From showing off embarrassing baby pictures to slight emotional scarring, the people who were in charge of us before we knew not to chase a ball into traffic affected our lives. Parents make a lot of choices for their young children, for better or for worse.
A recent lawsuit between actress Halle Berry and model Gabriel Aubry centered on their 6-year-old daughter’s hair. Nahla Aubry’s natural, thick, curly brown hair came from her racially-blended roots. While her father is about as white as French-Canadians can get, Nahla’s mother had a black father and a white mother.
In Berry’s complaints, she mentioned that while Nahla was in her father’s care, he straightened and highlighted the girl’s hair, an action she feels takes away Nahla’s African ancestry. The judge ultimately ruled neither Berry nor Aubry are to change their daughter’s hair color or texture.
A few years ago, I read a Dear Abby column in the Sunday paper in which a young mother asked how she should handle her child’s grandmother digitally retouching photos of the child, who had lost a few teeth, as young children do. This came to mind when I was reading about Nahla’s hair.
Children lose teeth and skin their knees because they’re young and don’t understand consequences. That’s part of growing up and learning about the world around you. The grandmother who “fixes” the photos of her grandson’s toothless smile is erasing an essential part of childhood that everyone experiences.
The human body is alterable. We can dye and cut the hair, tattoo and pierce the skin and enhance or reduce the size of certain features, but it’s the individual’s choice to do so. Nahla’s right to bodily autonomy, or the individual’s right to choose what to do with their body, is violated when her parents choose to routinely straighten or dye her hair.
You can argue that when her father suggested the changes to her hair, Nahla enthusiastically agreed. But I could jokingly suggest to my niece, who is around Nahla’s age, that we eat monkey brains for dinner, and she’ll agree to it if she thinks it would make me happy.
This case piqued my interest for several reasons, but teenage Nahla was the first thought I had. Nahla will grow up and no doubt find the TMZ and E! stories that ran about her parents fighting over her hair in court. This could lead to her questioning why her father thought it necessary to alter her appearance at such a young age.
Like it or not, we live for our parents’ approval. We get excited when our parents are proud and we second-guess ourselves when they express disapproval. That is true from the moment we are born until we die.
With young girls especially, there is a huge emphasis on physical appearance, and the children of celebrities are even more conscious of that. Nahla is going to grow up not only in a world where she would be judged based on her appearance, but also as the daughter of a Tommy Hilfiger model and the 2008 Esquire Sexiest Woman Alive.
At age 6, her appearance shouldn’t already be an issue. The judge who decided that neither parent could alter the young girl’s hair made the right choice.
Jana King is a 20-year-old communication studies junior from Ponchatoula, LA. You can reach her on Twitter @jking_TDR.