The Wrap: The Beauty of Black Culture

I am completely in love with head wraps! I l love to see black women wearing head wraps of different colors, patterns, and worn in different styles. I was first introduced to the head wrap culture in 2004 , when I was a freshman at Savannah State University; one of my friends use to take one of her t-shirts and wrap it in a way that created a ‘bun’ in the back. I started making the ‘bun wrap’ a part of my ‘relax style’ by using a white t-shirt, I would sport it while walking around campus or to my grandmother’s house. I stopped wearing the ‘bun wrap’  when my family told me it was not ‘appropriate’, but I still kept an eye out for women wearing head wraps in beautiful ways.

 

 I loved to see women like Erykah Badu, India Ari, and Lauryn Hill wear their head wraps proudly in their music videos, concerts, and televised interviews. I really felt that seeing these images on television helped women and girls embrace that style or proudly showcase their African roots. I began to get back into experimenting with head wrapping again when I lived in Lima, Peru. I had a ton of beautiful, large scarves and decided to try different styles. I had so much fun twisting and pinning my scarves in different ways, it transported me back to my undergraduate years.

   In the last three years, I discovered, through social media, many women embracing and revitalizing the beauty of head wraps and re-introducing the turbans to our culture. My favorite inspirations are Paola Mathe, Juliana Luna, Wamuhu Waweru, APIIM Palace, and my favorite style maven June Ambrose! I fell in love with the turban-style headwear because of June Ambrose, she always wore a stylish turban with over-sized sunglasses! I am still working on making that look, work for my everyday life. 

In my love of all things head wraps, Geles and turbans, I forgot how they came to be in American society. I was fortunate enough to attend a Historically Black College and University, so I was given the deeper understanding of how the head rags were introduced into the black culture, through slavery. The enslaved black women on plantations did not have ANY time to care for their hair; so they had to invent ways to protect it from the elements, bugs, and cover up bald spots. In my curiosity of Alexandre Dumas, the real person behind the stories of The Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo-I learned about the Black Codes that were imposed on the mulatto and black communities on the island of Saint Domingo. In the biography of Dumas, it talks about the Noir Code or Black laws, one specific code was targeted towards the women. The law that targeted non-white women was called the Tignon Law, it was created in 1786  under Spanish rule of these French colonies. The law was created in response to white women feeling inferior to the beauty of black and mulatto women in the Spanish/French colonies. I did not realize that the Tignon law was also enacted in Louisiana until I read ‘Flaunting Freedom’. I read the article and it reminded me of how creative, resilient, and defiant black women are with their fashion and existence. I believe black women embody that Mexican Proverb:

 “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”