Chicana/Latina Hair: A Discussion About Identity and Your Pelo Journey!

*This is why we need our storytellers, to point out the obvious in a beautiful way, because ordinarily we wouldn’t see it. VL

By  Amelia ML Montes, La Bloga

What is your relationship to your hair?  How much time do you fuss with it?  How much is it bound up with your identity?  I was cruising theFacebook News Feed during a break from my writing a few days ago, and suddenly I came upon someone posting a new Pola Lopezpainting.

Without thinking much, I said out loud, “Wow—that’s me.”  And then I asked myself, “why?” What was it about this painting that made me relate so strongly?   “It’s the hair and the colors,” I said.  I looked at Lopez’s figure with the brilliantly colored jacket, its many symbols, the bold hat, the turquoise design on the belt, the black pants.  I liked it all.  But at the center:  “It’s the hair,” I repeated again.   The hair is thick and strongly sectioned into the braided pattern.  It’s strong, like red stone bricks laid in place.

In her description, Pola Lopez writes:

. . . the women in my lineage of Apache, Spanish, and French heritage, the “eye-dazzler” bolero represents a sacred geometry that is reflective of the tribal designs that runs through our blood and that we wear as symbols and reminders of what has maintained our survival.  Every color of the rainbow and each line transmit to us spiritual strength and knowledge of being in balance with nature and all that creator has given and designed. 

The color black is worn to offset and anchor the high-keyed colors of vibration.  The Concha belt made of silver and turquoise is worn as tradition.  The turquoise stone is the stone of spiritual protection.  The cowboy hat acts as a southwest corona, and serves as protection from the blazing sun, but is also reflective of a life that knows horses, the range . . . wildlife.

The hands are held firmly on the strong swayed hips in confidence that I am here, and I know who I am.  Lastly, the braid conveys the Native American belief that our hair is our antenna for energy, the connection to our culture, our power.  In the end it may be a symbol for the weaving of the masculine and the feminine, the many different cultures that came together to make la mestizaje, and for remembering.

And perhaps “the weaving of the masculine and feminine” is what had caught my attention along with the centerpiece which, to me, is the hair.  Chicana/Chicano and Latina/Latino hair are symbols of so much history, identity issues, gender, sexuality, and queer discussions.  Hair carries with it psychological, sociological, and political implications.

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