There are things in Good Hair, Chris Rock's deeply funny and very serious documentary about the African-American obsession with straightened tresses, that may make your hair stand right up on end. Here are a few of the movie's fascinatingly fun facts:· The hair ''relaxer'' used by African-Americans for many decades is sodium hydroxide, which will eat away a soda can in two hours and leave you with permanent bald spots if it seeps into your scalp. (Peering into an 18,000-pound vat of the stuff, Rock remarks, ''This would last Prince for about a month!'') The asymmetric hair that Salt-N-Pepa made iconic was the result of a relaxer accident.· The weaves that are now legion among African-American women can easily cost the most modest working-class folks $1,000 a pop. Those high-maintenance 'dos have become an integral point in the politics of black dating.· The next time you see an artist like Eve or Nia Long (both interviewed in the film), there's a good chance that the hair they're wearing once belonged to a woman from India who cut it off in a religious ceremony.Rock, who co-wrote Good Hair and serves as its guiding host, is hilariously aware of the cultural insecurities that have driven many African-Americans to spend a fortune on straightening their hair. Yet by structuring the film around the Bronner Bros. Hair Show, a battle-of-the-salon-stars so over-the-top it's like Iron Chef meets Paris Is Burning, Rock gives Good Hair a rousing message: Where African-Americans in the '60s adopted a ''natural'' look, they now feel free to coif their heads any way they want. That's cultural power.
