A little bit of work and a whole lot of love

December 5, 2019 4:13 PM

Hair Love, a short film about a father learning to do his daughter's hair for the first time. (SLYT)
posted by numaner (18 comments total)

Wow. This is good.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:55 PM on December 5, 2019 [2 favorites]

I just saw this when a friend retweeted it a few minutes ago. Definitely got a little misty-eyed!
posted by capricorn at 5:01 PM on December 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Made me cry. The parent with cancer storyline threw me for a loop.
posted by Margalo Epps at 6:00 PM on December 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Beautiful. Thank you.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 6:34 PM on December 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Aww! Also, whoever animated that cat clearly knows cats. Random bathtimes, getting stuck under covers, running away when most needed. Yep, cats.
posted by Wulfhere at 6:52 PM on December 5, 2019 [2 favorites]

I remember when Cherry was getting this funded! I'm so excited it's out!
posted by Anonymous at 7:53 PM on December 5, 2019

That is sweet.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:28 PM on December 5, 2019

What I wanna know is how for a dad with such little apparent hair knowledge he has such nice hair himself.
posted by Mizu at 9:05 PM on December 5, 2019 [2 favorites]

Mizu, I assume he had it done professionally or possibly by his wife, though (if we were going for realism), wouldn't he have picked up a little bit of knowledge?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:17 AM on December 6, 2019

Even if you have very curly hair yourself, if you've either kept it short or had it done by someone else your whole life (very possible if you keep it in braids or dreads) then that can leave you unprepared for dealing with long, extremely curly hair beyond the basics of moisturization. It doesn't make you able to properly maintain and shape a fro, much less put together a very complicated plaited style all by yourself. This was made by a guy who said it was inspired by his own experience of feeling intimidated.
posted by Anonymous at 4:00 AM on December 6, 2019

Very dusty in here.
posted by leslies at 6:28 AM on December 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

Managing natural very-curly hair is A Thing with A Learning Curve, especially if you grew up in a house where folks wore processed hair or extensions. If Dad in the video wore his hair short as a child and then switched to locs or braids (they look like braids to me), he may not have any experience managing natural hair at any significant length. A feel for what's involved in the learning about and management of natural hair can be garnered from YouTube if you search for "natural hair journey" -- that search should turn up a genre of videos in which owners of very-curly hair discuss how they moved from wearing their hair processed or in braids, locs, or extensions to wearing it natural. One of the common features of this genre is that the owners of very-curly hair in these videos admit that there's a significant learning curve in the process of learning to wash, style, and manage their hair and they encourage other persons on their own natural hair journeys to experiment with products and protocols until they find what works for their own hair.

So, the nerves expressed by Dad in the video... seem legit and entirely reasonable.
posted by which_chick at 7:04 AM on December 6, 2019 [7 favorites]

Oh good, I needed a good cry today.

I was confused when the mother's voice and the youtuber's voice was obviously the same person at first, and then the reveal. aughah.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:39 AM on December 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

Argh, weeping
posted by sixswitch at 8:01 AM on December 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

oh my...dusty in here.
posted by supermedusa at 9:23 AM on December 6, 2019

I was a bit confused too - I thought maybe she was imagining that the YouTuber was her mother. But that didn't take away from the main story (her connection with her father).
posted by jb at 9:53 AM on December 6, 2019

I was so happy that, in contrast to so many cartoons, the mom was actually alive. What a great cartoon.

I don't get all you "oh it's a little dusty" people; I had tears dripping off my chin.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:08 AM on December 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

I was so happy that, in contrast to so many cartoons, the mom was actually alive

As somebody said in the youtube comments, that's how you know it's Sony and not Disney.

This was great; as somebody who remembers when it was in its early days going around Twitter, I'm so glad to see that it was funded and executed so perfectly.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:11 AM on December 6, 2019 [1 favorite]