Musings on Natural Hair
It took 15 years before I really knew what “Black hair” looks like. Growing up watching movies, TV, and music videos, every Black girl I saw was portrayed with pin-straight hair. It was only a few years ago when I started taking care of my hair myself that I began consciously noticing the discrepancy between the texture I was seeing on screen versus what grows out of my own head.
It’s no secret that for centuries Black people have been ridiculed for and pressured to alter our features to be more accepted by White society, hair being a large part of that. It’s because of those pressures and discrimination that resulted in the widespread adoption of chemical relaxers permanently damaging the curl patterns of Black men and women since the early 1900s, with recent studies by the National Institutes of Health linking the product to increased risk of breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer. For decades Black women have been continuously damaging their health… over hair?
Coming into the new year, it seemed that a new trend was going around on TikTok (ugh): hair calendars. The idea is simple; planning out the hairstyles you’ll be sporting over the course of the year. On paper this seems fine, but what irks me most is the emphasis so many Black women have on always having their hair “done” — and by that they mean hidden under a wig, blended in a sew-in, or constantly camouflaged with kanekalon.
Listen. I’m not a hair puritan who wants to dictate what “real” natural hair is (don’t even get me started on the resentment I see against mixed race Black people regarding hair texture), and there’s valid reasons for choosing not to “deal with” (I hate that wording) your natural hair every day, such as mental health struggles or stress related to school, work, or life in general. But when thinking about why you make the decisions you do with your natural hair, don’t have the answer be because you’re running from your own genetics.
