A Sleight of Hair

Abstract

This essay considers the presence of Black women’s hair as a necessary fact of embodiment that disrupts postfeminist romantic comedies. It focuses on Something New (2006), notable as the first film in which the director, producer, writer, and star were all Black women, arguing that the ontological ruptures created by Kenya, the main character, disrupt the film’s neat classification into the postfeminist romantic comedy genre. The article argues that the Black female body, through the signifier of Black natural hair, invites a chaos into the narrative that makes the film’s contribution to the genre invisible. This calls for a critique of the social order that the genre treats as essential to its foundation.