Hello again friends!
Today’s focus and maybe for a little bit will be hair, simply because hair, especially black hair, is one of the most magical, versatile, and unique features of the black community. Find two siblings, twins or not and there a great chance their their hair texture, length, thickness, and coarseness are completely different.
My sister and I for instance, have the same mother and father, similar genetic makeup, and she has kinky could 4b/c texture while i have a mix between curly and wavy 3c/4b hair. This may just look like some random letters but I’ll explain further,
Now that you have somewhat of an understanding of the different hair textures let me tell you why it’s so great, or atleast why i think so.
I’ve had natural hair since birth with the exception of about 5 years between 7th grade and my high school graduation. Follow graduation, i promised my self to return to my natural roots, literally and so I began the process of transitioning, allowing your hair to grow out the permed end and having two distinctively different hair textures on one strand of hair. I was convi ced I couldn’t pull of a super short haircut. About a two months into my freshmen year in college i began trimming my hair regularly to get used to having shorter hair.
It didn’t really work, there came a point about a year after transitioning I decided I just couldn’t deal with the added attention my hair needed with healthy natural hair growing out of my hair and about 7 inches of permed ends, so I said goodby to my length and I ‘rocked’ (tried to fake confidence) a TWA, teeny weeny Afro, emphasis in the teeny..
For the first few weeks it was like shock therapy, I was not comfortable with my hair and tried to forget the big change I had made, but was constantly reminded when I ran into someone on campus I hadn’t seen recently. I was showered with ‘OMG’s,’ ‘your hair’s so pretty,’ ‘you look five years you ger;’ like that’s really what i wanted to hear, I was a sophomore in college and first time Resident Assistant trying to assert my confidence, experience, and authority over freshmens, of which most of them my age and some a bit older.
To say in short, some of my residents called me mom in public and in our hall, I was baby, in the most demoralizing manner but we were a family so I didn’t really mind and little did they know my hair would grow and I’d look more mature, or so i hoped at the time. And good news for me it did and I did, and they stopped calling me baby and now it was Mom or JazzieCat, which I was okay with.
Some of my residents even took special interest in my hair and wanted me to explain how I styled, washed, and maintained my hair, I obliged and shared all the information I had learned so far.
It was then, in the face of my many residents and their natural hair questions that I realized just how magical my hair was.
It didn’t really work, there came a point about a year after transitioning I decided I just couldn’t deal with the added attention my hair needed with healthy natural hair growing out of my hair and about 7 inches of permed ends, so I said goodby to my length and I ‘rocked’ (tried to fake confidence) a TWA, teeny weeny Afro, emphasis in the teeny..
For the first few weeks it was like shock therapy, I was not comfortable with my hair and tried to forget the big change I had made, but was constantly reminded when I ran into someone on campus I hadn’t seen recently. I was showered with ‘OMG’s,’ ‘your hair’s so pretty,’ ‘you look five years you ger;’ like that’s really what i wanted to hear, I was a sophomore in college and first time Resident Assistant trying to assert my confidence, experience, and authority over freshmens, of which most of them my age and some a bit older.
To say in short, some of my residents called me mom in public and in our hall, I was baby, in the most demoralizing manner but we were a family so I didn’t really mind and little did they know my hair would grow and I’d look more mature, or so i hoped at the time. And good news for me it did and I did, and they stopped calling me baby and now it was Mom or JazzieCat, which I was okay with.
Some of my residents even took special interest in my hair and wanted me to explain how I styled, washed, and maintained my hair, I obliged and shared all the information I had learned so far.
It was then, in the face of my many residents and their natural hair questions that I realized just how magical my hair was.
Comments
Post a Comment