I love puns. I am not clever with them but when I get a hold of one I do tend to run wild with it.
That said, here is another post from my old website:
Hair’s to you!
The History of my Hair:
As a Black woman I often found myself slave to the perm, hairdresser and the weather. I hated not being able to plan my day without consulting those lying weather people. I’d have a bag full of junk that I would cart around if I were to stay somewhere overnight that was NOT my house. When I used to stay with my ex, he would rant and rave about the science experiment that went on in his bathroom.
Once when I was six, I decided that I wanted to cut my hair. My mom and aunt were cutting their hair all of the time but would not let me or my sister cut ours. Well, I took it upon myself to cut all of my edges and my widow’s peak. My mom hit the roof, I got in trouble, beat (late 70’s corporal punishment was still the norm) and I had to get “creative hairstyles” until my hair grew back. The affair began.
I get flashbacks of sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen whenever it’s time to do my daughter’s hair. The hot comb as it sizzled from the Royal Crown grease, the pain I would get in my neck from keeping my head still when my mother was putting those plaits in the back of my head, and the shrieks when my mom combed my hair after she washed it.
My hair has gone through it all- fried, died, laid to the side:
- I have had a bush/natural(my mother was an anarchist)
- Braids
- A curl (as in Jheri, as in I was a fashion victim of the eighties and yes, nineties!)
- Press and Curl not to be confused with
- blow dry and curl
- A relaxer
- finger waves (they were hard as sin!)
- home jobs
- hair dye: red, blondish, highlights, dark rinses
- A weave (Yes, yes, yes! I was unbeweavable. Twice. I went there and thought I was all that TWICE!)
- and last but not least, a texturizer. Which is really a perm but I so wanted to believe that I was doing something “good” for my hair
I used to hate my hair. I won’t lie. It is thick and knotty or in PC terms “tightly curled”. I don’t care for the whole hair experience but I used to think that I didn’t have it in me to go “bald or natural”. I hated sitting in the hairdresser’s for 3 hours and getting a crick in my neck from falling asleep under the dryer. My time was not my own for YEARS! I should do a commercial like the Zyrtek people and speak about how much time I have gotten back since I changed my whole relationship with my hair.
I remember before I started to loc I never felt confident enough to go all out. Now that I am locced (not dreads!) I love it. I love my hair. Oh sure, there are times when I wish I could blink and my hair is twisted and neat and clean but I will be hard pressed to ever believe the lye!!
-r
Addendum added 11/2:
I do appreciate the irony of FINALLY having long flowing locs after I stopped relaxing my hair and wearing it naturally.
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