My job would not have been on the printing floor. I would have been what used to be referred to in the industry as a "board ape" and sequestered in an office several floors above the printing presses. That was in late 1990s.
Another job I had was as an EA in the early 1990s. On that job, I had straight hair that I kept pulled back into a severe, slicked back ponytail or braid. I cut my hair off to my shoulders, got a perm and came to work the next day with my hair still in a ponytail but pulled loosely back. The old men in the office kept making comments about how I looked like I was heading out "on the prowl" or how the inspectors were going to come in and think I was looking for a date – this knowing I was very happily married and still newlywed… and also knowing how such off-color innuendo bothered me.
Men always seemed to feel empowered to comment upon and critique my hair. Maybe because I'm a redhead… I really don't know. I might just have been overly sensitive – as those commenting told me.
Still, I recall a workmate when I was in a data entry pool (back in the 1980s), who was a Black woman with natural red hair too. It seemed to me she fell victim to more crap than the other two Black women in the pool. She got all kinds of comments and back-handed insults – even from the other two Black women about how her hair was red. Once, she came to work with a very neat, maybe three or four inches long afro, adorned with a beaded headband at her hairline. The boss complained (we heard him) and the white woman supervisor of the pool told her she had to comb down the afro or go home. That was when I learned she'd also been told she couldn't come to work in braids – but no one had ever said anything to me about the single braid I wore most of the time. I remember another girl from the pool and myself crying with her in the bathroom over how they'd made her feel. The other two Black women were angrily telling her to forget those [many profane epithets] jerks, while one of them helped her pull her afro into a French twist.
That's one of the reasons I never liked Chris Rock's "good hair" jokes. Those jokes always took me back to that day in the bathroom with her crying and her two Black coworkers so angry on her behalf.
This crap has been going on forever. Black women most certainly have the most egregious assaults of it imposed upon them. But, people have for far too long thought they had the right to comment upon and control women's bodies – from abortion and contreceptive rights to hijab or accessory choices to our hemlines and hair.
