‘The Hair Tales’ Review: A Warm and Earnest Hulu/OWN Docuseries About Black Women and Beauty

'The Hair Tales' sees Tracee Ellis Ross interviewing Oprah Winfrey, Issa Rae, Ayanna Pressley, Chloe Bailey and more about Black women's hair.

‘The Hair Tales’ Review: A Warm and Earnest Hulu/OWN Docuseries About Black Women and Beauty

The Hair TalesCourtesy of Hulu

In the first few minutes of Hulu and OWN’s The Hair Tales, host Tracee Ellis Ross lays out her aims. “My hope is that these conversations that we have create more space for belonging and self-actualization,” she says. “It can feel like it’s just a conversation about hair. But it’s not. Especially not for Black women.”

“It never is,” her interview subject, Oprah Winfrey, agrees. And so it goes: Over six episodes, the docuseries invites Black women to discuss all things hair-related, from their inpidual memories to the decades or centuries of history leading up to them, to the idea of hair as a method of self-expression or a reflection of social change. If these talks prove Ross’ point that there’s always more to hair than just hair, however, they rarely probe as deeply as they could — resulting in a series that, for all its warmth and earnestness, falls somewhere short of truly revelatory.

The Hair Tales

The Bottom LineSincere and uplifting, if a bit too tidy.Airdate: Saturday, Oct. 22 (Hulu & OWN)
Executive producers: Oprah Winfrey, Tracee Ellis Ross, Michaela Angela Davis, Tara Duncan, Raeshem Nijhon, Carri Twigg, Kisha Imani Cameron

That said, warmth and earnestness are worthwhile qualities of their own, and the show’s empathy stems from a refreshingly clear sense of perspective. With Ross and Winfrey among its executive producers, The Hair Tales is a series by Black women, for Black women, about Black women. Each 40something-minute installment is built around Ross’ sit-down with a celebrity and fleshed out by experts offering historical or cultural context in talking-head interviews, along with recurring segments set among ordinary salon-goers to approximate the communal experience of getting one’s hair done. And every single person featured onscreen is a Black woman.

Viewers who fall outside that core demographic may still find plenty to enjoy here, thanks to Ross’ effortless charisma, an enticing lineup of beloved stars (including Issa Rae, Marsai Martin, Chika and of course Winfrey) and an amiable tone that invites anyone curious enough to hit “play” to get sucked into its discussions. But The Hair Tales wastes little time spelling out basic concepts or justifying its own premise for clueless audiences, and it’s better for it. In a society that too often demands Black women explain or assimilate themselves for the comfort of others, the series allows its subjects to tell their stories on their own terms.

Care has been taken to spotlight different sorts of journeys — Chloe Bailey’s experience as a Gen Z pop star who’s worn locs nearly her entire life is necessarily going to differ from that of Ayanna Pressley’s as a Gen X congresswoman coming to terms with her alopecia, which will differ from Winfrey’s as a Boomer who was pressured by an early boss to straighten her hair (with disastrous and painful results). Their biographies become springboards for The Hair Tales to weave in and out of related topics, so that Ross and Martin trading memories from the set of Black-ish leads naturally into a montage of Black female characters on television, or Rae reminiscing about her mother’s changing hairstyles segues into a brief rundown of hair trends in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and the politics that accompanied them.

Yet The Hair Tales limits itself by focusing so heavily on entertainers as its main subjects. (Pressley is the sole exception, though she too has a career in the public eye, and her episode benefits from her politician’s perspective on representation and legislation.) Black women from many walks of life will surely be able to connect with the celebrities’ conversations about the moment in childhood when they realized their hair didn’t work the same way their white classmates’ did, or about the importance of seeing natural hairstyles reflected onscreen. Yet more varied and more layered dialogues might have been had with a wider array of voices — like those of athletes, poor women or trans and nonbinary people, say, whose reasons for selecting a certain style could differ from those of cis celebrities working in notoriously image-obsessed industries.

Instead, The Hair Tales emphasizes commiseration over debate, personal anecdotes over history lessons and broadly uplifting statements over more nuanced analysis. In combination, these choices leave some of the episodes feeling overly tidy. It’s touching, for instance, to hear Ross reflect on the battles her generation fought so Martin’s wouldn’t have to — but the triumphant framing of Martin as “Freedom’s Heir” (as the episode is subtitled) offers little room to examine the battles Martin’s generation might be fighting now, or to explore any more complicated feelings today’s youth might have about the world their mothers created for them.

Still, if The Hair Tales goes flat from time to time, it never wavers in its boundless affection for Black women and the crowns they wear. In a montage that plays near the start of each episode, Ross invites the viewer to “join me as we celebrate the truth of who we are through the wondrous world of our hair.” And celebrate it does — by affirming the experiences its subjects share, by offering them the space to process what their journeys have meant to them, and above all by delighting in the rare beauty of styles and textures that, for far too long, have been deemed unruly or unacceptable.