When I was about six years old, my mother chemically relaxed my hair, and it’s something she’s been apologizing for ever since. But honestly, had she not done it early on I most likely would have gotten around to it on my own. From ages eleven to seventeen I went through several failed attempts of “going back natural”. Finally, one day after my eighteenth birthday on November 20th 2011, I decided I would never use chemically altering substances on my hair ever again. This decision had nothing to do with “getting back to my roots” or “embracing my race”, I was just sick of my hair growing only to break. It is almost two years later since I made that decision, and I am absolutely inlove with my hair.
The hardest part about “being natural” is that I was never taught how to take care of my hair. I was never taught what my hair needed to stay healthy. I was always taught my hair was unmanageable: “Black women’s biggest hair problem is that they think their hair is a problem.”
To make matters worse, the rest of the world seems to have the same opinion. While I am complimented on my hair almost daily, the criticisms are almost as frequent, as is the blatant disrespect. This summer while working as an intern, I went to work with my hair out. When I say “out” I am referring to my equivalent of down; due to the natural texture of my hair, it does not fall, and so my “out” is “down”. I was asked to go to the Human Resources department where I was asked in a disgustingly rhetorical way if I thought that my hair was “appropriate” or “professional”. I often questioned whether a Caucasian colleague would have been asked a similar question if they came to work with their hair down.
Though my decision to embrace my hair in its entirety was not in any way an effort to make a statement, I must admit it has become exactly that. My natural hair says I will not conform to the constraints of gravity, I will not fall. Likewise, I will not conform to the constraints of society, I will not fall. Over time, I have been able to educate myself on what my hair needs to stay healthy. And although I can’t say it has been easy, I do believe accepting my hair has resulted in a holistic acceptance of myself. And while I still love a 26” instalment as much as the next girl, I no longer believe those methods to be a stepping stone to beauty. These days I could not care less what people think about my hair, because as Michelle NdegeOcello said, “her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonised mind.”
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