by Stacey Dash
I actually had an actress come up to me and say, “You wash your hair every day like a white girl, don’t you?”
Holy shit. She actually said this to me.
The topic of hair amongst black women is one of the most hotly contested, debated, divisive topics you can imagine. Black women try to stick everyone into different camps—on one side are the “big hair don’t care” ladies who believe in “natural hair.” On the other are ladies who use chemical relaxers to straighten their hair and make it easier to deal with. When the topic of hair comes up, you can immediately see black women’s eyes light up. The “natural hair” women whip their hair back and forth and explain that they love how God made them. The “relaxed hair” women say that their lives are easier because God gave them chemicals for a reason. Black women judge each other on their hair more than on any other topic—even the phrase “good hair” is now considered an insult. What is good hair, after all? Is there an element of racism in that phrase, because it implies that looser curls are somehow better than kinky hair? The politics of black women’s hair cannot be solved by any amount of debate or reason. If you’re not a black woman, you have no idea the contention and judgment black women hoist on each other. (Though Chris Rock did a good job trying to understand it in his movie, Good Hair.)
I, however, am on the outside of this debate. I find it boring and small. Because I’m half black and half Mexican, my hair texture is different from everyone else’s. Black women will sometimes take one look at my hair and immediately try to classify me as “not black enough.”
On the set of Clueless, my hair was discussed by the stylists on the very first day.
“You’ve got great hair,” said one after I settled into the chair. She held some of my hair in her hand and examined it. It was still damp from my morning shower. “But it won’t do,” she said as she twirled a lock of it between her fingers.
“I thought you just said it was great.”
“It is great,” she replied, “but it’s not black enough.”
“Not black enough?” I knew instantly what she meant. “What about braids?” I suggested.
We agreed that braids would do the trick, so I went to a hairstylist who was a friend of mine. She used real hair for the braids, which took six or seven hours to put in, and I had to repeat that every month. Because I washed my hair every day, they didn’t last as long as they could’ve.
As I walked out of hair and makeup, I felt the weight of my new hair on my head. I had to admit I loved the way I looked.
I wasn’t offended when she said that my hair “wasn’t black enough.” Of course, filmmakers have ideas in their heads about “what black people do” and “what black people look like,” and it’s not bad for actors to change to meet the requirements of a role. However, it does get old when it seeps into real life. My entire life I’ve been told, I had to behave a certain way, look a certain way, and think a certain way. I was always told I acted like a white girl because of the way I spoke, looked, or washed my hair.
What does that mean, “like a white girl”? I thought when that actress on Single Ladies made the snide remark about washing my hair every day. Do white people have a monopoly on washing their hair? Is that what you’re saying?
But I didn’t respond. I could tell the actress was trying to goad me, so I simply put my earbuds in and ignored her.
Gina, who always was standing nearby to monitor things, said, “Oh, well, she’s Mexican.”
Thankfully, Max was a fun distraction. I saw him about every five days. Wherever he traveled, he wanted me by his side. We went to Copenhagen, New York, Chicago, everywhere. Though I didn’t love him for his money, there were benefits. He bought me a six-bedroom house and gave me money to decorate it. We spent hours talking about love and life. Frequently, our conversation turned to politics.
Once we were having a conversation about how liberals believe that justice demands that you take money from one group of people and give it to another.
“That’s socialism!” I protested.
“Of course,” he laughed. “What do you think it is?”
“Oh my God. No, no,” I said. “That can’t happen. We can’t have a socialist nation.”
He touched my nose and smiled. “My dear, I believe you are a Republican capitalist.”
The more time I spent with Max, the more I learned about politics and the more conservative I realized I am. And I started talking to my friends about such matters . . . for better or worse. Once I was hanging out with my British friends when I started talking about the opportunities available in America. “I just think it’s great that the American dream is available to everyone.”
“You can’t just keep on saying things like that, you know,” my friend Roman said, before taking a long sip of his pinot noir and smiling in my direction.
“Now I’m getting lectured by a Brit about my own damn country?” Everyone laughed.
“The American dream isn’t available for everyone,” he said. “There isn’t enough to go around.”
“That’s an absurd thought. You’re putting a limit on the universe? You’re putting a limit on God? Anything is possible if you want it.”
“Wow, you sound like every Disney movie ever made,” he quipped.
For some reason, his line of reasoning angered me.
“You can’t tell the difference between Mickey Mouse and Margaret Thatcher. You think you can only get to a certain level of wealth and that’s it?” I asked. Wealth isn’t like a jar of jelly beans: once you give them away, they’re gone. It’s more like literacy or life expectancy. It can increase in one area without necessarily decreasing somewhere else. When someone hits it big somewhere in America, he’s not taking money out of my pocket. He’s generating income, creating it from scratch. That’s quite a feat, and I hate how people stoke the bitterness and jealousy of one segment of the population toward the segment that is actually out there making jobs.
People aren’t poor because other people are rich. I saw the effects of that line of thinking in the South Bronx. People who get on the dole never get off, they aren’t respected, and they end up being someone’s bitch. It’s obvious welfare has encouraged inefficiency, waste, and laziness. I honestly believe if I could take my friends from the Los Angeles gangs and show them this principle, they’d stop being so resentful of “the Man” keeping them down. Also, if Americans had a better understanding of this notion, they would have respected Mitt Romney for being able to create wealth instead of looking down on him. “Of course you believe this way. You live in Laurel Canyon and don’t work,” I said. “You borrow money from everybody, so you’re used to getting something for nothing. How can I expect you to know about actually creating something instead of just tearing it down? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
The host of the event put her hand up, like a cop directing traffic. “Okay, that’s enough,” she said. “We’re just trying to have a nice dinner. Why don’t I go check on the cake in the kitchen?”
“I hope you don’t teach this to your children,” I said, ignoring the hostess. “Because God forbid they dream.”
“Leave my kids out of this,” he said.
“This is about our kids. We’re talking about America’s future, but you’re buying into the very lie that Democrats tell you to believe. They want you to believe that there’s only so much money and those greedy capitalists are stealing it from the average guy on the street. As long as they give you money and you take it, they control you because they control the resources. It’s a plantation mentality, and it’s not right. I like to call it the ‘White House Plantation Mentality.’”
I got up from the table and just walked away, leaving my confused friends sitting there with their mouths slightly open.
If blacks get more wealth, it’s because whites must give it up to them. That’s what I’ve heard my whole life. It’s a false choice and—frankly—it’s degrading. I took my conversation with Roman personally, because his way of thin
king undermines black people’s achievements and animates much of the racial tension that exists today.
We don’t have to choose between blacks and whites, between the haves and the have nots. We can all choose to act in ways that benefit everyone. That, of course, is capitalism. Everyone knows money doesn’t grow on trees. But what Democratic black voters don’t get is that money doesn’t just fall out of Uncle Sam’s pocket. It has to be created. What makes it? People. If people are the ones who generate money by using their minds and their creativity, that means that there’s a tremendous amount of hope and possibility right there in the inner city.
In America, our greatest natural resource is the talent of our people. But Democrats hand out dimes and nickels, pat us on the head, and then pack us up in buses to tell us how to vote. It’s a shame, and there’s nothing that angers me more than a wealthy white liberal spreading the same lies as Al fucking Sharpton.
My friends and I began having very heated political conversations, as something inside of me had awakened. I was a black conservative. No, I was an American. I happened to be black and I happened to be a conservative. But as an American I felt I had the responsibility to talk about these political issues that affect us every day.
The stress of shooting Single Ladies was getting to me. I was disappointed in the script, and I didn’t enjoy my castmates as much as I had on other shows. Though I loved seeing Max every five days, the international travel was physically taxing.
On Valentine’s Day, he asked me to meet him in San Francisco. When I saw him, I could tell there was something odd, something different about him. I’m not sure if he looked different or just was acting different, but certainly something had shifted.
“Do you have something to tell me?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Like that you’ve been with someone.”
He took my hand and smiled. “You’re a paranoid one, aren’t you?”
We spent the next five days together, and I couldn’t shake the feeling.
“Just tell me,” I said. “I need to know.”
He assured me, once again, that he hadn’t been with anyone else. And so I tried to shake the feeling off, but it lingered like a fly buzzing around my head. I couldn’t concentrate without dealing with that annoyance.
“If you ask me about being unfaithful again, I’m gonna leave,” he said, after I brought it up once again.
He was so confident and so persuasive. Was he telling the truth? But on the flight home I started feeling weird. I readjusted in my seat, but I felt itchy and uncomfortable. Something wasn’t right.
“Gina,” I said into the phone. “Make an appointment with Dr. Owens as soon as I land.”
I went from LAX to the doctor’s office, scared about how I was feeling. After a physical exam and some tests, he came into the room and tossed some antibiotics on the table.
“It looks like you have an STD,” he said. “Trichomoniasis.”
“What?” I instantly began crying. “How?”
The doctor explained that my sexual partner must have recently contracted an STD, but that it rarely shows symptoms in men. When Max passed it to me, it was a sign that he’d been cheating on me. Just as I’d figured. I wept and wept. My doctor put a hand on my shoulder, awkwardly. As he stood there watching me sob, he finally said, “Stacey, do you think I might need to sedate you?”
He smiled, but I don’t think he was joking. In my life, men have come and gone. In every circumstance, I was the one who left them. I’d fall fast for men, but tire of them almost as quickly. But I loved Max and had finally found a long-term partner . . . or so I thought.
“How could he do this to me?” I said.
“It’s a little outside my area of expertise,” he said, shrugging. “But I think you need to have a talk with your partner.”
The medicine took the pain and itchiness away, but the pain in my heart lingered. Especially when Max admitted the affair. He begged me to give him another chance and made a grand show of his love by taking me to Italy for Easter. There we had a private mass at the Vatican. Then we went to Florence, to the Medici Castle. After our whirlwind European tour, we came back to the United States, to what had become our normal lives. We hosted a party, and while people milled around we walked outside and stood on the edge of a river that ran through the property behind our house. It was so picturesque. We held hands, and I felt like he deserved another chance. After all, we all make mistakes.
While we were standing there, he began talking more philosophically. “My life is like the rocky points in the river . . . .” I can’t remember the rest of his analogy, mainly because what he said next just simply didn’t make sense. He told me that he was the type of man who has affairs. Not that he had an affair, but that he has affairs. Plural.
“Why don’t you just look the other way?”
I stood there speechless. I had been with this man for two and a half years, during which time he’d told me repeatedly that he was getting a divorce. Turns out, he wasn’t getting a divorce at all, and his wife was not too happy to hear about me. I was standing at the house—our home that I’d set up for the four of us—when he laid this news on me. I was welcome to stay with him, but I’d have to be okay with his constant infidelity. Oh, and his wife.
“Basically you’re asking me to be a gold-digging whore?”
“I’m saying things could be easier for you if you just give me some space.”
But “some space” meant simply that he’d have sex with as many women as he wanted. All I had to do was pretend it wasn’t happening. Then, all of this—the house, the river, the cars, the vacations—could still be mine.
“I don’t want to have to use a condom every time we have sex because I’m worried you’ll give me an STD!!”
“I’ll use a condom with the other women,” he had the gall to suggest.
I’m sure my mouth fell open. I’d never been propositioned in this way. And that’s what it felt like. A proposition. I wasn’t interested in being a prostitute. I wasn’t even interested in being “the other woman.” I wanted to love Max, and I wanted Max to love me. I wanted someone to help me create a family, a place of security and peace. Instead of explaining to him that I actually loved him—that this had been no act for me—I slapped the shit out of him . . . so hard he almost fell into his river. His friends, who were standing around sipping on champagne, suddenly got quiet and watched us.
“I don’t want your money. Take your fucking house, take your cash, take everything. I don’t want it!”
“Have it your way,” He said, rubbing his hand over his face. “I’m not going to finance you anymore.” At the time, I had some money from work, but definitely not enough to pay the bills for a house with six bedrooms.
“There’s no way I can pay for this alone,” I said.
“I’ll pay one year of rent so that you can get back on your feet and do it on your own. Or, if you’re willing to look the other way . . .” He lightly touched my chin and made me look up at him. “You could keep it.”
“Fuck you!” To suddenly find out that he was actually cheating on me, throughout all of my waiting—was overwhelming. But to realize that I’d lose my financial stability if I didn’t “look the other way” was downright insulting.
“How will you live?” he asked.
“How could you do this to me?” I screamed. By this time, no one at the party was pretending not to listen. We had a full audience, but I didn’t care. “To Lola?”
“I’ll pay a year’s worth of rent,” he offered again. “So you’ve got a little time to get your life together.”
Your life, he’d said. He used to say our lives. But I guess he used to be lying. Meanwhile, the atmosphere at Single Ladies had grown worse. Conflict on the set, a terrible script, and lots of drama made that scene unbearable. I was on the first full season, but decided not to come back for the second.
I was so devastated by my breakup that I couldn’t get out of bed for
six months. Gina worried about me, but there was nothing that could be done. My heart had been broken. To make matters worse, I got a notice that I had to get out of my home in five days. Apparently, Max had paid for the year’s rent, but that didn’t mean I had a year to figure out Plan B. Sooner than I was ready, the year was up, and the landlord wanted another year’s contract . . . in advance. I couldn’t pay that. After frantically looking for a place to move, I came up empty. There were not many affordable places to rent for my family of three in Los Angeles, which is where I needed to live to take advantage of job opportunities. And speaking of jobs, I was at a Clueless event when someone came up to me and handed me an envelope. “Sign here, please.”
In front of the media and fans, I was served a subpoena. I signed my name and laughed, as if this man was just another fan who wanted my autograph. But the truth was far darker. Apparently, Max and his wife finally did get a divorce, and she wanted me in court to help make her case against him. I called Max, afraid of the ramifications of this subpoena, but he assured me I didn’t have to go.
With that little piece of advice, Max caused me to be in contempt of court. Not showing up was the most asinine thing I’ve ever done, since I had nothing to hide. I certainly didn’t care to protect him. But suddenly I had to pay a lawyer to help me deal with the legal bills from being in contempt.
“I’m sorry, Stacey,” Max said. “I’ll reimburse you for the lawyer.”
Of course, he never paid one dime. And I sank further into debt and despair. Everything Max had given me, he took back: the house, the clothes, the jewelry. Well, everything but the STD, which thankfully was cleared up by antibiotics.
Let’s pause here for one moment and consider the mess my life had become.
