Well I would say that I am going to do a blog specifically to chronical my journey to natural hairdom (nappural I thin they call it) but I am not. I will lightly season this blog with the subject here and there. After all this blog is supposed to be about all the whimsical things and experiences that happen within my life and I suppose this is an experience. Plus I have known people to chronicle their hair journey and it seemed more like a big proclamation, like they are the first person in the whole wide world to stand up and say, "STOP! NO MORE CHEMICALS!" when in reality they aren't and to me it is not that big of a deal. I am not going to proclaim it I am just going to do it and know that I am doing it to have healthier, better hair (my edges are growing back in yeahhhh).
Moving on...
With every journey I start I have a period of reflection to the things that have brought me to the point to where I decided to make a change. During my reflection I came across a memory from junior high school. There was this girl in my class who was African and her hair was natural, never, ever in her life had a perm. It was of course noticeable but no one ever spoke on it until we were in the locker room changing clothes for third period PE class. One of my class mates rolled up to ole girl and told her that she needed a relaxer. Africa was resistant to it (more so her mom was like no) but collectively one by one we began to gang up on her and get into her thoughts and subsequently made her self conscious by taunting her about the unrelaxed state of her hair. Some people called her nappy (back then it was embarrassing to be called nappy) and others just straight out told her she should just go ahead and get the damn relaxer so the rest of us would shut up... I remember one dude rolled up to her and said, "Your hair is nappy just get the relaxer". *face in hands*
A few weeks later what do you know, ole girl went and got herself a boxed perm and slapped it in her head and came to school with as my girlfriend would say looking like she got her butter whipped. Everyone was like oh you are so cute and your hair looks so nice (she looked nice already) etc; but over the years I could see for myself why they called it the "creamy crack" because if it was time for a touch up this chick would freak out. It was like she had the touch up date and time marked on the calender and any time after that would be catastrophic....
Wow, ain't peer pressure a bytch but seriously as a 33 year old woman looking back on this I can say I feel some sort of shame (yeah I was in on the taunting). I mean how dare we as teenagers have the say on what is beautiful and what wasn't? How dare we pressure this girl to change who she was and was fine with being? In some ways I kind of feel like we set her on the same path that our mother's/granmother's/hairdressers set us on when they decided to put relaxers in our hair, only for a few of us to come back around and be like ok chuck this we are going back to basics. Some times I often wonder what her hair is like now. I know if we ever come face to face and if she is sporting patches, a receding hairline, hair thinning and/or baldness I am going to just be sick over it. You hear me? Simply sick! LOL!
This memory reminded me of when I went to the Dominican salon for a "sexy blow out" and the stylist was acting like she could not get my hair straight for anything. She kept on blowing it out and flat ironing it and telling me that I needed a texturizer and that the heat would boil my hair. I figured what could the texturizer really hurt after all it was just a mild perm, take a little of the curl out. Well the choice to do that was all shame on me. Why? I went to cosmetology school; for three years hair, skin and nails was my life and to this day I still retain this information. In my still carrying this information around with me I allowed for these chicks to taunt me into doing something I knew I really did not want to do and should not have done. I guess my best excuse right now is that I was trained to work with straight and processed hair. In my years of training we learned about unprocessed hair but we never took the time to work with it nor learn how to handle it. Yep, that explanation will do.
Any way, I went home yesterday fit to be tied because my hair was so crispy that all I heard was snap, crackle and pop at every turn. I was on a natural hair care forum and some one suggested Cantu leave in conditioner Creme. I picked the conditioner up and tried my routine all over again and it worked. I liked the results and I think I will stick with what I am doing until I get to point where I want to cut my hair.
I will probably write another blog tonight about some funny isht that happened to me, provided I can remember it by the time I get home. Until then you all have a very blessed evening. MUAH!
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