October 18, 2010

"I Love My Hair" Has an Adoption Connection

We've enjoyed a few views of the Sesame Street video "I Love My Hair" at our house. I learned tonight that it has a transracial adoption connection: the songwriter (also head writer at Sesame Street) is the white parent of a daughter born in Ethiopia and adopted when she was one year old.
[Joey] Mazzarino says he wrote the song after noticing his daughter playing with dolls.

"She wanted to have long blond hair and straight hair, and she wanted to be able to bounce it around," he tells NPR's Melissa Block.

Mazzarino says he began to get worried, but he thought it was only a problem that white parents of African-American children have. Then he realized the problem was much larger.



I'm too wiped out from the boy's birthday week to draw out any larger points, but I thought that was interesting.

9 comments:

Dawn said...

Madison loves that video and she says, "You know, that girl is kinda like ME!" (Pennie sent it to us on Facebook so that's my adoption connection to it!)

Heather said...

@Dawn - Eddie said, "It's hair like my sister's!"

Anonymous said...

That's so great! I got linked to the video on Facebook, too; how neat that it's a gift for his daughter.

joyce said...

what a cute video. i love sesame street.

harriet glynn said...

I've seen that. Wonderful. I need to bookmark it for my boy

sara said...

My niece (adopted from Vietnam) used to put yellow tights on her head because she wanted to have hair like the other kids. Wish this video had been around for her!

Lisa said...

I caught this on the news program last night. It is encouraging. Even African-American and mixed-race Barbies have straight or wavy, flowing locks. It just doesn't gel with real experience of kids with mixed hair. And I hate to think that my daughter would hate her hair...it is so beautiful. It just takes a little extra work, but a lot of worthwhile things do.

cindy psbm said...

tearing up...that was just soo soo soo great!!

Adoption of Jane said...

Awesome... I didn't know that either...Sounds Familiar!!!

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