In the first chapters we have read, hair seems to play a huge role on how "good" a woman looks and there seems to be a little colorism.
In the very beginning, one of the things that the women notice on the porch is Janie walking with her hair all the way down her back and their response is, "What dat ole forty year ole 'oman doin' wid her hair swingin' down her back lak some young gal" (2)? From the tone of voices, we can get that they are envious of Janie and that turned to resentment because they want what she has. There is obviously something about how long and relatively straight Janie's hair is that makes the other women want to have the same style of hair.
Hair is used as a measure of how "good" a woman by the men as well. When Janie is just walking by, the second thing that the men notice is, "the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume" (2). While the overalls were not seen as fashionable or decent in any way, somehow her hair still remained emasculate. The next moment where we can see how men rate women based on their hair is when Hicks tries to woo Janie and then later on he tells Coker, "Tain't nothin' to her 'ceptin' dat long hair" (38). That seems to be all most people think about when they look at her and Joe Starks is aware of that when he makes her wear a headrag around the store. He doesn't want anybody else ogling her so he makes her tie up her wondrous hair. That is just one way that Joe is controlling.
Where colorism shows up is when the guys and the girls are acting out courtship and then Daisy Blunt shows up. It is said that, "she knows that white clothes look good on her, so she wears them for dress up" (67) and, "her hair is not what you might call straight. It's N* hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor" (67). Not only is this implicitly saying that "white" clothes look better which shows that although there are not any white people in Eatonville, racism still very much exists. In addition, to go along with that, the hair that white people have is "better" than black hair. That also brings in a little bit of colorism because Daisy is seen as the most beautiful out of the other three women and that is in part due to her hair.
Thus, while racism seems to not be inherently ground up into Eatonville there are still the stereotypes present that white somehow looks better than black so they rank people based on that.
