#even those w natural hair grown & maintained beyond their waist or whatnot

[kouhaiofcolor]

I really miss the natural hair community & watching natural hair content generally. That was so good for Black Women; we were thriving at it, too. And as rapidly as it rose to popularity, it’s crazy how dead the whole concept is now. I think it had more to do w all the division created over routines around maintenance than anything else. Everybody was entirely too pushy w trying to make what worked for them personally a staple for taking care of textured hair in general — & that shit walked so that colorism, featurism, texturism & misogynoir could run. Now the same ppl who was riding the wave a few years ago & swearing by all these products, brands, sponsors, wash day & styling methods have put natural hair away as a concept entirely.

Also, why the hell did we waste all that energy prefacing everything w, “Stop doing this and do these things for your hair to grow to tailbone length overnight🤡” — just to go right back to weave and perms? All that researching for what? All the dedication to disproving antiblack/misogynoir notions about Black hair for what? All the redefining of protective styles for what? All the trying to unlearn the belief structures around the colonization of Black hair for what? What did we teach ourselves fr? How did we make things any easier for Black Women and little Black girls? It’s tragic af. The Natural Hair Community/Movement is dead, it seems like. I don’t think we fought hard enough to prevent what happened to it honestly :\

#this isn’t to call out or demoralize weave or perms or anything like that either #I don’t think there’s anything wrong w black women doing any of that #but on the flip side I do kind of feel like #maybe weave is a bit of a crutch for us? #even w an understanding of it being a conditioning via white supremacy & antiblackness #I just don’t understand why it was smothered as a movement #& why black women seem to have like…. kind of just rolled over with it? #it was legitimately good for us before everyone else went to bandwagoning for relevance #and I get that too #but I still feel like we did a poor job at defending & teaching each other first & foremost #non black people definitely got in the way of that #but we also got in each other’s way ourselves #everyone I used to be subscribed to on yt for natural hair content stepped away from it #even those w natural hair grown & maintained beyond their waist or whatnot #the switch right back to unhealthy means of taking care of textured hair was flipped so easily #it just saddens me cus we were working at doing better #esteeming ourselves #our nieces #our daughters #our female cousins and mothers and aunties about the way we take care of our hair #and fell just short of actually taking something tangible from it #it wasn’t about having longer hair #it was about giving textured hair representation in ways it mattered #we were so driven in this & it was beautiful #there is no movement or dedication to this in 2024 tho #proud of black women who were independent thinkers & didn’t fall off w all the chaos #them trends had ppl clambering all over each other #& it ultimately killed the movement #nowadays you don’t even hear from the non black women who were vulturing for clout #i be floored w how sparse any content true to the hash tags are anymore