Critical Lens Expert, Song of Solomon

In the article, “Why don’t he like my hair?”, the author Bertram D. Ashe talks about how women in the novel, Song of Solomon, care a lot about their physical appearances--especially, Black women care a lot about their physical appearance because they want to be able to fit in the  “White standard of beauty” (Ashe 179).

Not all Black women want to change their physical appearances to fit the image of the ‘perfect’ woman. In the novel, Song of Solomon,  Hagar is black female who tries to change her physical appearance so she can be “more desirable” to her husband (Ashe 179). Hagar tries to change her hair, so that it can be “silky copper colored hair” (Ashe 179).  Hagar wants her hair to be different so that she can fit under the category of  the “white standard of beauty” (Ashe 179). Pilate Dead is another character in the novel. She is very different than Hagar. Pilate Dead does not care if she represents the “White standard of beauty” (Ashe 179). Hagar always has her hair “closely cropped” she does this because this represents nature or natural beauty (Ashe 179) . Having her hair closely cropped represents nature because her physical appearance is a natural appearance since she is not doing anything to her hair to look different.

While reading Song of Solomon, the standard of female beauty was also strongly imposed through their attire. Women could not dress or act the way that they wanted; they have to dress and act in a certain way. When Macon asks Pilate,  “Why can’t you dress like a woman?” (Morrison 45) it's interpreting how Pilate is not dressed as how a woman should be dressed. “Don’t you have stockings? What are you trying to make me look like in this town?” (Morrison 45) Macon is more worried about what other people might say when they see the way Pilate is dressed rather than how Pilate is. Stockings represented something that is very feminist while a sailors hat is more masculine. This is why Macon yells at Pilate for wearing a sailors hat.

Reading the novel Song of Solomon and the article “Why don’t he like my hair?” I learned that Black women hair grows very differently from White women hair. So, Black women do stuff to their hair so that they can change the way it looks to look more like White women hair. They do this because they want to be able to fit in the White standard of beauty.