Hair straightening is the Dominican woman’s own: ritualized and mimetic practices of «dominican brushing»

Abstract

Around the socio-cultural practice of hair straightening for women of African descent, a field of debate has been formed regarding its interpretation. In light of this debate, some of the results of an ethnographic investigation are presented, which sought to describe and analyze, in the context of the immigration of Dominican women to Chile, the practices of hair straightening in hairdressing salons in an area of the commune of Estación Central. There, it was identified that the hair straightening and «Dominican brushing» is configured as a ritualized and mimetic practice in the body of the Dominican woman, of a valuative and normative discourse of colonial subjection and nationalist ideology. The aforementioned operates in an order of hierarchies of valorization on the «arrangement» of women that, located in Santiago, allows them to dispute in a national, racial and gender key with Colombian, Haitian, as well as Peruvian and Chilean women.