I
have always loved my natural hair. I
love its texture, its thickness, its versatility so much that I’ve never gotten
a perm or texturizer. I have been
natural since birth. Growing up with
girls and women with straight hair all around me I think my natural hair made
me feel special and I never wanted to throw my special thing away. But I think my biggest reason for staying
natural was my mom. My mom had been
perming her hair for years and years; that was the only way she “knew” how to
do her hair. But she had always made
sure to tell my sister and me how beautiful our natural hair was, and I never
stopped believing that. Even when my sister
got her a texturizer and then a perm when she was in high school and I thought
her hair looked straight and thick and beautiful, I knew I didn’t want to do
that to my hair. I had always loved my
texture and the variety of styles my hair could be put in; straight hair just
seemed to me a little boring in comparison. Then as my sister continued to perm
I saw her hair get thin and start losing its color and I knew I had made the
right decision to stay natural. A few
years later my sister came around and made the decision to go back
natural. And last year even my mom
hopped on board. I was born to be
natural and it looks like my family was too.
From left to right: my sister
Dyonna, my mother Evelyn, and Me
But
even though I’ve been natural my whole life it’s still been quite a journey. Growing up I always had someone else to turn
to when it came to my hair. From birth up
until my senior year of high school I had my mom or my sister or my godmother
to style my hair and choose my hair products.
I never had to think about what was going on with my hair and I embraced
the ignorance. But then came the summer
before my freshman year of college. My
mom (and I admit me too) was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to handle my
hair on my own. I knew how to twist and
plait but that was pretty much it, and even there my skills were nowhere near
advanced. And so that summer my sister
taught me to braid and when my family said goodbye to me after freshman
orientation I was left to fend for myself. It started out a little rough; there were some
nights freshman year that I was up until 5am trying to get my hairstyle perfect for
the next day. But little by little it
got easier and started taking less and less time (thank goodness!). And then I started looking up hairstyles
online, seeing what my sister was doing with her hair as it grew, seeing what
my natural-haired friends were doing and imitating and creating new things
along the way. By my junior year I was
feeling like a natural hairstyle connoisseur doing everything from twistouts to
buns, braided fauxhawks to cute up-dos.
I
may feel like a style master now but despite being natural my whole life there’s
still a lot I’m learning from people about styling my hair. For most of
my life I was a passive participant in the experience of my hair. It was really only after my sister did her
big chop (I think right before my junior year of high school) and when I came
to college and I met people who were transitioning or had been back natural for
just a few months or years that I became part of a conversation with people who
were actively engaged in their hair experience and knew exactly what they were
doing to and putting in their hair and knew exactly why (or experimenting to figure
that out). There were so many things
that I realized I didn’t know. Like the
idea of trimming my hair, which was a completely foreign concept. It never registered that maybe trimming your
ends every once in a while was a good idea if they were breaking off. So I just got my second trim ever as a step
toward maintaining healthy growth (well I asked for a trim, to me it seems more
like a cut – when I stretch my hair out its about 2 inches shorter than it was
before). Or like when I was growing up, whenever I would get my hair washed a
good amount of hair would come out when it was getting cleared out. And all the time my godmother would tell me
that it was natural and that was just all the shed hair that didn’t fall out
regularly coming out at once, and my hair was naturally thick and didn’t look
like it was getting any thinner so I figured she must be right. My hair would get dry fast and I just though
well maybe I’m not using my products the right way. It wasn’t until I was on my own newly
surrounded by naturalistas that I finally realized that maybe my hair was so
dry so fast and so much hair came out when I was clearing out my hair because I
wasn’t using the right products for my hair.
And so beginning my freshman year I started experimenting with new
products—I’ve found a couple of things I really love and way more things I’ll
never use again. And now if possible I
love my hair even more, because now I’m active in my own hair experience.
And
so going into my senior year the “gaining the ability to style my own hair”
journey is complete and the “taking care of my hair properly” journey is in
progress. It took me a while to realize
what all the fuss was about taking care of my natural hair because I’d always
had it. But I’ve learned it’s just like
when people have a natural talent for dance or music, if you don’t work to
maintain it eventually it goes away. We’ll
see where my hair journey goes from here.
But wherever my journey takes me I’ll never forget that my natural hair
is beautiful and that natural is absolutely positively cool enough.
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