“Black People, I Need You to Give up Your Secrets!”
(So She said)
By Glenn Peppers 1-5-2016
Well great shades of Madame C.J. Walker! You know what! Ain't that a blip! "I need you to give up your secrets!" That ignorant woman said! Well if the woman in that clip had done her homework, she'd have known that if anyone one of us wanted to share what it was, or what it is we do to maintain our hair and skin in recent past years. Black folk did not control not even a fraction of our own retail manufacturing and, marketing processes!
Nothing as far as widely distributing hair and skincare products for the african american population in america, until very recently!
For many years, all that was available for black folks' hair and skin was Vasoline based products that mainly white folks used. We got the run off products like Royal Crown, and Queen Bergamot, Hair Rep, Palmers, and later around 1971, Afro Sheen products and other afrocentric haircare products featuring Coconut Oil instead of petroleum.
We used all the white marketed shampoos and hand and body lotions like Jergens, and Vaseline Intensive Care that were formulated for your hair and body types for decades, drying out our skin with those subtle chemicals, alcohols and dyes. Some men and women used Ultra Wave perm kits to straighten their hair, damaging our hair roots and burning our hair and scalp in the process!
We used Ponds and Oil of Olay Because like that lady in the video, these products were all that was available to us! Toxic Petroleum haircare and skin products!
Sure we had Coco butter back in the day, but not in bulk like it has been sold in recent years by African business people, marketing it along with imported pure African Shea Butter, Argon Oil, and the south american Yucca plant extract. Afrocentric hair shops or beauty supply shops outside of selling Jeri Curl hair goods back in the 80's didn't have access to those butters in bulk like they do now.
Back 25 years or, we didn't have a large amount of African American beauty supply stores in urban areas until maybe the early 1980s. A great lot of us were kept in the dark marketing wise concerning black haircare products, using only what was available on department store shelves, and what we saw on TV commercials, just like you!
Back in the 1950's, '60's and 70's, Revlon was never going to invest in black haircare and skin care products. So when Shea Butter and Mango Butters and Argan Oil's, and Yucca, Coconut Oil and Grape Seed Oil and other natural African hair and body cremes and puddings and botanicals came about. A much better quality of grooming became more readily available to us.
As a result. We were free! Free from using chemically produced alcohol and petroleum based products like Prell, White Rain, Aqua Net, and any and all greasy kid stuff like pomades that white men used back in the day like, Murrays and Brill Cream!
And how dare this woman demand anything from black folks as far as how we take care of our hair and skin! These various retail and/or home versions of body butters and puddings are formulations that are designed for african skin and hair. Don't blame us for white industries who didn't buy into the natural butters and botanicals until recently. And once they did, they still found a way to infuse all those damned chemicals into their version of our hair and skincare products.
Thus why so many of us buy our own butters and herbal mixes and formulate our own natural mix of beauty and body products at home, using our own butters, and herbs, and flower extracts, etc! The personalization of our hair and skin products is as personal as our true history!
This woman has some nerve to demand our secrets unto our good grooming, and personal hair and skin care, just because she says she has a biracial child! Don't blame us for your not knowing the benefits of Shea Butter! Blame Johnson and Johnson for pushing all that petroleum based rot on us, and you!
Besides, like white folks back then ever really cared what blacks used on our hair and skin, outside of those Jim Crow negative images; your relatives thought were funny, and yet demeaning concerning our physical make up!
You need to blame all those hair and skincare product companies that you supported all these years who sold you those products! I find your not knowing about these products, perfect proof concerning who really were the inhabitants of Northern Africa. I think if the europeans would have really been the true inhabitants of northern africa, you or your ancestors would have known something about at least cocoa butter as a means to sooth and beautify dry skin, and Shea Butter to heal and make one timeless.
I say, do what we had to do! Do the homework! We had to! We had to suffer through using your hair care products because we came along in this country not in control of very many hair care companies! We had not the power to ship or import these emollients over to america, and then market them?
We could barely buy a ticket for a boat trip overseas, let alone become shipping magnets for beauty products abroad! Revlon and Miss Clairol and a small line of Madame C.J. Walker style haircare products was all we had access too most times!
I remember Posner's, and Palmers, and plenty of coconut oil based products in the 1970's; and that was the best that we had access to sometimes. I say Read! Go to an african American beauty supply store and learn something, and stay out of Wal-Mart! "Give up your secrets!" She said! As if ya'll haven't stolen enough from us already!
