In praise of hoops | WBUR News

Oct 18, 2024

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My love of hoop earrings probably started in the womb. My mother (who was a young woman when bamboo "door knocker" earrings surged in popularity in the '80s and '90s) rocked the iconic earrings, completing her look with a short haircut, long, elaborately painted acrylic nails and wedge heels.

When I was still a toddler, my father gifted me my first real pair of hoops — they were a modest size and made out of gold. My parents weren't rich. They were young, only a few years out of high school when they had me and they wanted to pass something of value down to me, something that I could call my own.

I'm not alone in my love for hoop earrings. For many women of color, hoops are more than just a fashion accessory. Presented as a choreopoem in the key of Ntozake Shange's "For Colored Girls," Company One's "Hoops" — at the Strand Theatre through Aug. 10 — is a collection of vignettes that explores the complicated relationship that people of color have with the iconic earrings. It's based on a series of interviews and portraits by artist and photographer Nicole Acosta that detail the significance of hoops in Black, brown and Indigenous communities.

The production interweaves music, dialogue and monologue and choreography to tell the stories of different people and how hoops came into their lives. Brandie Blaze plays one of those characters, an eponymously named DJ whose musical selections move the plot of the production along. Blaze created three original songs for the show.

"My connection to hoops is cultural, and it's a part of my identity," says Blaze. "It represents the culture to me. And especially as a Black femme, like that is the ultimate symbol of being a Black femme."

It's probable that hoops originated in Sumeria, or what is now modern day Iraq, and ancient Nubia, now modern day Sudan. The iconic earrings have been dated back to 2600–2500 B.C.E. In the United States, hoop earrings reemerged in the 1960s and 1970s, popularized by celebrities like Donna Summer and Diana Ross. The earrings resurfaced at a time when the "Black is beautiful" movement was gaining steam in the United States and across the globe. They were a statement piece, often worn alongside big curly hair or perfectly symmetrical afros.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, there was another resurgence of hoop earrings, as icons like Selena, Salt-N-Pepa and Lauryn Hill donned them and artists like LL Cool J rapped about wanting a girl with bamboo earrings, "at least two pair." Aesthetically, hoops became increasingly connected with Black and brown culture in the United States. They transformed into more than just a fashion statement. They became a declaration of pride in one's culture.

"I think that hoops are a point of resilience and resistance for me," says "Hoops" director Tonasia Jones. They have a treasured pair of bamboo earrings, given to them by their mother, with their name emblazoned across the middle. "My hoops mean that I can be bold and I can be loud."

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For people of color, hoops are a visual representation of individuality. Whether they're a delicate gold pair or the cheap ones you buy at the beauty supply store when you're in desperate need of some earrings, hoops have a long cultural history that we acknowledge every time we put them on. In many families, hoop earrings and other pieces of jewelry are either passed down from generation to generation or purchased by family members out of love, like my father and Jones' mother. They're an inheritance of sorts, sometimes the only inheritance that people of color are able to give to their loved ones.

However, hoops and their close association with communities of color also means that the earring, especially large, bold ones, are often maligned in dominant cultural narratives. "Hoops are a part of hood aesthetic, which can, even within our own community, be looked down upon," says Blaze. Growing up, I often heard the phrase, "The bigger the hoop, the bigger the h-," implying that girls who wore big hoops were, by default, more sexually promiscuous. The production unpacks this issue, pointing out that hoops are too frequently labeled "ghetto" or unprofessional.

People of color intimately know the tension between our cultural aesthetics and the way white supremacy demands we strip ourselves of those aesthetics and conform. "We sometimes have to make ourselves smaller as people of color to fit into these different spaces, whether that's in a corporate or college world," says Blaze.

In my late teens and early 20s, I stopped wearing hoops in an effort to appear more "professional" as I went on the job market. I have friends who did the same, buying demure studs or minuscule, dainty hoops to wear to interviews or at work. But as I became less concerned with the racist constraints of what appears "professional," big hoops and earrings worked their way back into my wardrobe.

In "Hoops," one of the characters describes the earrings as being a piece of armor. And they are. Whether they're passed down or brand new, hoops are really a tool of survival. Deciding to wear them, despite the negative connotations, is a testament to the desire to adorn oneself in a world that often tells women of color to abide by respectability politics. They've become a metaphor for the fight to be free, a visual refusal to bend or adhere to dominant cultural beauty standards.

"Hoops are a way of taking back space," Jones points out. "They mean, 'This is where I come from and no matter what I'm going to stay true to that'."

I don't remember what happened to that first pair of hoops that my father gave to me. It's possible that I simply lost them or we sold them for cash when money got tight. But for the time that I had them, those hoops were a representation of someone's love for me. My father wanted to be sure that I was adorned in a way that showed others that I was cared for. It was a radical act in a world that doesn't always value children of color.

For some, they may just be a pair of hoops. But for us, hoops epitomize some of the best parts of our culture and ourselves. They are intricately intertwined in our past and present. And as we get older and pass our own hoops down to our children, they become a part of our future too.