This is gonna be a nice long post but here goes.... Unless you live under a rock or have been on extended vacation on the planet Jupiter, you would know or at least should know (please be aware that legal culpability applies in most instances when ya should've known even when you didn't actually know...pay attention people) that the natural hair movement, particularly concerning black women, is on an all time high and is exploding all over the place! Black women are foregoing chemicals, mostly the creamy crack (relaxers), running away from flat irons, hot combs, blow dryers and opting for more naturally curly styles, and chopping their hair off for a "fresh" start clean and clear of chemical products. They are swapping a lot of the old school hair products for alternative products with less chemical and bad stuff (such as, sulphates, proteins, certain oils and things like that...you gotta do your own research to get all the specifics b/c I'm not entirely up on the dos and do nots but I will provide some really helpful resources at the end of this post); and they are adding homemade and natural products into their regime (this I know a little more about b/c I have done a little bit of this on my own and in doing so I have done way more research in this area). Women of this movement are on a roll all across America and all over the world wide web! In it's current form it's like a civil war. It's like they are angry with the stereotypes of what black hair is supposed to look like and be like and they are fighting it by rebelling and doing their own thing. I'm just wondering is this just a fad? A phase in black hair, again? Is this really a revolution or just a style of the moment?? When the smoke all clears and the dust all settles, where are we going to really be at with our hair?
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In the beginning of my
journey... chemical free!! |
My hair and I have had a very special relationship for as long as I can member. We have been through every color in the rainbow (I've had platinum blonde hair, hot pink hair, orange hair, and so forth), every texture on the texture wheel, just about all lengths possible and every single style that could be conceived or perceived! After all of this excitement, the ups and down, and a series of traumatic events, I finally decided, with the instruction of my primary doctor and the support of my BFF, Shan, to stop relaxing my hair in early 2008. Four years later, it is still the best decision I have ever made for my hair and esteem and this is the most comfortable and satisfied I have ever been with my hair ever!! I would be lying if I said I was less than convinced that this whole natural thing was gonna work for me when I ultimately stopped relaxing it. I can remember telling my BFF that my hair wasn't the kind that could go perm free! I always felt like when I was overdue for a perm my hair would start to break off worse than it would with a chemical. It would get so coarse and unruly I would get the perm just to make it behave and not so much for it to be straight. But I was very quickly proven wrong early on in the transition. First, I wanted a short sexy hair cut anyway. I was sick of being married to hair and I preferred a hot hair cut (duh, Halle Berry; Malinda Williams and Nia Long has that kinda affect on a honeey!!) to a boring long weave any day so that kinda made my transition that much easier. I didn't have any desire to keep my length so no hesitation there but at the same time I got the benefit of not only ceasing the use of a relaxer but also cutting out the majority of any relaxer I had on my head. Although there was a concern that it would be more complicated to keep my hair straight while natural at such a short length, but that too, with the magic hands of my stylist, Michael Flagg at
Bliss Elements, became the least of my worries. With the right conditioner, products, tools, and his skills the condition of my hair and the manageability of my hair, whether straight or curly, has never been better. And with time it just got better...it's even more trained and responsive. I could workout like crazy and sweat it up, I could get caught in the rain and humidity and easily wrap it up quickly and it rebounds nicely. After wearing my hair cute and short for three years, I decided to start the grow out process last year and I'm now at the
boring pain in the @ss medium stage and feeling antsy and stuck! It's not growing fast enough for me. But my stylist says I need to be patient and I need to just chill out b/c it's growing and more importantly it's not coming out or breaking off. True. Guess I should chill and wait....
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Grow out phase! Curled tight. |
When I started my journey it was about the health of my hair and scalp and also about freedom and autonomy. I love my hair and I think it's important to keep it done (honeeyz please don't slack on the hair...there is no excuse not to love yourself enough to care about your hair), but I was sick of being a slave to it. And for me, the perm (relaxer) was the ball and chain scenario because it was such a process and such a laboring event and just about everything had to be scheduled around it...it was more annoying than it was good. I know there is that constant bickering about whether or not you are more black in the "natural state," whether you're really natural if you wear your chemically free hair straight, or whether adding color makes you not natural, or if using non-natural products in your chemically free hair is not natural, or whatever other back and forth nonsense that is going on out there. But none of that mattered or matters to me. The truth is I don't feel any more black now relaxer free for 4 years and I didn't feel any less black before with a chemical or even with weave... all of those choices were more about styling, habit, miseducation and preference; and not about race or cultural identity so those arguments don't make much sense to me. And in fact, I find when you set up these kinda of rules... must use only natural products, must only wear hair in the curly style, can never use heat ever never on my hair... and then live by them as absolutes just because you set them, you ultimately put yourself in the same slave like mentality as when you felt like you must have this silky straight texture, you must have this certain type of length, you must fry your hair straight to be pretty, you must have a perm every 6-8weeks. No different. Same mentality but just from one end to the other. My journey was about not being dependent on some thing that was deteriorating my health and wrecking my flow. When I let that "need" to have a chemical smacked up in my head I achieved exactly what I set out to do! On top of that, the confidence and the carefree-ness that came along with it was totally liberating and allowed for my artsy self to shine through. I still enjoy my hair straight and wear it like this the majority of the time, although I actually don't use much heat to achieve this. I go to the hair salon 2x per month to have my hair conditioned, blown out and flat ironed. In between that I don't add any more heat or use the flat iron myself. And I recently had a sewn-in weave in my hair to give it a little bit of a different style and help me through my impatient grow out phase. But I'm chemically free and intend to stay that way. Glorrrryyyyyy to the good Lord Jesus!
MORE PICS, TIPS and RANTING after the break>>>>