Justin Simien's horror comedy Bad Hair is rooted in slave lore about a Black woman known as the moss haired girl, whose flowing hair is was harvested from a tree with branches full of evil. Once the enslaved girl placed the enchanted hair on her head, it killed the slave master and took over her body. Piece of the lore are woven throughout the entirety of Bad Hair, but there are still several questions about it that remain unanswered.
The movie stars Elle Lorraine as Anna Bludso, a young Black woman navigating corporate America after the company she works for is sold to new owners. Zora (Vanessa Williams) is a successful Black woman who now runs Cult, changed from Culture, as its CEO. Now that the image of the company has changed, she requests that the employees change with it in order to succeed. After meeting Anna, she encourages her to go to Virgie's, an upscale hair salon specializing in Black women's hair and weaves. That day, she goes to the salon and Virgie (Laverne Cox) gives her a sew in weave. Handing her a bottle of essential oils, Virgie instructs Anna to never get the weave wet. The line is reminiscent of the 1984 movie Gremlins. When the mogwai get wet, they multiply and turn evil. While this does not necessarily happen to the weave—it's evil to begin with—water proves to be the key to successfully defeating it.
Bad Hair commentates on the pressures that Black women face in corporate America as well as the nation at large to appeal to a Eurocentric norm by straightening their hair, getting relaxers, or weaves of several varieties. In 2006, Jeff Stilson's documentary Good Hair released and detailed the ways that the hair industry and society are structured to make Black people hate their natural hair texture. It documents how damaging relaxers can be when done wrong, which Simien also displays in the opening scene of Bad Hair when Anna's hair burns off from a relaxer. Historically, Black horror has been used as a means to shed light on issues facing the Black community and discuss racism in America. Most notably, Misha Green's HBO series, Lovecraft Country, utilizes Black history to craft realistic stories about her characters and the Jim Crow era while Lovecraftian beasts lurk nearby. Bad Hair's moss haired girl is another method of telling the true stories about Black people and, more specifically, Black women.
The moss haired girl story comes from a book owned by Anna's father, who works as an African and African American studies professor. It is a book composed of slave lore and mythology. As the story goes, the moss haired girl was a slave who went out one day and discovered a tree on the slave master's property that grew moss resembling smooth black hair. She fashioned a wig out of it in hopes of having hair similar to his. Upon returning home, the hair went wild and killed the slave master, then took over her body. The hair that grows from the tree is actually that of dead witches, whose souls are still trapped inside. When they are woven onto the heads of the living as weaves at Virgie's, they take control over them and feast off of blood.
It is revealed at the end that the slave master's sons, one of which is the new company owner of Cult, are harvesting the hair and selling them to Virgie's. Due to the fact that Virgie sells the hair and hands out the essential oil products, which are mostly made up of blood, it's likely that she is the original moss haired girl. The goal of the witches is to come back to life; it's never insinuated that they die once they enter their new hosts. They are a possessive parasite that gains a host by being embedded into the scalp, and seemingly live forever. Perhaps the moss haired girl made an agreement with Grant Madison to purchase the witches' hair in order to bring the other witches back to life with new hosts.
Ultimately, the mythology of the moss haired girl represents the long history of Black women experiencing the pressures of society to abide by an expected norm. By situating the story in the 1980s, it shows how the past can resemble the present. Grant Madison's ownership of the old plantation land that the tree stands on, which he harvests from, is meant to indicate the continual pressures that white people place on Black people. Bad Hair is a deeply nuanced horror comedy that addresses several important facets about being a Black woman in America, from past to present.