‘Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam CJ Walker’

Black hair.

It’s personal. It’s political and it’s big business. Last year, the US black hair care industry was valued at US$2,5 billion and in Netflix’s ‘Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam CJ Walker’ (2020) we get to know a little about its pioneers.

Telling a highly fictionalised story of Sarah Walker, a washerwoman who became the richest self-made woman in America through the sale of hair-growing and maintenance products just a generation shy of slavery, ‘Self Made’ begins with a boxing match.

The title bout like much of the series is fictional. The cheesy leitmotif featuring Sarah against her adversary Addie Munroe, who is based on the protoganist’s real-life inspiration and competitor Addie Malone.

Both formidable black women entrepreneurs, activists, philanthropists and community leaders, in the four-episode series, Walker and Munroe are demoted to petty rivals with Munroe rendered as particularly vindictive.

Given how society is ever eager to pit women and particularly black women against each other, this rendering seems especially indolent. The far more interesting story being how Madam CJ Walker was inspired by Malone’s initial product and how she used that reverence to build her own empire through tenacity and hard work. This without the melodrama of a tipsy Munroe infiltrating the family business through Madam CJ Walker’s son-in-law, handing out fliers while Walker’s business burns and being, in general, a badly drawn villain.

Based on ‘On Her Own Ground’, a biography by Madam CJ Walker’s great-great-granddaughter A’Lelia Bundles, ‘Self Made’ is directed by Kasi Lemmons and DeMane Davis and stars Octavia Spencer and Carmen Ejogo as Sarah and Addie respectively.

The two actresses playing the series’ stars are solid and their characters speak to other issues in black communities. With Walker larger, darker and ostensibly cursed with ‘bad hair’, Munroe is colourism’s queen and revels in her light skin, long locks, small nose and slim figure. In the series, Munroe is what Walker’s husband, played by Blair Underwood, calls ‘The Walker Girl’.

The Walker Girl is the aspirational advertising prototype Walker’s husband suggests as the face and figure of his wife’s hair products, and the character is the same slim, light bright woman with ‘good hair’ that has largely persisted as the standard of black beauty.

To her credit, in the film, Walker pushes back and makes sure that the woman on her products is The Walker Girl’s antithesis – her. Portrayed as strong-willed, ambitious and able to take on men – black and white – in a way that was completely unheard of at the time, Walker is certainly an inspirational figure one must research independently to appreciate her true measure. While the series is relatively diverting and even features Tiffany Haddish as Walker’s daughter Lelia, one ends ‘Self Made’ wishing its creators had dug deeper, ditched the melodrama and worked with the cinematic gold that is Walker’s unvarnished life story.

This is a woman born free to slaves soon after emancipation. The fact that it is a black businesswoman who rises to the top despite the double discrimination of blackness and womanhood in the early 1900s is incredible, so the catty, almost soap opera of a story we see in this miniseries is disappointing.

Shining a modern light on the times, one can see that very little has changed. Black women then like black women now are still judged by their hair. Natural styles being a barrier to certain kinds of employment and regard while more Eurocentric options smooth a way that is rocky to begin with.

‘Self Made’ doesn’t tell a perfect story but it will get you interested enough in the real people behind the characters to find out about them for yourself.

‘Inspired by the Life of Madam CJ Walker’. The disclaimer, after all, is in the title and, in that, I suppose viewers were warned.

Mind the clichés, the inaccuracies and sometimes cringeworthy dialogue and stream this as an entry point into the lives of these two formidable and complex black women.

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