Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s Baldness Reveal Hits Home In Detroit, Where Hair is Political
“There’s church and then there’s the salon. Pretty much in that order.”
Recently, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) revealed publicly that she has alopecia and that she has gone bald. Her Senegalese twists had become a powerful symbol that called to her power as a black woman serving in Congress.
And it was a natural hairstyle, something that has inherent social and political power for women of color.
Now, her hair is gone. And she decided to publicly reveal her baldness in a video op-ed for The Root.
It was a powerful message that calls back to the long history of pride, power, struggle and pain connected to hair for women of color.
“It’s not just about the hair, it’s about what the hair represents. It’s the power, it’s the intimacy.” – Nefertiti Harris, Textures by Nefertiti
“Watching how she’s internally processing her own journey was very beautiful,” says Nana Efua Mumford, executive assistant to the Washington Post’s Editorial Board. Mumford wrote an opinion piece this week titled, “Black women’s hair is political. Now Ayanna Pressley’s baldness is, too.”
“Hair is always going to convey a message. It can be very subtle or it can be very deliberate. And it can also be misinterpreted,” she says.
“It’s not just about the hair, it’s about what the hair represents. It’s the power, it’s the intimacy,” says Nefertiti Harris, the owner of Textures by Nefertiti, a natural hair care salon and spa in Detroit. She says she’s been a “natural hair culturalist” for 27 years. “This is her journey. We’re watching her journey from the inside out. Not the other way around.”
Harris says Pressley’s story and these issues surrounding black hair his especially close to home here in Detroit.
“There’s church and then there’s the salon. Pretty much in that order. Particularly in Detroit,” she says. “When we’re doing our hair we are engaging in storytelling, we are engaging in relationships.”
