Make Peace With Your Hair

Andre Talks Hair!

“I don’t know where my hair would be without Andre… with him, I’ve learned to love it.”- Oprah Winfrey

Have you ever looked in the mirror and asked yourself if your bad hair days would ever end? Wonder no more, because Andre Walker, five time Emmy Award-winning hairstylist for The Oprah Winfrey Show, has the solutions to your hair problems, from finding the right stylist to maintaining your crowning glory.
Andre has a philosophy about hair: it should be healthy, it should fit your lifestyle, and above all it should be easy to manage every single day. There’s no mystery to having great hair and no magic elixir to make it do tricks, he says. Instead, you only need to do one thing: know your hair type. All hair falls into one of four categories, and once you find your own hair type, you can make your hair look it’s best all the time, even if your stylist can’t fit you in for that afternoon appointment.

With a Special Message from Oprah Winfrey

I could talk for hours about hair and how much it meant to me while growing up with my grandmother in rural Kosciusko, Mississippi. Back then, hair played a prominent part in my life. Every day, my grandmother used to sit me down and give me three fat plaits- two sticking from the back of my head and another one twisted in the front. On holidays and special occasions, I got to wear my hair down in much- wished for and admired Shirley Temple curls, with on big roll in the front for bangs – because my grandmother, Hattie Mae, didn’t want to cut my hair, not even enough for bangs. One thing I knew for sure was that my hair was very thick. Sisters in church, relatives and even folks who barely knew me were always telling me, “Ooooh, that child has a lot of hair,” they used to say. “What’s Hatiie Mae goinn’ do with all that child’s thick hair? It’s a lot to keep up” It was a lot to keep up. Still, some of my most comforting memories are of sitting between my grandmother’s skirted knees while she scratched my head and oiled my scalp. It was our ritual, one we performed again and again, right there on the front porch- as did many a black girl growing up in the South. Today, I know enough to know that comfort was about all that I was getting out of our little ritual, because it certainly wasn’t doing my hair a bit of good. But it felt great at the time. We were told on many a day, “Child, your hair is your crowning glory.” We risked the wrath of the ancestors – or worse, the living – if we dared cut it. Needless to say, I didn’t cut mine for years, except maybe to trim the ends. Hair was to be revered, admired.
That’s true even today, no matter what your race or where you’re from. Like it or not, we are a society that makes judgments about people based on what they look like. And is a big part of how you look. I wish it weren’t that way, but that’s the way it is. Hair is one of the defining statements about your style, of who you are and what you present to the World. When your hair is clean, shiny and cared for, people take notice. You can have the finest dress on, the best shoes, all the greatest accessories, Cartier to the bone- if your hair is not in order, it doesn’t matter. But it’s how you feel about your own hair that matters more than anything. Hair grows on your head; your attitude about it grows in your head. We all have a certain image of how we want to look. We want to use all that we have to its greatest potential. It’s hard to do that if you feel like your hair isn’t looking it’s best. When my hair is looking bad, I don’t feel good about myself. Other people might say I look terrific, but if I don’t think I look terrific, then I don’t. And trust me, there have been lots of times when my hair didn’t look so good. I don’t think there’s a woman out there who doesn’t have at least one hair nightmare to talk about. I’ve had more than my share. Once, when I was just starting out in television news, I went to one of those fancy salons in New York City. I knew enough about the difference between Caucasin hair and black women’s hair to at least ask the fancy salon owner, who was French, if they did black hair. He said, ” Oui, Madam, we do black hair, we do red hair, we do blond hair, we do your hair.” I was twenty-two and didn’t have the kind of courage then that I’ve since grown into. So when the Frenchman put a ” French” perm into my non-French hair, I let him. He went off to attend to some other red head, blonde or brunette while I sat there, letting the perm burn into my cerebral cortex. When he finally came back to check on me, I said, ” I think this needs to come off now. It’s really burning.” He looked at the container and said, “No, you need at least eight more minutes.” By this time, my eyes were tearing and I could feel scabs forming on my head. When he finally rinsed the perm out, my whole head was one big scab holding in the hair fallen out. Every time I combed it, I would get another handful of hair. I walked around with bald patches in my hair for at least a week, until a friend in the newsroom pulled me aside and said, “I know you’re trying to hold onto your hair, but you really don’t have any. You’re looking bad sister. Why don’t you come and go with me to my barber and we can shave your heard.” I went home and cried and then took a good look at myself in the mirror. She was right. So the next day, I went to the barber and had my head shaved. Horror of horrors, I couldn’t find a wig to fit my bald head- my head is twenty-five and a quarter inches round. (when I did the movie The Color Purple, the hairdressers had to sew two wigs together to fit my head.) So there I was, an anchorwoman on television with a shaved head. I couldn’t even figure out how to tie scarves just right to hide my baldness. Finally, little pieces og fuzz started to grow back. After that, I was so afraid of any chemicals that I did not go to a beauty salon for six straight years – I wore a fro. Friends would say, ” don’t you know that ‘fros are out’?” My response? “This is the only way I’m going to wear my hair.” I was afraid to trust any hairdressers. Finally, just before I moved to Chicago to do The Oprah Winfrey Show, I tried lightly perming my hair for a jheri curl-style ‘do – without the grease. Unfortunately, the hairdresser who put in the light perm didn’t wash it all out in the back. So my hair started to fall out in patches. Again. And once again, I shaved my head down to a little teeny weeny Afro. I was batting zero with hairdressers. Until I met Andre. One day, I was out shopping and noticed an attractive black woman with hair that appeared to be the same texture as mine, but her hair had shine and movement and was obviously very healthy. I asked her, “How’d you get hair like that?” She told me about her hairdresser, Andre Walker. By coincidence, Andre had recently sent me flowers, trying to convince me to let him do my hair. So I invited him to the studio for a tryout. After all my experiences, I was reluctant to trust him. The first time he did my hair, it looked really great. But how was I to know that it wasn’t going to fall out the next day? It didn’t fall out, so I called him back for another tryout. I called him again and again and again. I grew to trust him. For more than eleven years, Andre has been the man, the only man, who handles my hair.
The thing about Andre that I really appreciate is that he understands hair and he loves it. He loves what hair does, he loves to play with it. Whenever you find someone who loves their work, they’re usually better at it than anyone else.

The industry apparently agrees with me; he’s won five Emmy’s for doing my hair. Those Emmys are well deserved. My hair has become stronger, healthier. Andre understands my hair and keeps me looking current without mimicking other people’s hairdos. I’ve evolved and so has my hair; my hair has seen different lengths and different moods. I’ve always made a conscious effort to not get stuck in life- to keep growing, getting better and getting stronger. That’s exactly what should happen to you and your hair. Many women get stuck in one look. But hair grows and you can always change it. A hairstyle is the easiest thing to change, for goodness sake. Hair should be fun. Hair should move, and it should be friendly. Hair should be an invitation: People should look at it and want to touch it. We all need to strike a balance in life between trying new things and finding what’s best for us. Don’t take yourself- or your hair- too seriously.
Which is why you’ve got Andre- and this book. With Andre’s help, you’ll come away understanding your own hair, your hair type, what to expect from your hair, it’s possibilities. Like me, you can develop a greater and more realistic expectation for what your particular hair type can and absolutely cannot do. You don’t have to walk around trying to have Diana Ross or Cindy Crawford hair. Andre can help you make your hair be its best in terms of strength, vitality, beauty, shine- all that good stuff.
What more can I say? I don’t know where my hair would be without Andre. He’s helped me to take care of it; with him, I’ve learned to love it, too. And in eleven years, I haven’t had to shave my head once.

To be continued!