Teh Awesome
That link to the Hair Petting Game is making the rounds of the blogs as people collectively go “WTF!! Why isn’t someone smacking them?” The fun thing for me is that there have been at least three discussions where someone brings up the fact that people associate this insane behavior with white women, another person queries why race is involved at all, and some other person links to my Hair Etiquette post.
ABW, providing a public service to all.
Just another white girl passing through. I’ve added a link to your blog…Hope you don’t mind. If so, I will remove it.
Cheers.
a *long* time ago, my best friend (who is black and samoan) was with her little brother at the park and a white man walked over to them and started talking about how cute her little brother was. he asked if he could touch his hair. my friend (weirded out) let him. The man was all “Wow! his hair is sooo soft!” we thought this was the funniest thing ever. she was like “Luisa, he thought my brother’s hair was going to be like steel wool!” Like he had never touched an afro!!! haha. white people can be soo crazy.
i haven’t read about the petting thing in the blogs but i am sure there are some folks like this man.
Faith – of course you can link to me :)
Luisa – yes, unfortunately there are far, far too many people out there like that man.
I volunteer down at a center for at-risk teen girls. We were all walking outside one day, and I guess I walked into a patch of sunlight, and it lit up my natural…little white girl behind me said “Omigod, your hair is fabulous! Can I touch it?” I let her, because, number one, she asked, and number two, she’s young, and just curious. For some reason, her request didn’t make my flesh crawl like other similar requests from adult whites. It was probably the “fabulous” thing…
Oh, this isn’t limited to white people. In addition to whites, I’ve had Asians and Latinos to “pet” my natural fro. My suggestion – let’s start charging for the petting. I’m thinking of getting a sandwich board that has my Petting Zoo hours listed on one side, and “Do Not Feed the Black Girl” on the other… :)