Phoebe’s Hair

One of my viewpoint characters is Phoebe, a 12 year girl from 1995 Arizona with a black mom and a European Jewish dad. Her, her mom, and her older brother Malcolm, are pretty much the only black folks in the small town of Barberry Lake. Certainly the only ones at school. Not everyone there is white; there are Hispanics and Native Americans, but coily hair isn’t exactly on view.

So what’s her hair like? There are different hair classification methods but, using the Naturally Curly system, I see her as a 3C (with perhaps some 4A).

Type 3C: This is sometimes called “curly-coily” hair due to its density. It’s made up of tightly-packed corkscrew-like curls that tend to be as big around as a pencil.

Type 4A: Your coils are either fine or wiry with the circumference of a crochet needle. They’re still dense and springy with a notable S pattern.

Hair Type Chart: How to Find Your Curl Pattern with Pictures.  Mar 9, 2017 (modified Oct 24, 2023).  Kenneth Byrd.  Curl Centric.

Something like these:

But this is a preteen girl who already feels “different.” Half black, half Jewish, with little to no community in her school and town for either. Constantly told she “doesn’t look Jewish.” And with no context for feeling beautiful as a black girl. None for looking Jewish either, as those frizzy curls wouldn’t be “nice” in their town.

Her mom, Pam, came from deep Black roots in Houston and hair culture is going to be a part of that. Having good looking hair for herself and her daughter is important. Pam would have braided and shaped her daughter’s hair since she was tiny. And, when she was old enough, she would have started to straighten it. Pam has a perm, a chemical straightening treatment that lasts for the life of the hair. But generally that isn’t done on someone as young as Phoebe, so her straightening is temporary, with heat only.

Now Phoebe is old enough to straighten her own hair, or choose not to. Though she and her mom do each other’s. They drive to Phoenix (three hours round trip) to go to church and the salon now and then. But home care is important too.

Modern straighteners—flat irons—are as easy to use as curling irons. And I can see them using these regularly. But they weren’t as available to consumers in 1995. The tool that was common in 1995 was the hot comb, something still used today. Hot combs were heated on a stove, over a flame, or with a special electric heater.

Both hot combs and flat irons burn the skin (no one can avoid that entirely) and damage the hair. But they work. Check out this video comparing the two (spoiler alert: they’re pretty much the same).

To add curls back in, they’d use a curling iron (which existed in 1995 in more or less modern forms) or do it with the comb/flat iron or they’d put their hair in curlers after the straightening. It’s a long process that would happen once or twice a month. In-between, there’d be no getting the hair wet and they’d wrap it up at night.

The results might look like these:

Whether done at home or a salon, what we know for sure is that Phoebe’s straightened hairstyle isn’t going to last long in Egypt.

References

Hair Classification

• Hair Type Chart: How to Find Your Curl Pattern with Pictures.  Mar 9, 2017 (modified Oct 24, 2023).  Kenneth Byrd.  Curl Centric.
• What’s My Curly Hair Type and Why Does It Matter?  January 26, 2019.  Virgo Texture Salon.

Hair Care & Styling

• How did women get their hair straight in the early 90s?  Nov 14, 2015.  Lipstick Alley forum.
• 11 Ways to Style Different Black Hair Types.  November 2, 2021. Alyssa François.  All Things Hair.
• Biracial Hair Care Guide.  Treasured Locks.
• How I Straighten My 3C Curly Hair & Prevent Damage.  Phelisha Cassup.  Mixed Makeup.

Hair Tool History

• From hot combs to hair grease: The journey behind afro-textured hair in America.   January 18, 2021 (updated: February 6, 2023).  Michelle Ganley.  Click Orlando.
• The Hot Comb.  January 2, 2011. Ashlee Catara Reed.  Manuscripts & Folklife Archives – Kentucky Museum & Library – Western Kentucky University.  
• Sizzle: Annie Turnbo Malone, Madam C.J. Walker, and the Complicated History of the Hot Comb.  January 10, 2019.  Moriah James, Robert F. Smith Fund intern.  Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture.
• Stories From the Historymakers: Hot Comb.  May 1, 2020.  Amber McClure.  Forsyth County Government Center, Winston-Salem, NC.
• Hot comb. Wikipedia.
• Hair iron. Wikipedia.