And I'm Probably Going to Look Like an Asshole

Today while I was hanging out at the 3rd Street Promenade, spending money I shouldn't and avoiding rush hour traffic on the 10, I happened upon two gentlemen who were shooting interviews for some summer episodes of Deal or No Deal, while waiting to cross the street. They asked myself and a mother/daughter pair if we'd like to be filmed for a segment on one of the contestants and all three of us were like, "sure, what the hell," mostly for me because I didn't have shit else to do besides wait for the interstate to clear.

The segment was simple: they would show us two photos of different kinds of hair and we were to pick which ones we liked the best. They would hand us said photos, we would look at them, then turn them around to show them to the camera. All three of us thought that would be simple enough. The mother and daughter went first and in order to keep my response spontaneous I avoided looking at the mother and daughter as they did their bits. Perhaps I should have looked.

When it was my turn I was asked to remove my jacket because it had my graduate alma mater's logo on it and then I was placed in front of the camera and handed the two photos face down. I turned them over and it was a photo of a small dog, perhaps Yorkie or something, I don't know the breed because I don't like small dogs and don't keep up with their goings on, but the dog had all this hair everywhere and it was wrapped in bows. The other photo was of a young black woman with super blue eye contacts, way to much makeup and a hair do I can only describe as "ghetto fabulous". The hair was long in the back and sides but the top was done in this awful spiked fashion, like a mohawk that just said "fuck it" and tried to make a run for it in a whole bunch of different directions. It was a bad hairstyle is what I'm saying.

So I picked the dog. I picked the dog on the grounds that the dog had no choice in the matter, but the woman did and I couldn't understand who would want hair like that voluntarily.

There were a bunch of laughs and the camera turned off and we were told the woman would be one of the contestants for a mid-June episode. Having signed a waiver I went on my merry way, hitting my car because it was after 7pm and the ten should (and was) be clear. But it was in my car that that little Jimminy Cricket, my conscious, hopped upon my shoulder and began whispering in my ear. And I actually started to think about what I'd just participated in.

Aside from the fact that it's a shitty game show, I began to wonder why the producers thought it would be funny to compare a black woman to a dog. Mind you, they were comparing her hair, but whatever. I know it's supposed to be "funny" because it's in the extreme, and comparing her to another wild black hairstyle, or even one considered "redneck" (mullet!!) would have been like comparing apples and oranges, but still. A dog? At this point I started to grind my teeth, but more from guilt than the fact that I was still stuck in traffic on Lincoln Blvd.

And then little Jimminy asked my why they should even care about her hair style. Of course it's out there. It's wild and something white people aren't used to seeing but should they really make fun of her for it? I don't watch Deal or No Deal at all so I have no idea how many of these segments they do but I can only hope that they find something to make fun of everyone for and they're not just singling her out. When we were at the Promenade the mother asked why she even had such hair and the guy said she (the woman with the hair) did it because she wanted it that way and she owns it. Sitting in my car, recapping this in my mind I thought "Good for her" mostly because I wanted to absolve some of my guilt.

Then I asked Jimminy why I even felt guilty. "She had shitty hair!" I defended.

"But she's black," Jimminy replied. "You shouldn't be mean to other black people, especially other black women."

"Why the fuck not?" I demanded.

"Because you're black," Jimminy said with infinite patience.

"Oh," I said, realizing he was right.

I was black. And she had been black and it might look bad me dissing another black woman's choice of hair, especially since I was rockin' the au natural look on camera and my hair was an explosion of curls. Then the light turned green and I managed to make it to the turn off for the 10 (which was awesomely devoid of rush hour traffic) but as I accelerated off the ramp I still wondered just why I had to feel bad. Yes, she was black and I was black but that's as far as our similarities go. I don't owe her anything just because we have the same skin tone. It occurred to me that white people probably don't have to face this dilemma and perhaps I was thinking to hard about something silly. She had stupid hair for Christ's sake!

Did she deserve to be made fun of for it? I don't know. Was the segment juvenile? Most definitely. Should I not have participated in it? Probably not. But don't think I won't be telling people from now until June, "I might be on Deal or No Deal!" and then we'll see how it plays.