What is Jewish hair?

I am man, currently researching my ethnic origins. My grandmother came over from Vilnius, her and my father had very black wavy hair. It would be interesting if hair type proved to be the basis of a currently speculative hypothesis.

This article, although well intentioned and written by a woman with straight hair, classifies most Jewish women with curly hair. Jewish people are the wandering people of the earth and come from all places and therefore have every hair type. I myself am 50% Slavic Jewish. My roots lie in Lithuania (most of the Jews who were there during WWII were murdered by the Nazis) and I have hair straighter and finer than anybody you can find on this planet. Funny thing is my non-Jewish European mother has very curly hair. But the straight hair gene from my fathers Jewish side is quite strong. Nobody from this blood line can even hold a curl, even with all the mousse, curlers, hot round irons in the world!!! I remember crying to my mother as a child because I wanted waves and curls so bad!!! My hair is also very light brown which I highlight and looks light blonde and I'm extremely fair. I have the look of a waspy California girl and nobody would ever guess I was Jewish, but I love to tell people to prove stereotypes wrong. Jews come in all packages!!!

It really doesn't make a difference what hair we got. I work at a hair salon with a lot of young clients who are Jewish. Many of them are from Eastern Europe, even from Africa, Asia and Latin America and they all have different hairstyles and hair textures. I'm Jewish Eastern European and Hispanic, and I've got green eyes and black hair.

I am half Russian Jewish an half Jamaican. All my Jewish family have dead straight hair. Even my hair is not that curly and I'm half black. Not all Jewish people look the same or have the same hair.

I remember once when I was about 8 and had plastered my head with vaseline and then sat on the edge of the bathroom sink and admired my glossy,straight dark brown hair. So far from the cropped curls I usually had - constantly being chopped off as my mother, blessed/cursed (depending on viewpoint) with ordinary straight brown British hair - had no idea how to deal with curls. It wasn't until the late 60s, when I was a rebellious teen and insisted on letting my hair grow, that I discovered how thick, curly and sexy it could be. Anyway now I am 60, and still the lucky owner of a full head of shoulder length dark brown curls - sometimes ringlets, sometimes straighter, and sometimes a puffy mess - depending on the weather. All this I can thank my fathers Italian Jewish genes for. Of course I did end up marrying a super Aryan looking northern European and none of our kids got the curls. So, thanks Pappa!

I'm 50% Jewish and 100% European. I'm really light skinned, maybe with a hint of yellow. People think I'm white and sometimes Spanish when my hair is wet. I have soft hair with thick wiry hairs on the outside. Its very thick and I have a lot of it. I live in Florida and sun turned it a sort of reddish brown. My hair is very frizzy and is wavy when I brush it out, but curly if I wet it. Its getting long and I love it. My hair may not look sleek and perfect but its definitely some form of Jew hair. Rarely, I straighten it and when I do, I think it looks nice and I don't have to worry about it frizzing. But with the right product, I like it curly too (but the products are veryy expensive and I can't afford them). Anyway, no matter what you guys look like, love yourself! Because they're only one you and we're all beautiful in our unique way!

I work as a hairdresser and see so many hair types on people of every heritage. Generally people have good hair only if they take a real interest in it! Curly hair is amazing when its well conditioned and the right products are used, same goes for silky straight hair, if its treated well its beautiful but when its dry and neglected it snaps, thins out, loses color and life MUCH quicker than thick, strong curls.
I know quite a few "white" girls that would trade flat mouse hair for thick, richly colored manes that Jewish girls are blessed with, and would kill for olive skin, fake tan is always just a bit to orange! I have so many clippings of Bar Rafaeli that have been brought in its not funny!

I'm a mixed ancestry African American with kinky hair and my ex is of Ashkenazim ancestry with curly hair. Our little girl has almost straight hair. Her hair came from my half-Native American great grandmother.

There is no such thing as a definitive "Jewish hair." Jews have all kinds of hair types. I've known and known of Jews with blonde, red, brunette, brown, black, straight, curly, and/or frizzy hair. To suggest that there is such a thing as "Jewish hair" is to give into the racially classifying Jews...something from history that we don't want to repeat!

My dark, curly hair (and many of my other features) have always been seen as being very "Jewish looking" when it fact this trait (and many of the others) actually come from my half-Italian father and not my Jewish mother.

I've seen the American Girl doll and must agree that if we are following what this article proclaims the Jewish look to be, she is pretty close. But how can you say what a Jew looks like when they are found everywhere from Eastern-Europe to North Africa to the Middle East and so on.... I think that Rebecca (doll's name) was an immigrant from Russia. So maybe her look reflects on Russian jews. I, however, admit that I fall into the Jewish looks category too. And I've never foudn myself longing to look Arian in any way.

I love my Jewish curls :) I wasn't raised Jewish as my family became Catholic while leaving Holland in the 1930s. But I love my heritage and my curls connect me to my family history.

For practically my entire life, I've hated my hair. Stumbling across this article enticed me to watch Good Hair, and after viewing, while I can't entirely relate to the black experience, I can attest to the torture that is a chemical relaxer.I'm a German and Russian non-practicing Jew and my hair has always been thick and curly. But from kindergarten until 4th or 5th grade, my mom always blew dry my hair in the morning and it ended up straight. Elementary school was fine. But the hormones of junior high kicked in, and my mom stopped blow drying my hair and POOF. Boy, do I mean poof. I didn't know what to do with it, and while I grew up in NJ and there were other Jews around, they all had beautiful straight hair. The beauty parlor my mom and I went to was temporarily hosting a black salon part time as they looked for a new storefront to rent and I desperately wanted my hair straightened. My white hairdresser had a black hairdresser coach her through the entire process of relaxing my hair. It was frightening, smelled horrible, burned my scalp and didn't even end up straightening my hair. Half of it was straw and half of it stubbornly kept the kinky curl. From then up until a few years ago when an ex convinced me to wear it down, I kept my hair tied up tightly. I used to read beauty magazines and feel awful because there were never any models with curly hair (unless they were black) and there were never any "how to style curly hair" articles, either. Now I use the whole DevaCurl product line and finally have embraced my crazy hair. And you know what? Everyone stops me to tell me what wonderful hair I have. Moms in the mall, guys at the pharmacy, pretty much anyone. It never stops feeling good. Embrace the Jewfro ladies!

I don't have the hair. My three sisters and I all have flaming red, silky straight hair. Our heritage is Eastern European and we are 100% Jewish.

...and have no clue about my heritage. My hair fits in with "jewish hair" though so you have me wondering. Interesting thoughts. 

I'm Christian and as far as I know, I don't have a Jewish heritage, but I definitely have Jewish hair! It's naturally dark brown, curly, thick and frizzy. I used to pull it back into a ponytail to hide the frizziness, recently I've learned how to get it tame enough to be worn down, although I'm still paranoid of a frizz attack when its down.

It wasn't until I started college that I embraced my curls. While I straighten my hair occasionally, I have learned how to make the most of my curls.

I'm 54 years old and STILL uncomfortable wearing my hair in its wild naturally curly state, even though my husband says he likes it better that way. I yearn for the return of the eighties "Flashdance", disco hair. Before I die, I'm gonna accept myself just as I am, fashion. Be damned.

i am an african-american woman and it is comforting to see that jewish-american women also feel the same kind of pressure to "fit in".
i have always thought curly hair was so pretty no matter whose head it was growing out of--except, of course, my own. after 25 long years I have opted to end my relationship with chemical relaxers, and letting my natural curls take reign.
as a side note, i believe seth rogen is irish or part irish (rogen is an irish surname). reading this article made me think of natalie portman a jewish-american who openly admitted her dislike of her "crazy curly hair" and says she keeps it straightened.
i think the only real glimpse she has given of her natural hair (that I know of) was in star wars: attack of the clones. there is a scene early in the film where she is wearing a funky, trophy cup headress and just the front of her unstraightened hair is exposed.

I am not jewish, i am black and mixed with other races, and i think it's wonderful. Celebrate your beauty my jewish sisters, this is what makes the world beautiful place, diversity. love who you are!

I come from a non-practicing Russian jewish family. My mother's maiden name was anglicized from Brokovitz to Brook. I grew up without a notion of jewishness. But, I was different. A picture of me shows a young girl, perhaps three years old, with an afro halo three feet above her. I grew up in Seattle, a mostly segregated city, during the 80's and 90's. African-Americans thought I was mixed. When asked to touch upon my racial background, I would shyly admit to being "jewish" not having any idea of the sacraments and duties, but to hint at my "ethnicity." I was "jewish." My mother, not wanting to take the time to fix or mess with it, made me stick to an afro. Oy, how I hated this. I was teased relentlessly. Some felt that it would be fine to try to see if a ball would bounce off my head-real funny. I finally relaxed my hair after again growing it out three feet above my head. It was a disaster- it looked like fried bacon strips. Again, I grew it out, and wore it proudly, purple, for my graduation. It continued to grow, and finally I wore it back, tied down. (always a few frizzy strands escaping) Today, after having again, gone through the relaxation process, I cut off my relaxed hair to once again wear my jewfro halo. A few relaxed strips create an interesting touch to my frizzy fro.It is my "ethnicity of jewishness" the only, granted tangible thing, I can identify to a culture.

Your film made me uncomfortable. It seemed destined to make the viwer hostile to the Koreans. Why not take a look at how the Koreans became so successful. What is it that the black community did not do? Were there illegal business practices or are the Koreans better business persons? I don't know the answers here.

Please take a moment to check out my documentary film BLACK HAIR

It is free at youtube. 6 parts including an update from London, England.

It explores the Korean Take-over of the Black Beauty Supply and Hair biz..

The current situation makes it hard to believe that Madame C.J. Walker once ran the whole thing.

I am not a hater, I am a motivator.

Plus I am a White guy who stumbled upon this, and felt it was so wrong I had to make a film about it.

self-funded film, made from the heart.

Can it be taken back?

Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p96aaTSdrAE

I didn't realize I had curly hair until 1964, when the Beatles arrived in the U.S. Then it became an embarrassment. I wore a hat the entire summer of '66, at the end of which my parents allowed me to get my hair straightened at a beauty shop because I really wanted to enter junior high with straight hair. After the ordeal, I dashed into the house, asking Mom, "How does it look?" She paused. For a long time. I'll never forget the words: "It looks the same." I ran to the bathroom mirror, stunned to see that in the 10 minutes it had taken to go from beauty shop to home, it had all "turned."

For years thereafter I slept with large rollers in my hair. But when I discovered my inner hippie, I let my freak flag fly into long ringlets. By the summer of '70, my younger sister and I couldn't go anywhere without someone asking us, "How do you get your hair to do that?" Years later everyone assumed we had "permed" hair.

To this day I wear it curly and occasionally wind-blown wild. Proud of my Jewish hair.

my hair is so curly and my skin is such a deep olive color, that people often mistake me for bi-racial. Because of this, I have always related very strongly to the black community. When it comes to looks, I feel like an outsider to the white world. However, I am Jewsh and was raised in a Jewish home by two Jewish parents.
I tried straightening my hair once with a blow dryer. It looked like dry stiff straw. I decided tight curls were beautiful and went with it. It wasn't a proclamation of my Jewish identity, but simply the most attractive and practicle hair style for me.

Jewish hair has a beauty all it own. Think Amy Irving in Crossing Delancy or Carol Kane in Hester St. or the actress (from Brandeis) in Will and Grace. I side with those that feel that Rebecca Rubin got sold out.

When I was a young girl in the 1960s, long hair -- the straighter the better -- was the must-have look for white girls. There was no layering of hair, either. Layered cutting didn't happen until the early 70s. My hair was wavy rather than curly, but very frizzy. This was before hand-held blow dryers and styling products. We had lacquer hairspray and instruments of torture like curlers and juice cans. Sleeping on rollers was an experience I'll never forget. When Dippity-Do was invented in the mid-60s it was a revelation.

I lived 50 miles outside of New York City, in a school district where there were very few Jewish families. When I was in the 5th grade, in 1965, it was the vogue to pass around autograph books at the end of the school year for other girls to sign. There were popular rhymes girls would write to each other, often "slams". One such rhyme was "When you are old and gaining weight, remember the girdles are $5.98." Common enough. Except that in my book, the writer added an asterisk and wrote "And the brushes are $1.00." In other words, it looked to my classmates like I never brushed my hair. I felt utterly humiliated.

Just to add a comment about the article above: some women did wear the Jewfro, briefly, in the 1970s. I remember Rhea Perlman of Cheers fame wore it for a season or two. I don't think it lasted long, though, possibly because we knew how much Jewish men yearned to date non-Jewish women who had that long, flowy, silky hair.

Growing up, I always wanted a Jewfro like Abby Hoffman had. Not a recent thing, at all.

Reading about Chris Rock's new film, I also reflected on my experience of having "Jewish hair". I have very wavy hair, and growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was very aware that I didn't look like most of my Catholic neighbors or like the idols or models of the time, including Farrah Fawcett. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to straighten my hair. Luckily, as I grew older, I learned to work with my hair, and now I have a hairstyle that suits the curliness. Also, I feel there isn't as much stigma attached to curly or "Jewish" hair these days. But it still is an issue - if you look on reality TV, most young women considered "hot" have straight, long hair - never going to be a reality to someone like me.