GOOD HAIR ON DVD

Basically, ‘Good hair’ is defined as straight hair. That concept has social and political implications, and fuels a billion dollar industry.

Filmmaker Jeff Stilson follows Rock to hair salons, barber shops, celebrities’ homes and the annual Bonner Bros. Hair Show, an African-American hairstyle expo that culminates in the Hair Battle Royale, in which where star-status stylists – including Tanya Crume, Kevin Kirk, Jason Griggers, Freddie J and Derek J — stage spectacular, outrageously costumed, carefully choreographed performances in which they style hair while dancing and doing acrobatics to win the best stylist title.

Interviewed at length, actress Nia Long reveals that she’s completely obsessed with her weave, and that meeting up with a lover in the shower — where her hair might get wet and nappy — is more intimate than getting into bed with him. Also interviewed, women who work as teachers, secretaries and other professions say they spend a small fortune, even go into debt, to have their hair relaxed or get weaves. And, assuring equal opportunity, Rock interviews African-American men, some of whom pay for the ‘good hair’ of the women in their lives, admitting that it’s important to them, too, or raising their eyes as an expression of ‘what can you do?’