Life-Saving Fashion

Yesterday, we posted on Alyce Santoro's repurposed audio cassette tape ties which are constituted at the intersection of the sartorial and the sonic (as well as the visual and the aural). Today, we learned (from the FIT Facebook feed!) about Dr. Elena Bodnar's sartorial-scientific invention, the bra/gas mask, and a bulletproof hair weave.

From the New Zealand Herald: "Bodnar, a Ukraine native who now lives in Chicago, started her medical career studying the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster." According to Bodnar, "If people had had cheap, readily available gas masks in the first hours after the disaster, they may have avoided breathing in Iodine-131, which causes radiation sickness . . . [Moreover,] the bra-turned-gas masks could have also been useful during the September 11 terrorist attacks, and for women caught outside during the dust storms that recently enveloped Sydney."

For these life-saving bras, Bodnar earned an Ig Nobel prize from the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

The bulletproof hair weave is an older story but nonetheless relevant to this admittedly silly post. Last February, Briana Bonds of Kansas City, Missouri survived what would have been a fatal gun shot wound from her jilted boyfriend because her hair weave stopped the bullet. See the video below.

LINKAGE: The Color of Beauty

Naomi Campbell rightly argues that the all-black Italian Vogue was an inadequate gesture: "That made some noise but, unfortunately, we are the same as before. People, in the panic of recession, don't dare to put a girl of color in their campaign, full stop."

At Sepia Mutiny, contributor Phillygrrl recounts the value given to lighter skin among South Asians in "Dark is Beautiful, Indeed." She posts the efforts of a new organization called Women of Worth and its "Dark is Beautiful” campaign: "The organization purports to erase the notion that 'the beauty and value of an Indian woman is determined by the fairness of her skin.'" (via Racialicious)

For The New York Times, Catherine St. Louis notes that "Black Hair [Is] Still Tangled in Politics." From the article: “'For black women, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,' said Ingrid Banks, an associate professor of black studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. 'If you’ve got straight hair, you’re pegged as selling out. If you don’t straighten your hair,' she said, 'you’re seen as not practicing appropriate grooming practices.' Anyone who thought such preconceptions were outdated would have been reminded otherwise by some negative reactions to the president’s 11-year-old daughter, Malia Obama, who wore her hair in twists while in Rome this summer. Commenters on the conservative blog Free Republic attacked her as unfit to represent America for stepping out unstraightened." The New York Times also features an interactive gallery of nine African American women discussing their hair, and Jezebel "combs through" the issue.

Afrobella sorts out her thoughts about Tyra Bank's National Real Hair Day episode, hot on the heels of the multiple stories recently published about black hair preceding the nationwide release of Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair, in which she appeared without her weave. "Maybe, despite the hype, Tyra wasn’t yet ready. And that I can almost respect. Going natural shouldn’t be a fad — it takes dedication, committment, and courage. Maybe this was a baby step for Tyra." Afrobella and her commenters parse the significance of real as opposed to natural hair, and the implications that follow. (via Racialicious)

Make Fetch Happen thoughtfully scans the Vogue interview with Beverly Johnson, discussing her experience as Vogue's first black cover model.

FILM/TEACHING: Good Hair (and a Lesson Plan)

In my fashion course I inevitably assign Kobena Mercer's "Black Hair/Style Politics," sometimes with selections from Lisa Jones's Bulletproof Diva and Ayana Boyd and Lori Tharps's Hair Story, sometimes with Angela Davis's "Afro-Images: Politics, Fashion, and Nostalgia," in which Davis reflects upon her infamous image as a revolutionary on the run, and this image's recirculation as a stylistic icon, as black power chic, in the decades that follow.

For me, Mercer's essay is especially valuable for his insistence that "we need to de-psychologize the question of hair-straightening and recognize hair-styling itself for what it is, a specifically cultural activity and practice." He usefully argues that black hairstyling can be understood as a variety of "aesthetic solutions" to these ideological of race and racism, "in that they articulate responses to the panoply of historical forces which have invested this element of the ethnic signifier with both personal and political 'meaning' and significance."

There are several independent documentaries about black hair and its politics and practices, but the latest --and with the most advance press and mainstream attention-- is Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair (2009), which opens in select theaters on October 9. Judging from the scenes in the new official trailer, it would be great to screen for the course alongside reading Mercer and Davis on the traffic in criteria for creating, circulating, and challenging stylized signs of blackness.