'Do & 'fro

The first time comedian Chris Rock saw his then 5-year-old daughter Lola enviously gush about a white friend’s long blond hair, it felt like a punch to the gut.

“You ever see a kid fall down, and the parent screams, and the kid wasn’t even thinking about crying, but now the kid is compelled to cry? It was the same thing,” says Rock. “I was like, ‘Ooo!’ I kind of flinched. But I knew at that moment to play it low, like, ‘Your hair is great. Wanna get some ice cream?’ ”

Watching the inferiority that black women have traditionally felt about their hair creep into his daughter at such a young age, Rock channeled his concern into a two-year cinematic journey, examining and documenting black women’s feelings about their hair and the $9 billion hair-care business it supports.

Alamy

Black women often feel they face a cultural choice between “good” and “nappy” hair.

Photos: Unkindest cuts

The result is the documentary “Good Hair,” opening Friday. It’s a candid and hilarious look at the often-

bizarre aspects of an industry that’s far more pervasive than many realize.

Much of the film, which includes interviews with everyday people at hair salons and celebrities such as Al Sharpton, Raven-Symoné and Maya Angelou, focuses on two aspects of black hair care: relaxers and weaves.

Hair relaxer, made from sodium hydroxide and commonly referred to as “creamy crack” for the way hair gets hooked on it, is the chemical that many black women (and some men, like Sharpton) use to straighten their hair to give them “good hair.”

“The whiter, the brighter, the better,” actress Nia Long says in the film. “There’s always this pressure in the black community that if you have good hair, you’re prettier than the brown-skinned girl with the afro or the dreads or the natural hairstyle.”

Rock shows how good hair demands a price, both monetary and physical. Relaxer can cause an excruciating burning sensation on your scalp.

Sandra “Pepa” Denton from Salt-N-Pepa admits in the film that her unique, one-side-shaved hairstyle in the group’s early years came about because the hair on that side of her head burned off when her relaxer was left on too long.

And when Rock asks a scientist — who’s unfamiliar with relaxer — about sodium hydroxide, the man is shocked and dismayed to learn that people put it on their scalps. He shows how the chemical burns directly through chicken skin, and how when a soda can is soaked in it for four hours, the can evaporates. Ouch.

But people are willing to endure the pain that Ice-T refers to as a “torture session” for the chance to rid themselves of “nappy” hair, including actress Tracie Thoms, who recalls in the film how after using the chemical hair straightener for the first time, she thought, “Now, I’m pretty.”