No. You cannot touch my hair! | Mena Fombo | TEDxBristol

'My seven-year-old self learnt to tell people what I thought they wanted to hear. By the age of eight, I’d convinced the other kids that my hair was made of sponge… because being black, it couldn’t be made of "hair".'

Through her own personal story and the hair-raising experiences of other women and girls, Mena Fombo’s TEDxBristol talk is a witty yet compelling and sometimes dark exploration of the objectification of black women. It's an issue she has spent a lifetime experiencing and exploring with both a political and creative lens.

Mena is the driving force behind the international campaign: 'No. You Cannot Touch My Hair,' which has attracted contributions from people across the UK and around the world. Over half the respondents said they had their hair touched on a monthly basis by people they’d never met before. Eighteen percent said it happened every week. The vast majority described the touching as intrusive, invasive, and unwelcome. Ninety percent of those responding identified as female, and the majority were black or of mixed race origin. Some said it felt like being petted in a zoo. Mena says, 'We are not animals in zoos - #DONTTOUCH.'

Mena Fombo describes herself as a British Nigerian Bristolian through and through! She is a purposeful coach, facilitator, motivational speaker, consultant, and activist with a background working in the arts, the voluntary sector, and educational establishments across Europe, the USA, Africa, and South Asia.

She is also the founder of The OJiJi Purple Project, a Bristol-based non-profit that campaigns for equality, focusing on working with black women and girls through everyday activism, connecting communities, and creativity. She is the curator of Bristol’s first Black Girls Convention.

As a confident black woman who has overcome a lifetime of adversity and personal experiences of injustice, she has carved out a role for herself as a creative activist, working tirelessly to support the political, social, and economic equality of black people and women. She is passionate about social change, the development of people, values-based leadership, and creating powerful learning experiences.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Let's play a game.

Mena says, 'Clap once.'

(Audience claps)

Great, well done.

Mena says, 'High-five
someone next to you.'

(Audience claps)

Very good. Okay.

Mena says, 'Touch the hair
of the person in front of you.'

(Laughter)

I'm serious.

Okay, now touch the hair
of the person next to you.

(Laughter)

Guys, guys -

Mena didn't say that time.

Come on, you know the rules.

Thank you for playing.

Just want to see, by a show of hands,

how many of you
just had your hair touched

by someone you've never met before?

Yeah? That's quite a lot of people.

And just by a show of hands,
how many of you were like,

'Nah, I'm not touching
anybody's hair today.'

(Laughter)

I'm with you guys.

I launched the 'No. You Cannot
Touch My Hair' campaign survey

in the summer of 2017.

And just under half of the respondents

said they had their hair touched
on a monthly basis

by people they've never met before.

And within that, 18% said
it happened once a week.

So if you can imagine unwanted
and uninvited hair-touching

by people you've never met before:

that's my daily life.

About a year ago,

I got exhausted

with constantly saying to people,

'Don't touch',

like, 'Thanks for the compliment,
but keep your hands to yourself.'

And I kind of wanted
a recorder to just press play,

but I figured that prevention
is much better than cure.

So I printed these T-shirts,

and I started to walk around wearing
'No. You Cannot Touch My Hair.'

And I wore them to supermarkets,

I wore them to work and to conferences,

I wore them out socially.

But what I found was that lots of people
started asking me questions.

Some people genuinely
didn't know that this was a thing,

even though it affects my life -
yes, it's a thing.

Some people were like, 'Yeah,
I want a T-shirt; that happens to me.'

So I wanted to start collecting that data,
and the survey was born.

As part of the research for the survey,
I made this bit of a social experiment.

[Is touching a stranger's hair
without invitation ever okay?]

(Video) Mena Fombo:
Wow, your hair's amazing!

(Laughter)

[How does it make you feel?]

[Share your hair story]

[with the No You Cannot Touch My Hair
campaign survey - goo.gl/jkeuty]

Now, the hardest part of that
was trying to chase people,

lift up my shirt to show I was wearing
this campaign shirt underneath,

at which point they thought
I was flashing them,

and try and say, 'No, no,
it's a social experiment.'

When I did catch up,
I asked them how it felt.

And most of the people in the video said
it was weird and it was uncomfortable.

The majority of our campaign survey
respondents said that it felt intrusive,

it felt invasive,

and they were very angry and annoyed
that this happened to them.

One of the things that I found

was that the majority
of respondents were female.

So 90%, in fact, identified as female.

And the majority of those
were black women and girls.

So we know this is an issue

that affects black women and girls
more than any other race.

Now, a friend of a friend,
this white guy, was saying,

'But Mena, I went on holiday
to India for two weeks,

and people were touching my hair.'

Lots of other women were saying,

'Oh, you know, when you're pregnant,
people come up and touch your stomach,

and it's the same thing.'

I don't want to take that experience
away from anybody.

Any form of unwanted
and uninvited touching

is completely unacceptable.

But most women, on average,
are only pregnant for nine months,

so that type of touching
will come to an end.

And I'm not on vacation or on holiday,

and like many of the respondents,
this is the country that I was born in,

and it still happens.

Some people, a very small minority,
said they didn't mind the touching,

and again, that's cool.

But this campaign is really targeted

at the overwhelming,
disproportionate number

of black people, black women, black girls

that experience
this unwanted hair touching.

When I was six years old,

I was asked to be Mary in my school play -

I was, like, 'Getting lead part!'

And the only other black kid
in the school was asked to be Joseph.

And on the day, they gave us
this white baby Jesus.

(Laughter)

Now, I accept

that it is genetically possible

for two people of African ethnicity
to birth a white child.

But this was the '80s England,

so I don't think that that was the point
my school was trying to make.

So I asked for a black baby;
they said, 'No.'

And in response,

when all the parents came in,
I just refused to smile.

(Laughter)

That was the day
that my inner activist was born.

When I got to seven,

I started to notice
that I was different to my peers.

So I concluded that I was really,
really, really intelligent.

(Laughter)

Hear me out.

(Laughter)

So basically, this is kind of the age

when they started to notice
that I was black.

And so they'd ask me
really crazy questions like

'Why are you black?'

Because I was really intelligent,

I'd give these over-elaborate,
detailed explanations,

and I would say,

'I was born black.'

This was mind-blowing to them,
and they'd keep asking,

'But why were you born black?'

I'd never considered
why they were born white,

but I'd say, well, I just was,
and we'd go back and forth.

But it became very apparent
that this wasn't the response they wanted.

So not just being intelligent,
I was very creative,

and so I made up stories.

I would tell the other kids

that I was walking to school
one day in the pouring rain,

a car drove past me,

this massive puddle splashed me with mud,

and by the time I got to school,

the mud had dried so hard
that I couldn't wash it off.

The kids actually believed the story
and were like, 'Is it true?'

I was like, 'Yeah.'

They would go and get their siblings
and come back and say,

'Tell my sister why you're black.'

And so this became my rhetoric
that I'd go around telling people.

And the fact that they believed
such a ridiculous story

made me conclude that they were idiots
and I was really intelligent.

(Laughter)

Many years later,

my birth mother, Ayiba,

would tell me stories
about when she would go to work.

And she would take her Nigerian lunches,

so she would have egusi, okazi, garri.

And her colleagues would say,

'What's that smell?'

'What are you eating?'

'What is that?'

And she would look at them,
and she would say,

(Nigerian accent) 'I am eating worms.'

(Laughter)

'I am eating snake.'

'I am eating insect.'

And she said, 'Sumena,

sometimes you just have to tell
these people what they want to hear.

They think I am a savage,
so I will act like one.'

(Laughter)

My seven-year-old self

learnt to tell people
what I thought they wanted to hear.

By the age of eight,

I had convinced other kids
my hair was made of sponge

because, of course, being black,
it couldn't be made of hair.

But by nine, my difference started
to become more of an embarrassment.

I can remember going on a residential,

and on the first night,
all the girls had to shower.

I was more developed than my peers,

so we get into the showers,
and my peers were fascinated by my body,

so much so that they took it in turns
to run into my shower

and to grab me here

and to grab me here

to see what it felt like.

And at the time, I tried to laugh it off,

but it was humiliating.

And it was so humiliating

that for the next three days,

I didn't wash.

Every day, the girls would say,
'Come shower',

and I was like, 'No, I'm not going.'

And by the third day,

I couldn't tell whether
they wanted me to shower

because they still wanted
to grab my hair or to see me naked

or whether it was because I smelt so bad,

because one of my guy friends said to me,

'Sumena, you stink.'

And I can remember
being mute the rest of that day.

The rumor kind of spread
through the school,

and over the next couple of weeks,

I remember being pulled out of my class
and sent to the headmistress's office.

And as I got there,

there was a male doctor in the office
and the headmistress and another teacher,

and they'd concluded that it was unusual
for someone my age to develop,

so they wanted to examine me.

And they pulled open
my skirt and my knickers

and looked down to see that I had hair,

and I returned to class.

When I got home that evening,

my foster mother, Jean,
was absolutely furious when she found out.

And she called the school,

she said a few angry words,

and then she put the phone down,

and she turned to me, and she said,

'I did not give permission
for that to happen to you.'

She said, 'I'm really sorry.'

She said, 'It takes all types
of people to make a world,

and there's absolutely
nothing wrong with you.'

I was very grateful
for my mother for saying that

because it does take all types
to make a world.

And if we appreciate difference

and it's not this intrigue

that we feel a right
or an ownership to go and touch,

and maybe if other mothers shared
that story with their daughters,

then perhaps we wouldn't
be seen as so much of an other

and my childhood may not
have been so humiliating.

In 1810,

a woman named Saartjie Baartman
was taken from South Africa

and brought to the UK.

She had distinct features:
she was a black woman with a large behind.

And they put her on display
in Piccadilly Circus.

Thousands and thousands of people
would come year on year

to stare and to point and to touch -

fascinated, intrigued, curious.

And she survived for five years in the UK,

and when she returned -

sorry.

She survived for five years in the UK.

And when she died,

doctors and scientists
were so fascinated by her body,

they made a plaster cast,

and they preserved her organs
in museums until the 1970s.

And in 2002, Nelson Mandela
sent for her to come home,

where she received a burial.

When I think about the experience
I had at school with my peers

and I think about the women who answered

the 'No. You Cannot Touch
My Hair' campaign survey

and I compare that
to the experience of Sarah Baartman,

I have to say that the actions
keep repeating themselves.

This fascination with black bodies -

when I say black bodies,
I include black hair -

has been around for centuries.

So is the motivation for touching hair

different to the motivation
for those that went to see Sarah Baartman?

I'll say that again:

is the motivation
the same for touching hair

as it is for the actions
that happened to Sarah Baartman?

In 1889,

human zoos were first founded
by a guy named Carl Hagenbeck.

And he travelled the world,

and he took tribes,
some new African tribes,

and he presented them
in Europe and in the Americas,

and people would come
to stare and to see.

And those zoos existed until the 1960s.

And I think to myself,

'Had I been born a few decades earlier,
could this girl have been me?'

Hundreds of thousands of people
came to point and to stare and to view.

And they even had signs, and it would say,

'Don't feed the natives;
they've already eaten.'

Many women who responded to the survey

said that people touching their hair,
it felt like being petted in a zoo.

'Your hair looks like my pubes'

is what a group of lads chanted at me
as I walked down Bristol Harbourside.

'I've never touched an Afro before'

are the kind of comments
that people respond

when I challenge them
after they've just grabbed my hair.

'You can touch mine'

is a common response I get
in meetings or at conferences

as a trade-off
for exchanging hair touching.

One woman said to me,

'If your hair wasn't so beautiful,
people wouldn't touch it,'

after I went up to her and said,
'Don't touch my hair again.'

Is the motivation different?

Because the actions are still the same.

A 14-year-old girl from Bristol
wrote in and said

that she was in the shopping mall,

and a group of girls came

and started playing
with her hair from behind.

When she turned and asked them to stop,

they laughed and walked away.

Is the motivation different?

Because the actions are still the same.

Another woman

talked about her boss's boss
walking past her desk every day,

playing with her hair.

She said it happens not just to her
but to other women,

always of colour.

Is the motivation different?

Because the actions are still the same.

A father talked about his daughter
begging to have her hair straightened

because the touching
had become relentless.

A mother talked about having to braid
her child's hair every day

because the touching had become too much.

Is the motivation different?

Because the actions are still the same.

We live in this world
that is systematically unequal.

So we have designed it

to favour one group
over another and over another.

And we start to say terms like

'unconscious bias'

and 'microaggression'

and 'macroaggression'.

But I would argue that
we should really be saying 'racism'.

The motivation hasn't changed;
the actions are still the same.

If you imagine

that we were to describe words as people,

then I would to argue
that 'power' would be the grandfather,

'prejudice' would be the grandmother,

and together, they have
given birth to 'racism'.

Now, 'racism' hooks up with 'ignorance',

and they create 'microaggression'.

Now, if you imagine that 'microaggression'
is raised by 'ignorance' and 'racism',

what do you think she's going to become?

Every time you put your hands in my hair
without my permission,

you are her.

And every time you ask my permission

and I say 'No',

you are also her.

Every time you see it happen
and you don't call it out,

and we don't have systems in place
to stop it from happening,

you are her.

I call hair touching 'hair attacks'.

Every black person, black woman,
black girl deserves the same privileges

as our peers.

So we deserve the right to go to work

and to not be attacked.

We deserve the right to have an education

and to not be attacked.

And we deserve the right
to go for dinner with friends

and not be expected to be

the educator of all things black hair,
black history, black hair care.

Many of the respondents were angry

at the responses that come
when you challenge things.

So I asked them, what can we do,
what can be done?

And they came up with three things.

One -

they said that the touchers
just need to stop touching.

So if you're someone who touches,

whatever you need to do -

put a memo, a Post-it note
on your computer, educate yourself -

but stop touching.

Two -

they said that more education
and awareness was needed,

and that looks like more representation
in mainstream media,

more history in schools
and not just one month.

I hope that this talk today

has helped to raise
some awareness and education,

but don't be complacent.

Google, YouTube exist.

So if this reaffirms your position,
or if this is new to you,

then learn, share.

And three - last but not least -

they said that we need
to call it out more.

We all need to call it out more.

What does that look like?

I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to split us through the middle.

You guys over here are 'don't'.

When I point, you'll say your word.

You guys here are 'touch'.

It's two simple words,
and this is how we call it out.

(Audience) Don't.

Guys, that was weak.

(Laughter)

It's two simple words.

So for anybody who doesn't understand,
doesn't know, or hasn't experienced this,

this is how you call it out.

(Audience) Don't! Touch!

I want to hear it loud
like these guys at the front.

(Audience) Don't! Touch!

I want to hear it one more time!

How do we call it out?

(Audience) Don't! Touch!

Angela Davis said,

'I am no longer accepting
the things I cannot change,

but I am changing the things
I cannot accept.'

I extend that to you,

and I say:

if the motivation is truly different,

then we need to let
our actions be that change.

Thank you.

(Applause) (Cheers)