STACEY SARGEANT
This Spring, I had the pleasure of hearing the exquisite multi-hyphenate artist Stacey Sargeant share her hair journey for this issue’s installment of Our Hair, Don’t Care. I was immediately captivated by her intuitive spirit and evolving self-confidence, from the moment she began recounting her hair journey as a young ballet dancer to her present day life as a Broadway performing artist. As she described her formative years, I wished I had even an ounce of the gumption she displayed in managing the racial bias related to her crown. I am also deeply appreciative of her honesty in describing the pressures she experienced relative to her body and presentation, and the dynamics of the toxic atmosphere in which she, nevertheless, was able to expand her natural, incredible talent.
Stacey is an extremely generous storyteller, and I am so happy to share her narrative here. Please enjoy her crown story.
I started training in ballet when I was 3, and at age 9 I took it very seriously. I wanted to be a ballerina. The dance school I attended was predominantly white. There were not many girls there that looked like me. I always wanted my hair in a tight bun like all of my other dance classmates, but I had really, really thick, big hair. So my mom gave me cornrows - that way, it wouldn’t be out, but it was still in a bun.
I remember wash days very clearly. The entire day was dedicated to washing my hair and putting it in sections. I would be sitting on the floor in between my mom’s legs or right in the bed, and I would be falling asleep. That was what it was, until I got a little older and proclaimed: “I want a relaxer.” I wanted my hair to be long and straight, and I don’t know what convinced my mom to let me get the relaxer – maybe just to save herself her own time on the weekends – but that’s when I started getting my hair relaxed. My natural hair just wasn't what I was seeing on stages when I would go to the ballet with my family, so, the messaging that I internalized from very early on was that I wasn't pretty, that I wasn't beautiful.
The messaging I constantly faced in that dance studio was very: white is right and thin is in. There was a children's company attached to this school that I wanted to be a part of and the artistic director of the company called my mom and I in for a meeting. She said how hard working and talented I was, but I was too fat. At 9 years old, this is the first time I remember being confronted with feeling like something was wrong with me.
Later, when I was in junior high school, I remember seeing a picture of myself from when I was three. And at this point in the relaxer, my hair was damaged. And I remember seeing this picture of myself, and my hair was probably shoulder length, natural, full and thick. And I remember looking at it and saying, “Oh, I had nice hair. I had thick hair.”
One of my closest friends in junior high had very thick hair. I think hers was relaxed, but there was just a fullness to it that I don't remember having myself. I think there was a part of me that was envious. When I saw that picture from my childhood I couldn’t help but reminisce on how my hair once was.
I was still training in ballet at this point, now at predominantly Black school. I transferred there because I thought it was going to be different…it was us... but the ostracizing was much more intense.
Before I even auditioned, it was already very disappointing. I was told, “Well, you'll have to go into the Saturday program because of your weight.” I heard what she said, but I wasn’t going to be in anybody's Saturday program. I was already on pointe and had been training five days a week at Carnegie Hall. However, I still auditioned, and they put me in a beginner ballet class, teaching us how to do pliés. I wanted to dance so badly that I went to that first class and the teacher, Daryl Quinton, came up to me while we were warming up at the barre. I think we had gone through pliés at that point, and maybe even tendus. He said, “What are you doing in this class?” He clearly saw that it was beneath my skill level. I responded, with all the shame in the world, “Oh, they put in here because of my weight.” He immediately moved me to the advanced beginner class, the highest-level class in the Saturday program - still just training one day a week. Daryl said, “They're going to keep you in this class until you lose some weight.”
I lost weight and a year-and-a-half later, they moved me to the pre-professional program, giving me a scholarship. I was training three days a week now. But even with that advancement, I was constantly being humiliated and incentivized to lose more weight.
I often thought, "If only I had smaller thighs and I didn't have a big butt, my life would be perfect,” because it was never a question of my talent. It was just the body that the talent was housed in that was unacceptable. But at the same time, somewhere deep within, I knew I belonged, and I knew this was my path, and no one was going to deter me from it. I knew I was talented. That was undeniable. I just believed that if I worked hard, it would pay off at some point.
From the time that first teacher told me I was so talented, but too fat, I always felt cursed in my body. That was the prevailing thought. I dealt with disordered eating. I was always on a diet. I was always trying the next best thing to lose weight and I believed that if I was just skinny, I’d have it all. So many women and girls believe that — whether they're in this industry or not. You could turn on the television, you could look in a magazine, and that's the messaging that we're getting.
After junior high, I attended LaGuardia High School, where I majored in voice. In a drama-focused English class, I was given the Toussaint monologue from, for colored girls... That was the first time I had to present a monologue to anyone, and it was around that time I realized, This is it! This is my way in, onto that stage. It doesn't matter what I look like because I'm supposed to be a representation of what we see in the world.
After graduation, I ended up at Syracuse University, in their musical theater department, and returned to my natural hair. I think there was only one other Black girl in my class. Being away from home and seeing, I'm not a majority here in this department, I put all my boundaries and defenses up. But there was also pride. I think coming from West Indian parents, I didn't grow up thinking, oh, we're all loved and accepted for who we are. No, I grew up knowing I was going to have to work twice as hard to get half as much.
They had an orientation for everyone in the drama department, which includes this ritual of a song and dance. Everyone sings it. They teach it to the incoming freshman class, and there's choreography that every person who's been through that program has done. I was in that rehearsal and my hair was in Bantu knots, and one of my classmates touched my hair and made a comment. I don't remember what he said, but I was like, “Oh no, do not. Do not ever put your hands in my hair without asking permission.”
I wasn’t going to let people’s perception of my hair hinder me. I’d had a vision of myself with locs on a magazine cover, so I decided to transition my hair into locs. (Fun fact: I subsequently ended up in a hair magazine.) I had been doing my hair from such an early age, so I was able to do all these different styles. If I had an audition where I needed to have a 20s look, I was making it look like finger waves and doing all the things. My hair was and still is another way of being creative for me.
The first time I had an issue with my locs professionally, I was getting ready to go on tour. It was a show where there were a lot of wigs, and I had just finished two other period piece shows where I had worn wigs. The first day of rehearsal, the hair supervisor came up to me and was like, “Oh, you're gonna have to cut that."
The details of my contract were still being finalized and the hair clause was a big sticking point for me. I told her I did not have a problem wearing wigs, and that I knew how to prep my locs to get it under a wig. And so, we had a wig fitting, where they Saran-wrap your head and create a head mold to use when they are making your wigs.
At the start, I was like, I'm gonna let her do her job. She started to section my locs and then put them in plaits, but I'm sitting there and I'm like, this ain't it. This is not gonna work. Like, you're making it lumpy. I sat there for about 7 minutes watching her struggle. When I finally said something, she said, “Well, show me how you prep your hair.” I immediately took the braids out, smoothed it down, overlapped it, put the wig cap on and: boom. I had the flyest wigs in that show! But had I been someone else who wasn’t as confident, or had certain boundaries, my locs would've been cut.
I had my locs for 7 years. Generally, most people cut their locs off, but I was like, oh my God, I'm not gonna look good with short hair! So, I did not leave my apartment for 16 whole days, and I combed my locs out.
People always say, when you’re thinking about getting rid of your locs, you’ll just know when it’s the right time. I remember it was one day I was walking in Harlem and this Jamaican guy passing by said, “Ah, Empress…strong black woman.” I was not feeling particularly strong that day. It literally felt like a weight that I was carrying, and people were projecting their feelings about my locked hair onto me. And I was like, “I gotta get rid of this.”
Funny enough, a year later, I ended up chopping off all my hair because of extreme heat damage. After my dad passed, I shaved half of my head. During the pandemic closure on Broadway, I grew out my hair, and I'm back to a full head of hair. I feel like a lot of my journey has been guided by my intuition.
Cookie Jordan, who designed the wigs for for colored girls...came to one of our in-studio run throughs and she was like, “Oh, is that all you? Is that your hair? We’re gonna design a wig that looks exactly like your hair”. And that's how I ended up in the wig that I wore in for colored girls... It's been a journey.
I saw during the pandemic there were a lot more discussions around the trauma that Black actors experience in this industry because of the lack of knowledge of those who are considered “hair professionals.” This is because there hasn't been a necessity for them to know about our hair.
Because of the “racial reckoning,” there were union Zoom meetings discussing this issue: the hair professionals in our industry not knowing about Black hair. I’m starting to see some changes for the better in that area, especially in terms of Black actors speaking up for ourselves. I think that's first and foremost. If we don't speak up for ourselves, then no one's gonna know there's an issue. Everybody’s hair is different, and the hair supervisors and designers need to train for sensitivity for all our experiences.
There is one poem in particular in for colored girls... and it was the poem that I cracked open last because I think I was always afraid to express the frustration she speaks of in that poem, living in the world, because I think we're so used to, as Black women, having to temper ourselves so as not to appear as the ‘Angry Black Woman’.
I had been working against that, but at some point, I came to the conclusion that if there's any place that I can be frustrated or angry, it's on the stage. I gave myself permission to be frustrated. The frustration the character is dealing with stems from the fact that she's living in a world where she does not feel safe because of her femininity, men sexually accosting her on the street, and not feeling free.
In one line she says:
when i walked in the pacific
i imagined waters ancient from accra/ tunis cleansin me/ feedin me
now my ankles are coated in grey filth from the puddle neath the hydrant
She's talking about her move from the west coast to the east coast, to Harlem in particular, in this poem. But for me, growing up in East New York, Brooklyn, that's just a part of who I am.
When I leave my house, whether it's where I live now or wherever I am, I innately do the things I need to do to protect myself. Regardless of whether you are a Black woman or not, if you're a woman, that is something you deal with, and you're not even conscious of it, because it's just a part of being a woman in this world.
To have the opportunity to be in the revival of for colored girls as ‘Lady In Blue’ and to do the poems I did, was very freeing. With theater finally opening in the midst of the pandemic, it was wonderful to get to express all of these feelings that had been pent up for so long. Being able to showcase my talent, Black women; show Black women a true reflection of themselves onstage and help them to feel like they matter is one I don’t take for granted.
As I continue on this journey, I just try to do me and live in that space. As far as my hair is concerned, I do what I am comfortable with and try not be too attached. You know: I am not my hair.
