When I started wearing my hair natural, without hot comb or chemical straightening, it felt so right for me. Key phrase: “It felt so right for me.” For the last fifteen years, I have been happy with my choice. My hair is now a little past my waist in length. My husband is quick to quote that I am, “Nappy and happy.”
My hair has become its own ministry. I’ve explained where locks are mentioned in the Bible when I’ve had my hair discussion at the beginning of the Girl Scout year with my Brownie Scouts. I have to have that discussion to get all the hair questions out of the way so we can be about Girl Scout business the rest of the year. “Is that your real hair?” “Why do you wear it like that?” “Will you ever cut it?”
It is an important discussion to have with little girls of Africanesque features. The media still tells them that those features are not considered attractive. Before disagreeing, take a look at the hair care products that are advertised on TV and in magazines. The “better” looking hair is considered soft, silky, “manageable” and straight. Even in ads for hair coloring products, the African American models most often have chemically altered hair. That and the constant fight to pull, perm, and tame the tot’s tresses gives her the implicit message that she needs to be made over—that God made some serious mistake that has to be corrected—before she faces the public. That is the concept I fight and one I take seriously as that negative message has an impact beyond hair texture for children.
My job and my hair’s job is to reinforce Pslam 139:14: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Children need to understand that God doesn’t make garbage. That includes each of them from head to toe.
A person’s choice to wear artificially straightened hair—with all the consequences that entails—is their own choice. Inevitably, I am asked about my hair. Usually Black women who may be described by one of my friends as either Tres ghetto/gauche country, will ask if it’s all mine and how I get my hair like this—as if they really don’t know. These are usually women with very hard straightened hair that is partly shellacked with gel to the scalp, bleached copper red on the ends with hard hair ribbons cascading from somewhere on top or from the side of their heads. Yes, Virginia, some people really do wear salad bowl waterfalls on their heads!
These ladies will ask, not for my answer but to make a statement, which is usually an explanation as to why they would never wear their hair locked. Most often the explanation is, “Because I like to wear different styles/change my hair style a lot.” One lady told me she likes to scratch her scalp. She believes locked hair would prevent that, so she will continue to smear skin-irritating chemical straighteners, which make her scalp itch, onto her head every three weeks for the pleasure of being able to scratch the chemical induced itch. Stop. Blink. Now read on.
It amuses me when a lady with all of her hair cut near the scalp except for the little bent hairs on top, tells me she likes to change hair styles when she hardly has any hair.
The other type is the “I’m-too-important-to-reveal-my-natural-hair-texture” woman who knows we all know but acts like we all don’t know what we know we know. That type, if she ever does speak to the likes of me, will usually say how unprofessional natural hair is as she should know because she would not be in her position if she were not privy to all things professional. Her concept of professionalism usually includes not allowing a certain “ethnic look” to offend those of Euro-ethnicity.
To those women, I say: You must get a life. I am ethnic. You are ethnic. To say that one ethnicity is more professional that another is, to quote Mike Tyson impersonators:
“Simply, ludicrous!” My ethnicity doesn’t prevent me from being professional.
Here’s what my Italian-Irish husband said he thought when he first saw me: “That hair caught my eye. I said, ‘Here is someone who is real. She is who she is and not a thing about her is fake’.”
To those ladies: When you ask me about my hair, I tell you just to answer your question. That is all. I am not trying to proselytize you into a religion of natural hair. You do to have to explain to me why you wear your hair the way you do. You may not believe this but, read my lips, I really do not care. That is why I did not ask you about your hair.
Other questioners are children. Little Black girls are told their hair stops growing and cannot grow as long as naturally straight hair. Tell your little girls that the pulling and yanking on hair with implements made for straight hair breaks it off—especially when that hair has been damaged by the chemical straighteners and plied with greasy hair gook that is supposed to counteract the drying effect of the chemicals.
These excited children ask me, “Is that your real hair?” and want to play with my hair. Um, honey, do you usually allow people you don’t know to touch your hair? Well, you shouldn’t. I don’t.
Teens who are starting their locks will ask some upkeep questions. I have to remind them that my hair is not part of a faddish fashion statement for approving peers. I usually get a “Wow! Ma’am, I like your dreads! How long you had ’em?” I have to remind them that there is nothing dreadful about locked hair. I prefer not to use the term for cultivated locked hair. In the West Indies, transplanted Africans allowed their hair to lock. Notice I said allowed. Those avoiding slavery would, from the wilderness, attack English colonist who dreaded seeing them coming because it meant bad news! Since our hair is usually started or styled to induce locking they are cultivated. That is why I prefer to say “Nubian locks” or “locks.”
I’ve been approached by older Euro-Americans who want to ask questions and tell me that Johnny is sitting at home with blond dread locks. I’d rather a person ask and know rather than assume and walk around ignorant. So I don’t mind answering questions. For kids straight hair there is a different method for achieving locked hair that can be a hairy experience for parents.
The one question that gets me is, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Whoopi Goldberg?” The answer is yes. Usually it is some well-meaning person of largely European descent who has had limited exposure to people of African descent thus having the perception that all of us know each other by name and remarkably resemble each other!
My retort to the comparison to Whoopi is that I can understand that mistake seeing that we are close in age, both female, African Americans with locked hair. The big hairy BUT is, that while I deeply admire the Whoopster, which is what I call her on a more personal level as we all know each other, she is the more humorous while I am cuter.
I appreciate differences God created. Appreciating is knowing of the beauty in the differences. My daughter’s hair is black and curly. My Hunnee’s hair is wavy and blond. My hair is kinky and brown. It’s all good from God! This is my hair story and I’m sticking to it!
