I was watching The Graham Norton Show the other week and Chris Rock and the lovely Josh Jackson were guests.

It was just really funny, and although I’m not a big fan of Chris Rock he did come out with a few funny one-liners and Josh Jackson was a dab hand at the comedy too.

Chris Rock was there promoting his new movies Death at a Funeral and Good Hair, the latter being the one that I wanted to mention.

It’s more of a documentary film about the massive business that is the black hair industry, he visits salons in the US and witnesses hair competitions and the like. The clip Graham Norton showed was just typical of how much weaves and hair pieces cost, as he asks one hair dresser when he picks up a particularly unappealing hair piece and she replies that it would cost around $1000 and that most women would pay the prices.

Even if they didn’t even earn that sort of money, most black women it seemed in the clip would put the needs of their hair above everything else.

There’s an article on the Guardian website by Hugh Muir where he gives us some facts and figures, pointing out that, “Black women, according to researchers Mintel, are willing to spend at least double the amount on hair and beauty products that white women do. In the eight years to 2002, the market for black female beauty products grew by 48%.”

The pressure for black women to look like their white counterparts is enormous, and I’m hegding my bets in saying black celebrities are to blame for this. Yes, Beyonce, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Gabrielle Union, Rihanna, you all wear weaves have the best hairdressers that money can buy so that you can have your hair perfectly straight with smooth waves to make it look ‘natural’. Tyra Banks may have given up her many years of wearing weaves but she still has straight hair!

I must say I have spent ALOT of money making my hair straight, and once you do that there is no possible way for it to go back to its afro roots, literally. The chemicals that I use force your follicles unnaturally straight and the only way I could probably go back is to shave my head, and I can tell you I’ve come close a couple of times but I cherish my hair too much.

There’s a comment on that article that makes me laugh from someone called “Nishville”:

“I don’t get it. Why do black people do anything with their hair at all? I’d kill dolphins for a hair like that. See, I like to have my hair long but it doesn’t look very good because my hair is of that particular thin, weak honky variant that just looks like seaweed when long.

If I had a black hair, I’d just let it grow, baby.”

Yeah people who say this are without a shadow of a doubt WHITE. The amount of people that used to say to me oh I would kill to have your hair have no idea how much it takes for it to look remotely normal, so for you Nishville please just be happy with the hair that you have and that goes for everyone out there. We all have bad hair days but take a moment and think about how much you prefer your hair straight to afro and then stop complaining.