El cabello domina la sociedad dominicana. Afecta a toda la gente igualmente.
Hair dominates Dominican society. Hair issues affect everyone equally. Women want straight hair and men want "hard" hair (cabello duro) because straight hair makes you look gay, apparently. The Dominican Republic has the world's densest concentration of barbershops and salons. Thanks to the racial-ethnic dynamics of the country, sharing a tiny little island called La Española with Haiti, which if the DR had its way would be floating miles and miles away, keeping one's hair looking a certain way is crucial.
Said racial-ethnic dynamics result in Dominican women denying any trace of their African heritage, which of course results in coarse natural hair. Such hair is unacceptable in the workplace or indeed anywhere in public. Thus, women spend hours every week getting their hair relaxed, straightened, weaved, extended in order to satisfy a rather impractical and whitewashed standard of beauty. Many women will not go outside when it's raining for this very reason; imagine treating your hair with such not so tender, loving care on a regular basis and that care coming tragically undone within minutes of exposure to water droplets falling from the sky. On rainy days, it is common for school classrooms to contain boys only, as it's understood that parents are not going to send their hair-relaxed or straightened or weaved daughters out in public when the pains taken could be so untimely ruined. A girl's first weave or relax is considered a rite of passage - women take their daughters into salons for the first time on average at the ripe age of 8 or 9, once girls gain enough of a consciousness to mercilessly mock their peers for having cabello malo. Only for their hair to fall out when they reach maturity.
At the same time, the Dominican brand of machismo appropriates blackness to suit its needs - men proudly wear natural hair because to have straight hair makes you marica. Thus, your Spaniard-descended uppercrust Dominican men slather gel over their heads every morning to achieve acceptable cabello duro.
The importance of hair in this country is such that in my Spanish class earlier this week we spent no less than 45 minutes discussing it. Imagine Chris Rock's Good Hair documentary applying to an entire country, and there you have it.
Disclaimer: I do not want to speak with any authority on the dynamics of racialized Dominican hair. I'm merely discussing my personal observations and I apologize if it the tone sounds mocking at any point. I don't intend to devalue people's lived experiences.
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