LAST week I focused on how the head-wrap (dhuku) has become a symbol of self-respect among African women.
This week I look at the functions of these head-wraps going down in history.
Throughout the years, women’s head coverings served various purposes, just as they have over other historical periods and in other places.
In addition to being simple fashion statements, women’s head coverings have denoted age and religious beliefs as well as marital, gender and class status.
Enslaved women wore types of head coverings-from simple straw hats to the contemporary fashionable bonnets-that were similar to those worn by white women.
At certain events, however, neither white nor black women were expected to cover their heads.
At dances, for example, pictorial evidence shows both groups of women with only flowers adorning their hair.
Similarly, Sylvia Boone’s 1986 description of Mende women in Sierra Leone shows the head wrap may also serve to protect an African woman’s well-groomed hair until it is time to expose it.
Boone writes: “A woman always goes to a man’s room with her hair neat; and if she wants to make a special impression, she will spot a new and elegant style well done.
“Since the woman would have left her quarters with her head under wraps so that will not see her hair, the man will have the flattering feeling that she went through so much time and trouble to fashion herself for his eyes alone.”
Even in the BaTonga culture, when a wife has to walk only a few metres to her husband, she will follow the rituals of ‘going to a man’s room’ and arrive in a head-wrap covering her head.
When 19th century enslaved African-American women wore hats or bonnets or left their hair uncovered, they not only conformed to normative customs in fashion prevalent for all Western women of the period, but also to an African aesthetic. What distinguished the black woman, of course, was that at certain times she, alone, donned a head-wrap.
Since the head-wrap was such an outstanding feature of the enslaved women’s dress, it is important to note how they acquired them.
The head-wrap served in another purely expedient capacity as an article of clothing which could be used to cover the hair quickly when there was not adequate time to make it ‘presentable’.
The kerchief is an adoption of the black woman’s manner of dealing with her ‘unpresentable’ hair.
It is tied in a traditional style covering the forehead.
The novelist Buchi Emecheta demonstrates a recent Nigerian example of the Afro-centric taboo against leaving unkempt hair uncovered: “They saw a young woman of 25, with long hair not too tidily plaited and with no head-tie to cover it … her hair (was) too untidy to be left uncovered.”
Well into the 20th century, the head-wrap continued to be used as a conveniently serviceable item used to cover ‘unpresentable hair’.
Although the head-wrap became a form of head covering specific to African women, no clear-cut, single reason accounts for this long-standing item in their dress.
In some instances, whites devised reasons for black women to wear the head-wrap.
In other instances, the purposes for donning the head-wrap developed from within the black communities.
No matter where these functions originated, the head-wrap worked at several overlapping and sometimes conflicting levels ranging from the symbolic to the utilitarian.
One symbolic function of the head-wrap was to maintain white power in a society based economically and socially on racial slavery.
Noteworthy in this respect are the ordinances which regulated African-American dress during the 18th century.
In effect, whites used these dress codes to outwardly distinguish those without power from those who held it.
During the period of enslavement, whites enacted codes that legally required black women to cover their heads with cloth wrappings, but these codes do not explain three other functions for the head-wrap devised by the Africans themselves.
One purpose was purely practical: the cloth covered their hair when there was lack of time to prepare it for public view, the material absorbed perspiration and kept the hair free of grime during agricultural tasks, and the head-wrap offered some protection against lice.
Within the African communities, the head-wrap denoted sex, marital status, and the sexuality of the wearer.
These instances show that although the head-wrap marked the social status of the wearer within the larger African society, the head wrap marked the wearer’s status within black communities as well.
For example, enslaved African-American women practised customs wherein certain types of head-wraps were worn for special social events and for religious worship services, baptisms, and funerals.
In these usages, African American women demonstrated their recognition that they alone possessed their particular style of head ornamentation and thereby, donning the head-wrap, meant they were acknowledging their membership in a unique American social group.
For the enslaved women, the head-wrap acquired significance as a form of self and communal identity and as a badge of resistance against the servitude imposed by whites.
This represents a paradox in so far as the whites misunderstood the self-empowering and defiant intent and saw the head-wrap only in the context of the stereotypical image of black women as domestic servant.
After emancipation, the head-wrap became a private matter possessing closely held meanings which were evident, but mostly subconscious.
In the 1970s, the head-wrap re-emerged as an item of clothing worn publicly by some black women.
When the head-wrap reappears, a white audience senses the true contradiction in the original paradox; it evokes the white’s role in the system of slavery.
While the head-wrap still bears this metaphor for modem African women, it also represents a symbolic embrace of their enslaved American forebears; and, it now serves yet another function as an emblem of their African ancestry.
Thus, over time, the head-wrap displays a dynamic quality in gathering new meanings and shedding older nuances.
Fashions come and go, but African women never changed from the old-fashioned method of tying up their heads.
A piece of cloth folded smoothly above the forehead and tied in the back with the ends hanging down on the back of the neck was the proper method and she stuck to it
Women might wear head-wraps for Sunday worship.
In certain areas, customs related to head coverings for the religious camp meetings denoted the age of the women.
If other black women wore the head-wrap with less self-conscious concern for daring fashion with more concern for its utilitarian functions, nevertheless, they will continue to wear it in particularly innovative ways, and always to wear it tied up and away from the face.
In this manner, African women demonstrate their recognition that they alone possess this particular style of head ornamentation and thereby, donning the head wrap meant they were acknowledging their status in social group.