All hair must be straight. Period.
I spent Friday night blog hopping rather than sleeping (or catching up on housework) and came across this post about a mother’s love/hate relationship with her hair. I couldn’t help laughing as I read:
Aunty come make I fix you.
Aunty come make I fix you.
I can hear them calling from Tejuosho MarketCorrect Chinese
Expensive Brazilian
Virgin Indian
No one sells African hair.
Memories of Tejuosho market came flooding back. Walking through the market, the vendors would repeat their calls, directing their wares at me. They would look confused, wondering if I was perhaps deaf. Afterall, my hair often looked like it needed to be fixed.
Fixing Hair Was Torture
I dreaded having my hair fixed, but fixing hair was a fact of life. So I did it, but less frequently than I should have. I loved the weaves - short, long, wavy, curly, brown, black, mixed. I never did blond. I loved the braids, but never did the ‘million braids’ despite admiring everyone who carried it. For that, my dread of the hours of sitting exceeded my desire to look good. When I did put in the effort, I would love the outcome of my hairdo, that is after the tension eased from my scalp. I would love it untill the itching and scratching started some 4 or 5 days later. But better bear the itch than endure the ‘unfixing’ and the detangling. My permed hair was a little kinder, yet it never felt quite satisfactory. Flat and lifeless in week one, plump and smooth in week two (if only I could freeze it in this state), frizzy in week three, undergrowth palaver in week four. I won’t even talk about the burn of the relaxer … and why do the hairdressers have to turn the dryer heat so high?
What’s Wrong With My Natural Hair
I came to the United States with a weave, and it became inevitable that I had to remove it someday. Nobody called out ’aunty make I fix you’. “Where do I fix my hair?”, I asked. I found it and also learned how much it would cost. “Yikes!”, I exclaim to myself. “Is it not just hair?” For someone who despaired over the discomfort of getting my hair fixed even when it was free, I wasn’t going to pay that much money for someone to torture me. I quickly figure out ways of administering the torture to myself. I experiment with relaxers, hoping to find in the United States, that magical formula for beautiful, straight, long hair. It eluded me. But I got by.
I gave up the self torture and resigned to outsource it. Perhaps the formula is an attribute of technique - the golden touch of the hairstylist. And indeed they wielded a special touch, but nothing that could stand up to week one’s ‘flat and lifeless’. “Why don’t you come back every two weeks for maintenance?”, the stylist suggested when I shared my frustration.
“Why don’t you get it braided?”, hubby asked. But I had already decided “not that torture”. Back in Nigeria, when it came time to remove the braids, there were always many hands to assist. Not here in the US.
I started to ask myself questions about hair. “Why do I have to braid it? Why did I ever perm it? Actually, I begged and cajoled. After all, being straight was the destination of every hair. Perming was a sign of maturity. “When you’re 16″, my mom said, but she gave in when I was 12. And I thanked God that she did so that I wasn’t the kid everyone whispered about in school, the kid who’s being held in the dark ages by her parents. Why did our entire society have that view of hair? All hair must be straight. Period. What’s wrong with our natural hair anyway?
First Attempt At Natural Hair
Nothing’s wrong with my natural hair, I told myself as I contemplated going natural. Then I had a baby girl. I looked at her pretty hair and I wondered what the future of that hair would be. Would she burn her scalp with relaxer trying to get her hair straight? Would she spend all her energy trying to tame her hair like it was some wild beast? Would she think she was less than the next person because of her hair? What example am I setting for her? I grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped off my permed hair.
I loved the feel of water running through my scalp as I showered. I could feel it everyday. It started to grow a bit, started to get more difficult to comb. I went to a store and grabbed a curl activator kit. I applied it but it seemed to make no difference. “The kit is for shorter hair”, a friend suggested. I got two kits, doubled the application. It made my hair crisp and curly at the ends. I really mean crisp though, and no easier to comb.
Another trip to the store to get a relaxer kit put an end to my natural hair dreams.
Second Attempt With Some Education
Three years later, I stumbled across websites on natural hair care - ourhair and nappturality. I read about the struggles others have gone through in trying to return to their natural hair. I read about the triumphs when they were successful. And most importantly, I read that natural hair is not necessarily difficult to comb, difficult to manage, not a monster of a wild beast. That struck a cord with me. Even though three years earlier, I had dealt with the unmanageable hair, I recalled that prior to initially perming my hair at age 12, my hair was in fact, not difficult to manage. And my daughters hair was actually rather soft. I resolved to go natural again, and decided to stick with the plan for at least two years. With more education about natural hair at my finger tips, I was able to stick with the plan.
It’s been two years and I’m not planning to apply a relaxer anytime soon. In fact, I’m more motivated now than ever before to stick to my natural hair. When my daughter starts counting off all the people with straight hair, I want her to be able to point to at least one person with natural hair. The only way I can guarantee that is by being that person.
This post is getting longer than I intended. Apparently I have hair vents to let go off and will require more than one post to get them out. This will be continued.
