Know what really grinds my gears?
I'm about a year into my natural hair and let me tell you something I can't stand: when people imply that women who don't have natural hair "want to be white" and "hate themselves." ugh...get OFF it!
There was a brief (and I'm talking millisecond) time in my life when I wanted my hair to be more like the Puerto Rican girls in my class. They could go swimming and have the same hair when they got in the pool as when they got out. And it was nothing to just tie it up in a bun or ponytail whenever the mood hit them. But then I realized that I could braid my hair and it wouldn't slip out, and the billions of other things I could do with my hair, even permed, that they couldn't.
Now that I'm natural, I do love it. It suits me perfectly. People who have known me for years say that my personality has always been one of someone that should have natural hair that does what it wants and I fall in line with it. And that's exactly what I do. If my hair doesn't want to lay a certain way, I just work around it. But I met a woman at a bar a few weeks ago with hair about the same texture as mine. She had cut hers off a few months before me and it was about the length mine was last summer. But she wasn't happy with it. She liked the predictability of her perm and was considering going back. At first I was tempted to tell her to "stick it out" and pep talk her, but all I could say was, "y'know, it's not for everybody." Because it's not.
When I first started toying with the idea of cutting my perm, my family was NOT having it. They said I would look a mess, that I was "so pretty" so why would I do that? For a family that grew up in the 70's and had monstrous afros and black power chains, they couldn't understand why I would take away my beautiful long hair. But I didn't care. I knew I wouldn't be "ugly" with natural hair, my personality wouldn't change, I wouldn't lose my job. So why stress about my hair choices? So I wasn't about to pep talk some girl that I just met in a bar into keeping hair that she wasn't happy with. The great thing about being a black woman is having the freedom to choose perm or natural, braids or twists, scarf or du rag! I love seeing a woman with natural hair, but I love seeing a woman comfortable in her own skin more. And if she's walking around feeling like she's wearing a sheep on her head, but i'm like, "yeah sista! you look the way God intended!" how is that helping her any?
Black pride isn't what's on your head or where you grew up or how you talk, because I know we all met the brother who wants to preach to you about the white devil as he struts about with his dashiki and ofay wench on his arm. It's about your pride in the color of your skin and what you choose to do with it. It's how the color of your skin has affected you your whole life, either negatively or positively, and turned you into the proud person you are. You don't have to go around spitting how "down" you are because it's already in your heart. You don't have to have an Africa chain and listen to Tribe Called Quest, or sag your jeans and shine your spinners. You don't have to belittle other blacks that you think aren't as proud as you cuz they perm or know how to properly conjugate a verb. Black pride is on a level that hair doesn't even come close to.
If we're calling out people for being "ashamed", there's a shit ton of people that truly are ashamed to be black. Who want to tell you how they can't stand rap music and don't act like "other" black people. They only date white people because a black person is "never interested in the same things they are." These are the ones in denial that they write off an entire race of their own people as unacceptable. they perm the kink out on purpose, dye it and fry it so you can just once, if they're lucky, ask them "are you mixed with something?" those few are the ones that should (if you have to say something) get told about themselves. THAT'S self-hate.
There was a brief (and I'm talking millisecond) time in my life when I wanted my hair to be more like the Puerto Rican girls in my class. They could go swimming and have the same hair when they got in the pool as when they got out. And it was nothing to just tie it up in a bun or ponytail whenever the mood hit them. But then I realized that I could braid my hair and it wouldn't slip out, and the billions of other things I could do with my hair, even permed, that they couldn't.
Now that I'm natural, I do love it. It suits me perfectly. People who have known me for years say that my personality has always been one of someone that should have natural hair that does what it wants and I fall in line with it. And that's exactly what I do. If my hair doesn't want to lay a certain way, I just work around it. But I met a woman at a bar a few weeks ago with hair about the same texture as mine. She had cut hers off a few months before me and it was about the length mine was last summer. But she wasn't happy with it. She liked the predictability of her perm and was considering going back. At first I was tempted to tell her to "stick it out" and pep talk her, but all I could say was, "y'know, it's not for everybody." Because it's not.
When I first started toying with the idea of cutting my perm, my family was NOT having it. They said I would look a mess, that I was "so pretty" so why would I do that? For a family that grew up in the 70's and had monstrous afros and black power chains, they couldn't understand why I would take away my beautiful long hair. But I didn't care. I knew I wouldn't be "ugly" with natural hair, my personality wouldn't change, I wouldn't lose my job. So why stress about my hair choices? So I wasn't about to pep talk some girl that I just met in a bar into keeping hair that she wasn't happy with. The great thing about being a black woman is having the freedom to choose perm or natural, braids or twists, scarf or du rag! I love seeing a woman with natural hair, but I love seeing a woman comfortable in her own skin more. And if she's walking around feeling like she's wearing a sheep on her head, but i'm like, "yeah sista! you look the way God intended!" how is that helping her any?
Black pride isn't what's on your head or where you grew up or how you talk, because I know we all met the brother who wants to preach to you about the white devil as he struts about with his dashiki and ofay wench on his arm. It's about your pride in the color of your skin and what you choose to do with it. It's how the color of your skin has affected you your whole life, either negatively or positively, and turned you into the proud person you are. You don't have to go around spitting how "down" you are because it's already in your heart. You don't have to have an Africa chain and listen to Tribe Called Quest, or sag your jeans and shine your spinners. You don't have to belittle other blacks that you think aren't as proud as you cuz they perm or know how to properly conjugate a verb. Black pride is on a level that hair doesn't even come close to.
If we're calling out people for being "ashamed", there's a shit ton of people that truly are ashamed to be black. Who want to tell you how they can't stand rap music and don't act like "other" black people. They only date white people because a black person is "never interested in the same things they are." These are the ones in denial that they write off an entire race of their own people as unacceptable. they perm the kink out on purpose, dye it and fry it so you can just once, if they're lucky, ask them "are you mixed with something?" those few are the ones that should (if you have to say something) get told about themselves. THAT'S self-hate.