Anyone can have a lazy hair day when styling it is not a high priority, but Tiffany Haddish weighed in on the hair bonnet controversy saying that wearing them publicly should have “respectable limits.”
Haddish — who is an actress and Grammy-winning comedian — recently spoke with journalist D’Shonda Brown via Zoom about body positivity and the bonnet debate that left Mo’Nique feeling frustrated with Black women. In the conversation, Haddish told Brown that when it comes to bonnet-wearing in airports, she agrees with Mo’Nique that it should get the thumbs-down.
“You spend all this money for an airplane ticket, you might as well get dressed up because you never know. I was always taught to make sure your drawers are clean and you look decent, especially when you’re moving and traveling around because if something happens to you when they got to cut your clothes off, you want to be decent,” Haddish told Brown. “It’s about respecting yourself. I ain’t going to lie to you, I run out in the streets in my bonnet sometimes just to run to the store real quick but we got to have some dignity in ourselves. When you dress a certain way, it tells people how you feel about yourself.”
The bonnet debate is now extending to workplaces
. Should women wear bonnets during work calls on Zoom or to work? Refinery29 writer Sydney Clarke explored the idea of doing her hair for meeting calls on Zoom, amid working from home.“Working from home should offer us the same sigh of relief as when we take off our bra or heels at the end of the day, but the fact that I still hustle to do my hair for my virtual meetings says the opposite,” Brown said in the article.
She took the initiative to organize a Zoom Bonnet Meeting (ZBM) which was comprised of six Black women who work for Refinery29 and Vice. The dialogue centered around hair, and if they still felt like getting glammed up, even when work duties are not in-person. Brown said that the women showed up in bonnets for the discussion.
“When
you’re in a group of women who look like you, it feels more like family, like a safe space; there’s an understanding there. I don’t have to explain myself,” Stephanie Long, the senior editor of R29Unbothered, remarked during the ZBM.“When you’re in a group of people that’s outside of that understanding, that’s outside of your community, you definitely think about how you’re coming off to other people.”