Justin Simien's Bad Hair begins with a trauma that many Black women can relate to across the globe--their first perm. Eager to look like her dazzling older cousin, Linda, pre-teen Anna Bludso looks longingly at a box of relaxer while the creamy crack sits in her coils and kinks. Unfortunately, the result is disastrous. Just minutes later, the chemicals penetrate her scalp and clumps of hair snap from the roots. Her shrill scream zips the audience forward in time to Los Angeles in 1989.
Anna (Elle Lorraine), now a grown woman, lives with the painful memory and a scar from her first and only relaxer. Currently trusting only her own hands to care for her soft afro, she's become a more timid version of her younger, bolder self. Though she carefully styles her hair with bows and wraps, Anna is virtually invisible at Culture, the music video based TV show where she works. As an executive assistant desperate for her own chance to host a show, she's constantly passed over in an entertainment industry that only finds value in Black women who present like Janet Jackson in her Control era, with long-flowing curls and caramel-to-light skin and Eurocentric features.
When the network's top executive (James Van Der Beek) shakes things up by placing ex-supermodel Zora (Vanessa Williams) at the helm of Culture, she sees promise in Anna, whose ideas have been stolen or ignored for years. However, Zora warns Anna that to seize her spot as host of the new Cult, she needs a new look. Desperate to be seen, Anna suppresses her fear and goes to Virgie (Laverne Cox) for her first sew-in. Though Anna's new look transforms her image and her career, it comes at a cost that she never expected.
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