.
Hell, the girl got free of her burden and was already thinking about what she looked like and how she needed to go get her hair done. Don’t act like ya mama didn’t instill in you that you needed to be presentable when you were going into public spaces. Don’t act like going to church was not preceded with hot combs burning the back of your neck with so called steam, to make you worthy of the love of the Lordt--and to make sure your parents were seen as someone who loved you by ensuring you were “right” before you left the house. Don’t act like you have not also sucked from the bottle of white supremacist beauty standards and have done the strangest of things from placing a box of deadly chemicals on your head, to burning away your melanin with bleaching creams (or just avoiding the sun altogether). Now if you were so-called fortunate enough to have the skin color and hair texture that folk found acceptable and desirable, don’t act like you didn’t think you were cute because of that skin tone and that hair texture. Don’t act like, at some point, your very value in yourself wasn’t based on being the light skinned jawn with the “pretty hair.”
Folk are saying they don't understand how she could come to such a pass. I am saying if you don't understand you are hardly paying attention. I am saying that you must not know how the very racism you talk about day in and day out works. I am saying that you have been deaf to the words of Dark Skinned women like Viola Davis, like Cicely Tyson, like Nina Simone, like Erika Hart, like Tracy Gilbert, like me, Donna Oriowo. We talk. You don’t listen. It doesn't mean that what happens isn’t understandable. It means you have failed to understand it. Gorilla glue may not be gorilla snot, but neither of those, help you to present YOURSELF, your authentic self, with your authentic hair to the world around you. It does say though, that we will continue to spend the time, money, and effort, to conform to what the white male gaze desires from us--whether that gaze is romantic partners who was the whitest Black person they can find, or from corporations who talk about looking “professional” like that shit aint coded language for white.
For those that wanted it, these are my thoughts on this situation. For those of you who didn’t ask, I see you read it anyway **shrug**
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