Hair Tales: Regina King from MADFREEtv on Vimeo.
The Hair Tales,’ which was being nicknamed as "the vagina monologues for black hair", is a collection of stories from Black women in Hollywood about their feelings, fears and emotions surrounding their hair. It gives viewers a front row ticket to black women’s love hate relationship with their tresses with such beautiful heavy hitters as Mara Brock Akil, Tasha Smith, and Emmy Award-winning actress Regina King -- they all share their uncut hair stories with the world.
The show was created by Micheala Angela Davis, a cultural critic who believes that there is an underlying story for every curl, coil, and kink of the black woman. She openly invited King to share her story in the show’s final episode. King happily took her up on her offer.
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In the video, King talks about her breakout role on the popular NBC show, ‘227.’ She tells that joining this particular sitcom is what marked the first time that she’d ever worn a relaxer, to help make her tresses straight.
“When I started 227 is when I got my first relaxer. It burned,” admits the Southland star in the footage. “And when I got my second relaxer it burned. And my third, and my fourth. They all burned."
"My scalp didn’t like me liking the relaxer.”
She continues on by questioning the cultural influences that have seemed to impose on her.
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"When I look back at it now, I understand why I did it even though it burned. It's so easy to buy into 'this is the latest' or this is what 'everybody is wearing' or this is what will 'make you hip.'"
But King is older and wiser now. Making more healthier choices for her hair and scalp.
Talking about her roles in ‘Boyz N’ The Hood,’ and ‘Poetic Justice,’ two popular cult classics, she looks back at those films as two distinct and defining moments of her hair journey. Wearing box braids in both films, she’d ended up......playing two separate characters.
“[They] represented so many girls I knew in high school,” King says. “The braids represented that regular beautiful black girl. It all starts with your hair. A lot of your confidence lies in your tresses.”
King gives credit to strong, confident and beautiful Black women for creating styles in many ways that she says have set the bar pretty high for women of all other races.
"We are the tastemakers when it comes to hair. It starts with Black women. Everyone else is looking at us like, and they're going, 'Oh my gosh, I wish I could do that.'
