LET IT GROW
BY AZILA PRESSMAN
ART BY SARAH PRESS PHOTOS
This article was originally published in HEEB #1, Winter 2002
Let us gather now to speak of puffy hair. You know what I’m talking about. That nappy, kinky, frizzy stuff that we have straightened, pulled back, slicked down, blown dry, blow torched and hacked off. But there are some who dig their hair’s natural freakiness—those stylish souls who make the tribe (if not their mothers) proud by kicking the fully-grown Jewfro.
This might be a stretch, but it seems to me that the proper Jewfro arises, literally, from a distinguished legacy. Think of Einstein. That whole theory of relativity was pretty cool, but without the hair, would anyone have really paid attention? Dylan’s Brillo pad was a more conscious creation, and brought the look into vogue with the macramé crowd. Raise your hand if old photos of your dad show someone who could have feasibly passed for a Black Panther or Harlem Globetrotter from behind. Please, have no shame
Personally, I know the perils of Jewish hair well. I got mine layered in junior high, a travesty that my therapist still hears about to this day. It was so huge that I could have been mistaken for landscaping. Recently, a snooty hairdresser asked if I’d like my hair “texturized,” meaning chemically enhanced to straighten out the natural funk. Excuse me? Some of us like being surprised by the bathroom mirror every morning. (Note to you ladies who do straighten: Yes, we can tell.)
So how did this happen? Are our wooly locks the result of some groovy lovin’ that went down during our forty years of wandering the ancient African desert? Or maybe they’re a remnant of what we really used to look like, before some other groovy lovin’ warmed our European and Middle Eastern beds. I don’t know, but please let’s love our hair through thick and thinning, slick and frizzing, soon and in our days. Selah.
Dan Lubell, 26
It might have coincided with drug use. I might have smoked some pot and decided to let my hair grow. In fact, I’m sure of it. I play in a rock band, Lonehawk. It’s like a funky, melodic rock-and-roll band. I also write music for films. Having a big head of hair as a white man is definitely a flag that I’m Jewish, so in that sense I have some Jewish pride. And then I am a musician in a rock-and-roll band, and having bigger hair looks better onstage. When I go into a bar where people are drunk, people get very excited when I show up. They grab my hair. Guys will be like “Awesome hair man, awesome dude,” and girls will be like “Oh my god can I touch it and feel it?” I’ve definitely been approached by women who I don’t think would have approached me if I had straight hair. I’ve definitely gotten digits as a result.
Jon Henry Fine, 27
I've always had big, curly hair my whole life. I used to get haircuts when I was a kid at Tino's. He was a barber. And Tino would cut my hair and he'd cut my brother's hair and he'd cut my dad's hair. And we'd always end up leaving there with the same haircut. The same haircut that Tino had. Short on the sides and poofy on top. At Tino’s we'd sit and talk about soccer and, you know, whatever. Eventually I felt like I didn't need to go to Tino's anymore. And since Tino's, I don't think I've gone to a professional barber. I've gotten haircuts by friends. So that was the last barber I went to. That was New Jersey. His barbershop's no longer there. He moved.
Asi Ptahi, 25
I'm Israeli. Because they make you shave your hair in the army, in Israel everybody grows their hair. Here, everybody just say it's nice. Almost every day I have people saying how nice it looks. I have people taking pictures of me. Tourists and Americans both. Most people don't think I'm a Jew. They think I'm mixed, they think I'm Hispanic sometimes. I mean, Israelis can tell I'm Israeli for sure. But here they don't know what I am. It's interesting. Sometimes I make up stories.
Asaf Azani, 15
Every time I tried to put gel in, it would deteriorate and just push back to the way it was. There was no way of dealing with it. I was out with my friend one day and he said, “You know something, why not just puff it out as much as you can and go outside and see what happens?” So I fluffed it out and everybody couldn’t help but stare. And I went to a deli and everybody came up to me, “You should get braids,” “You should get cornrows, dreadlocks.” And sometimes, just for the attention, I would stick a pick in my hair, sort of like the 70’s kind of thing. You know, so it was just kind of fun. I puffed it out one day in school and every teacher couldn’t help but make a comment. Dorky comments. It was pretty funny, like all the teachers came up to me kind of amazed, like ‘who’s that kid?’ All that you see from the back is an extra ten inches of hair. It’s like you’re a whole different person, know what I mean?
David Siegel, 24
My boss, the deputy director of the Parks Department, gave me barrettes to put in my hair. She had these little rainbow barrettes in her hair and I complimented her on them and she was like, "I'll bring some in for you." And sure enough, the next day she brought in a little bag of barrettes. So I put them on and started wearing them around the office. That's the cool thing about it, you become kind of a magnet for weird situations. It’s kind of a spatial thing where you're extending beyond the boundaries of your personal space. Your hair is out in public space and you become public property in a weird way.
Cynthia Madansky, 40
My family's Polish and Russian, but who knows where they came from before that. I don't know. My coloring and everything about me is more Semitic and Middle Eastern than Polish, in a way. Once I went to get a haircut in Chinatown and they were like, ‘Oh my God what am I going to do with this head of hair?’ I think it was exactly discrimination, but they were definitely like, ‘We don't cut hair like yours.’
Nikki Borodi, 22
I've always had this kind of hair. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and I got harassed and made fun of for my entire growing up because of it. People would be like, ‘fro!’ and ‘radiation!’ and all this crazy stuff. The neighborhood I grew up in was 90% upper middle class Jewish and only like 10% minority, if that, with about 400 people in the high school. They were photocopies of each other. Nobody had hair like mine. Who knows if anybody at all in Cleveland, Ohio has hair like mine? It was strange. I always felt very self-conscious about it. And now I'm at a point where I love it and I wouldn't give it up for anything.
Adam Baruchowitz, 28
I’m not a product type of person. The point of messy not-care-about-it hair is to not care about it. Anyone that can sport a ‘fro, I look at them with envy. It goes back to that Yoohoo commercial where the guy drinks Yoohoo and then he has a huge ‘fro. It’s very cool. He’s bald and this drink remedies the baldness. I don’t think mine will ever get that big. I don’t think my mom will ever let me get to that point. My mom hates it.
Jason Kraut, 28
Two years ago I got it dreadlocked by a Rasta in Brooklyn. Then it just got too annoying. It was getting really messy. I didn’t realize how much maintenance goes into dreadlocking, so I just cut it off. But it didn’t stay short for long. A lot of rap artists and hip hop culture brought back afros in the late 90’s. Back in the 70’s that’s what everybody was doing in rock. Jimi Hendrix, that whole band had afros. The guitarist that I play with is the bluesiest cat I’ve ever played with. He looks like Jimi Hendrix and he plays like Jimi Hendrix. People have commented that I look like Noel Redding, the bass player. But I don’t like the blues that much actually, I like funk and hip hop. And I don’t want to be in a Jimi Hendrix cover band. Every single event I go to, like family event or whenever I run into someone from high school or something like that, I always get really insecure. And when I’m onstage, it makes up for all those insecure moments.
Bess Cilbert Whillhite, 44
I’m ‘Ashkefad.’ Sephardi on my mom’s side. Ashkenaz on my dad’s. My mom used to send me down to Crenshaw, which was a black neighborhood. They put straighteners on my hair and I had sores on my head. My mom said you have to suffer for beauty. When all was said and done, it was straight for two days and I had sores on my head. At Bullock’s in Century City there used to be a machine that would test your hair for its strength. I stopped blow-drying it in 1983, when curly hair came in style, I was like ‘Thank God, finally the Jewish girls can have something.’ I always say I’ll pull a Sinead O’Connor, but my husband loves my hair.
Rob, her husband
Her hair’s different. It’s really...there’s so much of it. It has a renaissance feel to it. It’s evocative of something deep and old. It’s very feminine. After she’s done in the shower there’s a ball of hair the size of a tennis ball in the drain. She’s a bigger than life personality and the hair goes right along with that.
