The Womanist Salon Podcast

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Hi, we’re the hair docs! Schedule your appointment and take a seat for intergenerational, woke, womanist ”shop” (beauty shop) talk that integrates the popular, political, practical, and prophetic. This podcast plays up the hair salon as a social, secular, yet sacred point of departure for exploring Black women’s culture in the context of authentic sistahood. Welcome to the Womanist Salon with Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems, and Rev. Dr. Melanie Jones Quarles.

Episodes

  1. TWSP Ep2 - Sitting Between The Knees: Work What Your Mama Gave You!

    11/01/2020

    TWSP Ep2 - Sitting Between The Knees: Work What Your Mama Gave You!

    Sitting between our mother’s knees getting our hair done was a time when lots of information, knowledge, and coded talk was passed along to black girl children about beauty, womanhood, self-esteem, self-love, and self-protection. Lots of policing our appearance, speech, and sexuality with pressure to be good girls, respectable ladies – not the kind who makes the rest of us “look bad.” Getting and keeping our hair “fixed” or “done”  was our first and most important strategy as girls on how to avoid the racist, classist, and sexist stereotypes other people might put us into. Before all that wisdom and knowledge could be passed along, there was the detangling process. A black girl’s hair has to be detangled before it can put back right. Many Black women have experienced the horrific childhood moments of sitting in between our mother’s legs as she combed through our hair which involved lots of tugging, tears, and even a few love touches to the head. Detangling. Deconstructing. Decolonizing. Demythologizing. Demystifying. Breaking stuff down. Hair texture mattered, but what we now know is that product and the proper tools matter too. You learn that if you have the right  -- detangling moisturizer, the proper brush and comb-- and patience, detangling becomes a breeze! In this episode, the hair docs specialize in the ministry of detangling the politics of Black hair for Black women facing the double bind of caring for their hair and resisting hair discrimination. (Intro/Outro Music provided by Epidemic Sound: Sunday by Ballpoint)

    48 min
  2. TWSP Ep1 - Let’s Take Your Hair Down: Who’s Been Doing Your Hair?

    10/25/2020

    TWSP Ep1 - Let’s Take Your Hair Down: Who’s Been Doing Your Hair?

    You may recall Sesame Street and the song, “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others by the time I finish my song?” There’s no doubt that every identifiable Black woman experiences the saliency of this song when it comes to living one’s life by comparison and embodying that difference. You have to get through our hair before you can engage our minds and understand our point of view. Our hair symbolizes and signifies all that is summarily unique and ubiquitous about being Black women in a world, as Patricia Bell Scott once said, “all the women are white and all the Blacks are men, but the rest of us are brave.” There’s a world of difference between white women’s aspirations for equality and Black men’s fight for liberation. Did you notice that white women “let down their hair” and we “take down our hair” and Black men have to merely get an edge up and we have to “tend to our edges” and “comb out our kitchen.” There’s something very precise about that wording. Black women’s hair poignantly represents “what we go through,” “where we go to,” “those we allow to touch us” conjuring up for us a crown of thorns or a crown of glory. In this episode, the hair docs tell their hairstory and talk about Black women becoming victim to “Verzuz” and “Cancel” cultures because of how they are viewed aesthetically. "Sunday by Ballpoint"

    57 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

Hi, we’re the hair docs! Schedule your appointment and take a seat for intergenerational, woke, womanist ”shop” (beauty shop) talk that integrates the popular, political, practical, and prophetic. This podcast plays up the hair salon as a social, secular, yet sacred point of departure for exploring Black women’s culture in the context of authentic sistahood. Welcome to the Womanist Salon with Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems, and Rev. Dr. Melanie Jones Quarles.