By Sharanya Gopinathan
Some things are just meant to provide pure glee, and this new game is one of them.
Hair Nah, a new game conceptualised by art director Momo Pixel, actualises the frustration Black women feel when people ask them if they can touch their hair, or worse still, reach out and grab it to comment on its texture. This isn’t something I knew happened until I studied abroad and befriended a whole bunch of Black women, who told me how ridiculously common it is. It clearly comes from a grave lack of respect for people’s personal space, and a “curiosity” about natural hair that doesn’t respect people’s boundaries, or even reflects a casual sense of ownership or entitlement to other people’s space.
Hair Nah, which carries a bold 80s aesthetic, allows you to guide your Black woman character to a certain destination, and you have to swat away all the hands that reach out to grab your hair. It’s been used by Shonda Rhimes, and has of course been compared to Solange Knowles 2016 song, Don’t Touch My Hair.
Funnily enough, Huffington Post‘s article on the game quotes a man named Tul Elsiddig, who says that he’s experienced this behaviour the most from South Asian and Arab people…