Up above is my latest hair style:The Undercut, I am constantly changing my hair. About three years ago I started my natural hair journey, after one relaxer, 2 big chops, and countless weaves, I ask myself, what is natural hair? I’ve never really struggled with accepting my hair, I got my first relaxer in the sixth grade, and I was accustomed to maintaining it and straightening my hair regularly. I experimented with growing it out, cutting it off and repeating. The natural hair movement began to grow and I was like OOOOO snap I’m going to cut all my hair off and go natural, I did the “big chop”, and started my natural hair journey. My protective style of choice became weaves, to “protect” my natural hair as I grew it out, indecisiveness would cause me to relax my hair, and do the big chop yet again, bleach my ends and cut them off again, trying to get a grip on what type of processing should be allowed on my natural hair.
As I experiment with my now natural hair, I notice that most natural styles demand an endless amount of hair product, and setting that alter your hair’s “natural texture”, or curl pattern. I ask myself if dying hair, or flat ironing hair alters natural hair?
The way I see the whole black girl/woman hair debate is as the India Arie’s song state “I am not my hair”, and as a community we should liberate one another no matter what your hair choices may be. In today’s popular culture black hair has a lot of negative connotations associated with it, the words used to describe the texture of our hair, and also with black women who wear hair extensions as oppose to women of all other races that do the same. Or the disbelief that we can grow long hair, or thick hair which baffles me. I don’t know which insults me more when I wear a weave and someone ask me if its real or when I wear my fro and someone ask me if its a weave…
I’ve had my own personal journey with my hair and experimenting and have decided if I wanted to get a relaxer tomorrow I would, to me it goes both ways a lot of women that choose not to relax their hair either wear a weave, or twist, braid, or knot their hair to create a certain curl pattern.
Hair is one of the most temporary, changeable attributes to one’s physical appearence and the fact that we prioritize hair so much as black woman, should have us questioning our self love, and our self hate all at the same time…but as long as you look fly what does it matter? That’s just my opinion… look good, feel good, do good.
What are your thoughts?
here are some images that sparked my blog, I”ll be honest I did chuckle at these memes, however they also sparked a bit of concern with me and the spectacle placed on our hair…
After being “natural” for a couple years I finally decided to relax my hair in January of 2015, It was and has been a positive hair experience for me, and I have began to use my flat iron again. However, I have only had one relaxer since the beginning of the year and have over 2 inches of new growth, in which I can attribute to the wonderful Hair, Nail, and Skin supplements I have been using, in addition to the healthy growth of my hair I have not experienced any shedding and very minimal breakage.
verbatimlee 