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thisspiritsgarden · 6 years

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Hair Like Mine

I have struggled with my hair since I was a young girl. I’m not exactly sure what grade of hair I have but I’m sure it is a 4-something. It is kinky, unmanageable, and frustrating. Learning to embrace such a grade of hair has been a lifelong struggle for me. I was in Elementary school when I realized my hair was different from the other students in my class. Their hair was straight and blonde. It blew in the wind and they could easily sling it back into ponytails without a brush or a comb, or grease. My hair was a polar opposite. As I got older I realized that my hair was different from my own sister’s hair. I realized that she had “good hair” and I did not. When I finally did learn to embrace my natural hair I realized how confused people can be about what it means to be a Black woman with hair like mine.

My hair was relaxed when I was younger, and was that way for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember when my first perm was or even what it felt like. I do remember that getting ready in the morning required at least thirty minutes of hair grooming. My mom used to sit me in a plastic white chair. She used to use those hair bows with the big balls on the end of them that make a “clanking” noise if you play with them (which I did often). My mom had a plastic bag filled with these hairbows. My favorite one had some sort of Pokemon painted on the balls. My mom used to create these weird ponytail hairstyles with them. Sometimes she would do “plaits” (or twists), carefully parting my hair and greasing my scalp as she would do them. Her parts were always perfect and I could always see the white of my scalp when she was done. I very rarely wore my hair straight down when I was young. My mom always added some sort of braid or ponytail that hung over my face. I did not know how to recreate my mom’s hair styles so I had to be sure not to touch my hair when I was in school.

The hot-comb was also a staple in my house. My mom had the plug in eye and everything. That comb burned my ear so many times, but I used to love hearing the grease on my relaxed hair fry when she would run the comb through it. I still remember the smell of frying hair and the sound and feel of her breathe blowing against the steaming comb to cool it down. I remember flinching when I could feel the heat of the comb nearing my ear or my scalp. I remember the very few, and very painful times my mom would accidently put the comb to close to my scalp. She would always apologize and try to rub it or put cold grease on it.

Despite the hard work that my mother would put into my hair every morning, growing up I was a “tomboy.” I used to run around the playground hitting boys, and pissing them off. It was my favorite thing to do. If my mom did any sort of ponytail with my hair, that pony tail was guaranteed to be a mess when I got home. Strands of hair were guaranteed to be sticking straight up from my scalp and that is only if the hairbow didn’t fall out of my hair.

As I got older, around eight or nine, I stopped caring about my hair looking nice. Picture day was always funny. The photographers would have their combs out, ready to comb some blonde hair out of the faces of pretty white girls. Then there was girls with hair like mine. The photographers didn’t know what to make of my hair, especially if my mother had done my hair in some weird ponytail style. There was no hope for me as far as picture day came if I had ruined my hair at any point during the day. We would also have wacky tacky day at least once a year, and I loved it because it meant that my mom did not have to do my hair that day. My hair could be a wild mess, it could be free. Or so I thought. A memory still lingers in my head. A male student told me “Your hair looks wacky tacky everyday.” At the time, I thought I didn’t care about that comment.

I can’t remember how old I was or why I started to hate my hair. Maybe it was the fact that I used to play with Bratz dolls, and every single doll had long straight hair? Maybe more people said hateful things to me about my hair? I just remember thinking to myself that if I had longer hair, more manageable hair, that I would be prettier, and that boys would like me more. I used to flip through yearbooks and imagine I was a pretty girl with long straight hair. Sometimes I would pick a random girl from my sister’s old yearbooks and pretend I was her in my daydreams. I would change my name and everything. Sometimes they were a different race from me but they always had long, straight hair.

When I got to middle school my mom still did my hair, albeit, she no longer did the pony tail styles. Instead she started using a curling iron and curling my hair into these unflattering old-school...shapes. My hair started breaking off in middle school too. It was long when I was in Elementary school but it started getting shorter and shorter the older I got, and probably the more relaxers I got.

At the start of seventh grade, I had cornrow extensions. The extensions were long and for the first time I actually felt pretty and boys were actually starting to like me. I used to sling my long, fake braids around one side of my shoulder because I thought that made me look prettier. Then I met a group of girls who decided to make my life a living hell in seventh grade and what little bit of confidence that I was gaining in myself faded away. The extensions also had to go. I had left them in for too long which caused further damage to my hair, but my hair no longer mattered in seventh grade because I had much bigger worries.

When I started the eighth grade, I desired to reinvent myself. My mom would always get me one professional perm per year, usually before the start of the school year. All of the rest of my perms would come out of a box. I loved the way my hair looked after a fresh perm. It was still short, but atleast is flowed freely through the air, and didn’t stand up in the back if I leaned my head down. I looked pretty with my hair straight too. The perms usually only lasted a week or so and then I would be back to trying to straighten my hair to manage it.

It continued to break off throughout high school. The only time I ever truly liked my hair was when I would get a fresh perm. I remember my mom applying vaseline to the edge of my face in case the lye fell on my skin. I learned to keep the perm on my hair for as long as possible in order to achieve the best results. My scalp would be on fire before I would tell my mom to start dunking my head under the running sink faucet. I spent so much time under the faucet in my parents kitchen. That is what I remember the most about box perms. Salon perms didn’t require as much head dunking but hair stylists are not as gentle, (or caring) as a mother is. Once, one of the women who did my hair dropped some of the lye onto my bare forehead. She wiped it off with her finger and kept it moving. My forehead had a nasty, crusty red bruise on it for weeks.

Growing up, I never paid attention to the fact that my sister and I had two different hair textures. I didn’t realize this until I started wearing the cornrow extensions. My sister was rather condescending about me wearing those. I remember once she teased me for wearing “horse-hair weave” My sister never needed to wear a weave. She has some kind of three-something hair. Her curls are pretty and bouncy. When we were younger she wore it straight often. She endured the hot comb and perms too, but not nearly at the rate that I did. My mom didn’t spend hours trying to get my sisters hair to cooperate. My sister, even though she didn’t have hair like the blond white girls I went to Elementary school with, had manageable hair. I wouldn’t learn that my sisters hair was considered “good hair” until I was in my late teens.

When I was a senior in highschool, my sister called me to tell me that she was going “natural” with her hair. This was in 2010 and going natural wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now. I, like so many others, thought she was going to cease washing her hair. She explained to me what natural really meant, and I began to ponder if this was something I should do. I was getting ready to go to college in the fall of the next year and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do my hair. I never figured out how to properly straighten my relaxed hair. I didn’t know how to curl it and it was too short for a ponytail.

There was another girl at my highschool named Brianna who had went natural with her hair. Her hair was like mine, thick and kinky, but it looked nice. She used to do nice updos and blowouts and I started thinking that maybe I can get my hair to look like that. I told my mom I was thinking about going natural with my hair and her response was “So you going to walk around with an afro?”, as is if both her and my dad didn’t walk around with an afro when they were my age. My dad even has pieces of his afro taped to the back of one of his pictures in our family photo albums.

I had made up my mind. In February of 2011, my parents and I visited my sister in Raleigh and we went to a natural hair salon so that I could get the “big chop”. When I stepped in the salon and told the stylist what I was doing and she recoiled. She told me that I should just go to a barber shop because I would look like a little boy when she was through. My sister had noticed the woman pull me aside and she text me to tell me not to let that woman talk me out of getting my hair cut. Another stylist cut my hair for me and afterwards my family and I went to buy me an onslaught of natural hair care products.

My hair grew fairly quickly. By the time I attended undergraduate school it was a TWA. I used to buy flower accessories to put in my hair to make myself look less boyish at this stage. I liked that I no longer had to worry about strands of my hair sticking up or relaxers. My TWA was surprisingly simple to manage and I was not in a rush for it to grow long and full. Nevertheless it did, and by the time I graduated from undergraduate school it was long, big, and fluffy. It was still hard to manage, but I was beginning to accept my hair the way it is.

“Good hair” is a rather interesting concept. The Elementary school I attended was majority White. Both my sister and I are very light-skinned and we were never considered to be just Black. Indeed we are not, because I took an Ancestry DNA test this year and found that I do have a substantial amount of European ancestry despite the fact that both my parents are African-American as are their family members. We didn’t know this when we were younger and our parents (who most likely did not know either) always told us that we were just Black. As I grew up, I realized that the only thing people used to identify me as Black was not the color of my skin but the texture of my hair. Even in its relaxed form it was thick enough for people to know that I was Black. As for my sister, her hair is an anomaly. It is an indication that she is mixed, but I am not sure how many people assume my sister is actually Black. Both her and myself, have gotten Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and the occasional Islander. I get these assumptions, but everyone knows I have some kind of Black in me, especially now that I am natural. I am not sure how often people assume my sister has any Black in her at all. It is entirely possible for her to pass as White-Hispanic or some other mixed race woman. She doesn’t do this on purpose, but it is just a consequence of being an African-American woman with “good hair” because people on the outside looking in do not think it is possible for an African-American woman to have “good hair”.

There is no clear definition of what “good hair” actually is. It is a social construct most likely started by White people to divide African-Americans. Hair that isn’t blonde and straight is usually not considered good hair in White communities. If you are Black, however, and you’re hair is long and manageable like that of my sisters, a white person may consider that you have good hair for a Black person. It isn’t as good as theirs, but it’s better than Black people with hair like mine

It is clear that hair like mine never was and never will be considered “good hair” in the White community or the African American community. When my hair was relaxed it wasn’t considered “good hair” to White people because it was still nappy. It also wasn’t considered “good hair” to the African American community because it was chemically processed… and still nappy. My relaxed hair was never good hair to begin with because it was unhealthy and dry and was breaking off my scalp like a Nature Valley granola bar. Now that my hair is natural and long, it is still not considered good hair in either community. I know that wearing my hair natural curbs my dating potential. African-American men would much rather date a woman with hair like my sister’s or a white girl with flawless blonde hair. They want hair they can run their fingers through and hair they can play in. You can do both of those things with my hair on a good day, but they don’t know that or care to find out.

Older Black women also do not enjoy the natural look. It doesn’t fit in with many of their “respectability politics.” I straightened my hair for my graduation from graduate school because I highly doubt I will go back to school and I wanted to know what it was like to wear a graduation cap the “normal” way without the use of bobby pins to keep it on my head. I went into work with my hair straight for about a week and an older black woman who worked with me told me that I should keep my hair that way. Truthfully, many people told me that I should keep my hair straight, but it always cuts the deepest when a black woman tells you should wear your hair straight.

Another thing that happens when you have hair like mine and you wear it natural is that White people view you as defiant or believe that you are making a political statement. I live in a rural, majority white town for now, and I wear my hair out in a afro most times. People here stare at me as if am walking around butt naked. They look up at my hair as they talk to me and they think that I don’t notice it but I do. I will admit, sometimes I do wear my afro out on purpose, just to trigger them because it is not my fault that they view my hair as some sort of political statement. It is not a political statement but it is the way my hair naturally grows out of my scalp. It grows horizontally instead of vertically. Us Black folks didn’t make our hair into a political statement, White people did that. If they don’t like the way our hair grows out of our scalp then they need to take it up with God.

Finally, there are the every day trials and tribulations of having hair like mine. The hair straightener kiosks at the mall never bother to approach someone with hair like mine. They know their stragtheners won’t work on my nappy ass hair. There is the ever present worry of going on a job interview with my natural hair and fearing that the interviewer will deem me unprofessional for wearing my hair the way it naturally grows out of my scalp. Both my Dad and my sister recommended I keep my hair straight for interviews but I can’t afford one hundred dollars per interview. I worry how my hair texture will affect my dating life if I ever do decide to date. I know that many African-American men are not fond of hair like mine, and I am willing to date outside my race, but I don’t know how many non African-American men are fond of hair like mine. There is also the ridiculous personal anxiety of a bug falling into my hair and eating through my scalp. The other day I picked a bug deep out of afro and flung it into the street. Then there's the realization that there are some styles I will never be able to do without having to pay an arm and leg and a torso. Doing a simple bun takes time and patience. Living in a rural area also means that most stores do not sell the products that I use frequently. I am no longer a product junky but I still have to drive an hour into the city to find some of the products I use to deep condition because a rural white town is not willing to accomodate the few people here with hair like mine.

I am 24 years old now and I am still learning to love my hair. Sometimes it still frustrates me because I think of all the ways the texture of my hair has held me back in life. I think of how much prettier I would be with straight hair, whether or not boys would have liked me more if I had “good hair” in high school. I still like to imagine what my life would be like if I had gotten my sister’s grade of hair. How much easier it would be for me to love myself. I didn’t get to pick my hair texture. It’s one of the things God gave me to work with but unfortunately the world isn’t so accepting of a person's natural God-given attributes if they do not understand it.

Still, I am proud of my natural hair and I do appreciate it and like it most days. Some days I love it. It suits my face better than straight hair does. It is long and I love to wear it big and blown out whenever possible. It reminds me that I am a Black woman. It reminds me of who my ancestors might have been. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of where I might have came from. It reminds me of where my original home might be.

I don’t know when or why my mom started relaxing her hair, but I still remember the annoyance she displayed when I told her I was going to go natural. After I cut all my hair off she gave me one of her old, black, plastic afro picks. A few months later she started transitioning to go natural with her hair. She has been natural for several years now. I have been natural for seven years. Whenever I go home, I look on my moms vanity mirror in my parents room. She has a metal afro pick with a black power fist on the handle of it. I don’t know when she got it but I like to imagine that she got it back when she was my age and that she kept it all these years. I don’t care for metal afro picks, but sometimes I am tempted to steal it. I always decide against it because I’d like to think that this pick is special to her. I’d like to think that this pick reminds her of her home. I’d like to think that this pick reminds her of who she is and who she was created to be.

#natural hair #personal writing #personal #African-American #writing #good hair #afro hair

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