"Your Hair Represents Who You Are" by Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Episode 1: “Your Hair Represents Who You Are” True Or False?

About Afro Archives

Afro Archives explores heritage and identity within UK society. It investigates images of black women through promotion of self-expression and confidence to be who we naturally are. This project seeks to promote and celebrate afro hair by having inclusive discussions about hair and hair-related experiences with people of all ages, backgrounds, cultures and creeds.

“A Performer’s World”

“A Performer’s World” showcases with comparison the experience of women with afro-textured hair through the eyes of the acting industry, where what we look like, matters. By asking to a diverse group of actors questions like: “Would You Shave Off All Your Hair for a Film?” and “Your Hair Represents Who You Are”, True or False?” we uniquely examine the responsibility of media, and curators of culture, as well as how we see ourselves and how society sees and portrays us. “A Performer’s World” could not have been made without the time, generosity, and collaboration of the featured artists, and co-creatives. Thank you to all involved.

Big Thanks to our host filming location, The Black Cultural Archives, in Brixton.

Creatives: Africa Fashion (Afro Archives Blog Host), Robbie Spotswood (Photography), Chris Lovell (DOP), Imogen Mackay Dall (on-location Director), Loreen Brown (Photography), Livvy BakerMendoza (Music) Ayesha Casely-Hayford (Editor, Producer).

Main Creative Team Creator & Producer Ayesha Casely-Hayford is an actress, award-winning voice artist and employment lawyer of Ghanian descent, born in London and raised in Kent. With her roots in law, specialising in employment law and discrimination, and as former chair of the board of trustees for The Act For Change Project, a charity campaigning for greater diversity in the arts, she is uniquely positioned to see the social, performative and legal issues facing black women in the UK today.

Photo credit: Helen Murray Photography

Director Imogen Mackay Dall is a Sydney-born writer, director and ‘ginger ninja’ raised in Tokyo, Washington D.C. and London. She wrote and directed the award-winning conservation documentar y Mystery of the Gnaraloo Turtles (2017) and is writing features for Pinewood Studios and Same Name productions. Keen to advance social issues in her work, Imogen is also writing Creative Breakdown Insurance, a book to help artists and freelancers manage their mental health.

Photo credit: Helen Murray Photography

Featuring in this Episode and With Thanks To

Alexandra Conlon

Alice Fofana

Verona Rose

Tania Rodrigues

Ketorah Williams

Simone McIntyre

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

Ayesha Casely-Hayford

India Ria Amarteifio

ÂŠ 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

This is a verbatim transcript of our interviews

“Your Hair Represents Who You Are” True Or False? Part 1 Featuring actors Alice Fofana and Verona Rose with Alexandra Conlon VERONA: True or false my hair represents who I am. ALICE: I don’t think your hair should represent who you are because it is your hair do you know what I mean but erm, in this world we are living in at the minute it kind of does with a lot of people Yeah I think other people think your hair is who you are. I definitely think it represents me in some way. When I have my own hair, or hair like this - just more natural hair, I feel a lot more confident. For a long time I wore weave and felt that I needed to have weave to look pretty. Then again, as soon as I stopped wearing weave, I don’t like the look of weave, I don’t think weave or straight hair looks right on black women anyway. I am not gonna say it looks right, [or] it does not look right, each to their own. But for myself, it does not suit me. It does not! You’ve seen me with straight hair! Remember when I put that wig on you for that role! It does not suit me. But that is because, I am just used to my hair. But I do not look at myself and go I need to wear a wig or a weave or I need to have my afro out. It is just me For me though, as soon as I took the weave out I felt so much more confident, so much more me. © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

So I do think my hair represents me a bit, because I feel a lot more judged and I feel like the need to feel or to look pretty when I have weave. I know that sounds ridiculous. I am gonna have my nice Brazilian weave and I am gonna turn around, say if there is a guy right, and not that I am looking at guys, I do not give a s.h.i.t. anyway but if there was a guy behind me and you know you are walking looking all nice, you are dressed up all nice and you have got your Brazilian weave in, they’re expecting you to turn around and be pretty, yeah. No but they are! Come on now! Then what about me, if a guy is walking behind me and my afro is out and what you are expecting, me to look ugly? No, no, I am not saying that Come on now, if you have got your most expensive weave in and your clothes game is tight. When someone sees you yeah, if they’re walking from behind, they are thinking I want to see what her face looks like yeah, cause her hair, is, you know. I am not saying our hair does not look en pointe when it is natural. I don’t give a **** what you think. But with the weave I just think they’re expecting me to turn around and be like “heeyyy!” This is why I think, what you have just said there..I should not talk for anybody, but this is why I will not wear a weave. Because of what you have just said. what you have just said has put me off. I love my hair anyway so I would not need to put weave in my hair or anything else in my hair, but for what Verona has just said, that guy behind me if I was in a weave, I must be pretty but if you are rocking the braids or whatever, it is just a girl. No. Listen yeah. A guy - if you are behind me, when you see my afro, understand, when you see me, when I turn around you’re gonna go “Oh My Days!” “Oh My Days!” That is what I just personally think. That is why I do not like that whole thing of if a girl has a weave she looks pretty, if a girl has natural hair she ain’t all that. © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

I do not think that. I am not saying that is what you think but that is why I am saying I do not think your hair should represent you. I do not go down that road of going my hair represents me. No. I am who I am. If you like me you like me. End of. But then you do not wear weave so maybe your hair does represent you a bit. No, that is not it! Well, my hair represents me. When I do not have weave, I feel better. ALEXANDRA: I suppose it is really interesting the fact you are doing it with actors as well, I think it is really cool, because I just know from this year we have had, the amount of different hairstyles, and everything, and things we have had to do with our hair. It has been so interesting. It shows you how people relate to their hair if that makes any sense, and how precious they are or not precious. It can do a lot, taking away somebody’s hair for example, can do a lot to a person, more than you kind of think. I think it is really funny. People do not really think much about it but actually It is something that can really change someone’s comfort zone really really quickly, which I think is quite interesting. I often talk to girls and I think I was one of them at one point where there would hardly ever be a time you come out of a hairdressers happy or like, without having shedding a tear or two. Because it is so like so important to people. There is a trust that goes into, I suppose like giving that over to somebody I suppose and like, trusting them to shape it in the way you want it or whatever. People can get very emotional about it. It kind of taps into a vulnerable side pretty quickly which I have always thought is really interesting. Yeah. Hair.

Part 2 Featuring actors Ketorah Williams and Simone McIntyre with Tania Rodrigues KETORAH: Ooh, true or false my hair represents who I am SIMONE: Do you know I’ve been playing India Arie all week, by coincidence. I am not my hair. But you kind of are. Well it is part of you and what you do with it is part of who you are, so in a way it does it represents that part of you how you see yourself or how you want to be seen. I think it is how you want to be seen. Because I think it is more about perception. I think it is more about how society sees you and it is those kinds of social norms that are placed on you. I think there should not be so much emphasis placed on people’s hair in general I think it can just kind of inform who you are so I know when I see a black woman with you know do they say grade one? Ridiculously low hair low afro or bald, whatever, I assume that she is really bold, daring, fearless Stereotypes Perhaps even a bit eccentric I would assume the same thing if it was a white woman actually because it takes a certain kind of character to do that. You have got to be very confident And then, if you have got someone who has insanely massive extensions to the point where their head must be heavy again, for me that says something else about how they want to be seen. But then would you place those same kind of judgments on other races? Yeah I would I don’t think you would In some countries, some parts of the world they do not just have different coloured say blond wig they also use bleaching creams and I think that is symptomatic of a society where people have been brainwashed to believe that the European aesthetic is the correct aesthetic And when you have grown up as a minority, you know as a kid I never saw anyone who looked like me on © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

the front of a magazine, ever, unless you got black hair magazine but then even if you got the black hair magazine what have you got?Women with weaves all the time I must big up the black hair magazines though I think as well coming from a town where there was not a lot of minorities, but in the same breath as you said as a teenager growing up my biggest idol was Beyonce, absolutely obsessed with Beyonce, obsessed on a big major level I think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quite bad because as we know, Beyonce, Nikki Minaj, Rhianna, a lot of the celebrities are very fake, not their character but in terms of their look with their weaves the bleaching like you said, the nose jobs, the liposuction, the air brushing, so it is kind of like as a younger person you are trying to live up to something that is unobtainable because it is not real I think it is very important that we have more kinds of role models that are actually real people real women who eat normally and who are real TANIA: I think that hair is actually quite emotional as well and the whole thing about losing your hair if you are having chemotherapy and stuff I know people who have been through chemotherapy and when they lost their hair that was one of the really hard bits for some of them so therefore their hair was really tied up with their identity and it was a terrific loss And I think that is kind of a shame really because obviously we are a lot more than our hair so I think it would be nice if other people were able to see past that The same thing goes for going grey as you get older. In fact I actually started turning grey when I was 24 and so I have been dyeing my hair for a long long time. I have often thought about just letting it turn grey but somehow it is just not considered acceptable Like it is great to go white but not to go grey Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind of a weird thing.

ÂŠ 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Part 3 Featuring actors Ayesha Casely-Hayford and India Ria Amarteifio with Kobna Holdbrook-Smith INDIA: true or false my hair represents who I am I don’t think it represents who I am I think it is a big part of me but I do not think someone would say “India the girl with the big hair” AYESHA: We are in an industry which is a visual art And we are in a world where people are People do make judgements It is not necessarily going to tell you everything about me but it represents who I am in that when I leave the house in the morning I have looked in the mirror and said whether it is okay or not that I am leaving the house looking like this And my hair styling is part of my image and my hair styling is going to be my first impression So it represents who I am in that it is my first impression I mean to me it does not but as you said probably to someone else At school if I am walking down the corridor if I have my back to them they probably recognise who I am only because I have my hair like this all the time rather than actually looking at my face If my friend Shakira (who has European hair) was walking down the street - Shakira, come over here! - I do not think I could recognise her Do you think someone could look at you and just write a little short story about you, how you put your hair and things like that Maybe You mean if they did not know me? Yeah, like if you just look at me now Do you think you could write a short story and do you think my hair would play into that? I mean if I was writing a short story and I was doing a descriptive story obviously I would describe your hair, that is what I normally do You might imagine what job I might do or where I worked? © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

I would probably do that for someone with European hair too You don’t think my hair would have anything to do with what ideas you might come up with? I think I would include it because it would make the reader picture you more if I said she had light fluffy afro Then they would say Oh that is what she looks like, it would be easier to describe you But then you would go on to say more? Yeah definitely Because it has not just ended with my light fluffy hair! KOBNA: I have so much to say about hair I do not know where I would begin I think hair It is something that people always look towards Whatever you do you cannot avoid people making an assessment of you and that your hair is almost like clothing but it grows out of you more than your nails or anything else that you modify or augment I think your hair Even if you are bald, even people who are bald and then they shave the sides It is part of your, it is a natural part of your aesthetics So even if someone does not do anything with their hair it grows out of their head and it locks up and it does not have any particular style I think that is again something people will read, deliberate or not So whether people pay attention to it or not I think hair has an influence in your life, in society I am not sure what it means in nature I am not sure if a lion’s mane looks scarier to a warthog than a lioness’s face that does not have a mane Or if my hair would make me look different to a creature, to a non-human. Yeah. That is all I have to say about hair.