Curly Hair: The New Racism

CURLY MENACE Meg Ryan Thank God someone finally said it! Curly hair: it's not just an issue for black women wanting to be taken "seriously" anymore—though could little Malia Obama have had her hair straightened any harder for the DNC?—because now Hollywood and the TV shows have come for the Jews and the ethnic whites. "Is pop culture a mirror for our society's straight-ist attitude toward hair, or is it helping to perpetuate it?" asks Sara Vilkomerson in this week's New York Observer, on the occasion of the release of the (totally ucky) remake of The Women, which stars a Meg Ryan who gets straightened out in all ways possible. Turns out? Some curly-haired ladies are pissed about society's hair-straightism.