(Photo taken New Years Day 2008)
I am a woman who notices parallels.
I notice them whenever they occur and in the last year or so I have stumbled quite by accident on an amazing parallel in my life. It is the parallel between coming to terms with my hair and coming to terms with myself.
Coming of age as a black woman is much like coming of age for anyone -- wrought with twists and turns that with hindsight seem inconcievably trite but while traveling through appeared to be if not insurmountable, an awfully long row to hoe. Self-esteem, so essential to this coming of age proces is a tricky thing. Ultimately, it is controlled by self but until one realizes this fact, most allow others to control self resulting in self-esteem being anything but controlled by self. The end result is sadly obvious.
In the case of many black girls, much of their self-image is wrapped up in their hair. Whoopie Goldberg alluded to this fact in her amazing stand-up show many years ago when she created the character of the little black girl who desired "long, beautiful, golden, blonde hair". The hallmark of classic comedy is that it provides a mirror of the souls of us. Unfortunately there are no photos available to prove this, but I was born essentially bald headed and with a strand of grey hair. Two years later, I was joined by a sister who in contrast was born with "Shirley Temple" ringlets. As we grew up, my fine strands of hair never grew long or luxurious while hers on the other hand rivaled the length and thickness of Oprah's oft questioned locks. Looking back on pictures from my childhood, I often tease my mother that because I did not have long, luxurious hair like my sister's she didn't exert much energy keeping it neat and that when she did comb it, she put these giant, heavy barrettes on the stubby little ponytails to make them move when I moved. Yes, you guessed it, I was Whoopie's character who dreamed she would one day have long, beautiful, golden, blonde hair.
As the ritual goes, I went through the hair rites of passage of most black girls. Press and curls from about five years of age onward, thinned already fine hair. I loved these press and curls, because they made my hair smooth and now I could have curls and bangs. I was getting closer to realizing my dream. Thirteen brought my mother's approval for a perm which moved my cause even further along as I continued my quest for
long, beautiful, golden, blonde hair. Somewhere in the middle of all this, things started to
really get warped.
All of the hoops I was jumping through to realize my quest came with added responsibility. Press and curls dictated a maniacal avoidance of the summer sun and water that I loved dearly being a water-baby born under the sign of the fish. Perms required a major investment of time and money and a life spent at the mercy of beauticians who had little if any respect for my time or money. In my quest for long, beautiful, golden, blonde hair I had found that I was becoming someone other than who I wanted to be.
Going from bad to worse, enter
BOYS! A girl and now a woman who has a craving for the brothas exclusively, I was willing to have my physical appearance somewhat dictated by what those beautiful black boys and later men, found attractive. Now this was not apparent on the surface as I was a dedicated tomboy and swimmer who projected the image of not giving a damn what anyone thought about her appearance. However, whenever I did change my hair it was never without the thought
"What will the boys think? Will they think this is attractive?". There was never a time when I failed to
"get the guy" that the thought that
"If I had longer hair he would have found me attractive", didn't find its way through my skull in some format.
Next, enter corporate America.
Trying to
get in where I fit in came with problems of its own. Having gotten closer to fulfilling my quest of obtaining
long, beautiful, golden, blonde hair by graduating from the perm to braided extentions left unraveled at the ends and subsequently able to be curled, I now wondered as I prepared to interview whether or not they would be considered acceptable in the lily-white corridors of corporate America. Adopting a better-safe-than-sorry attitude as I tried to secure a baller job that would ultimately deliver a key to the Vice President's bathroom, I removed my extensions and opted for a more commonplace and conservative version of my previous perms.
Worse however was not as bad as it could get as weaves exploded on the scene. "Wait a minute", I thought. "Here is the answer to all of my prayers. I can have long, beautiful, golden, blonde hair if I want. I can. I really, truly can." So I did just that; minus the blonde that is.
It was shortly after this phase began that something happened that changed me. I ended a relationship that had been on-again, off-again for the better part of fifteen years. I was just a few months shy of my 39th birthday. I finally began to see myself for myself for real, perhaps for what was the very first time ever; and I did not see the person I would have expected to see based on what I wanted for me.
I am a woman who is a lover of all things natural. I am at my best when gorging myself on all the texture life holds.
(Bandana photos taken today, February 2, 2008)I am casual, and in my natural state, quite low-maintenance to boot and above all else, I understand that life is short and therefore should be savored. I get that we are each given our own individual blessings and if we take the time to notice, understand, and appreciate them, they will give to us everything they were sent to bring.
Why then, I found myself asking was I going through all of these kniptions with my hair considering that in all the time I had been caring for and making decisions regarding my hair I had never once been satisfied with the result; nor did I ever feel it was representative of me or the image I choose to project.
This was when I first saw the parallel between learning to be at peace with me and learning to be at peace with my hair.
It was the same journey. A journey that required enough life experience to get to know who I am, what I am, who and what I want to be, and what it takes to realize all of those things.
My mother turned my hair over to heat and chemicals before I ever had the chance to become acquainted with it. I pretty much did the same with myself I realized now as I look back and recognize all of the times I tried to be what I thought others wanted me to be instead of choosing for myself who and what I was.
I chose to continue that pattern until those processes controlled my locks and my life for the better of thirty-five years. Now, I have chosen to eliminate these elements from my haircare regimen and also from my life. It is ironic to see the amazing growth spurt my hair is undergoing now after all the years of hearing how my hair was too fine, thin, and fragile to grow long and strong like I desired. It is just as amazing to see the change in myself as I become more and more comfortable with and enamored of the woman I am becoming. Since allowing and encouraging my hair and myself to return to our natural states I have been introduced to textures I didn't know it had and freedoms I didn't know existed. At the same time, I have discovered truths and falsehoods about myself that I would have sworn before could not exist inside of me.
So at 42, soon to be 43 I am finally and at long last doing what I do for me. I sometimes hear sistas I respect make comments about the nappiness of my hair; their comments bead up and roll off me like rain off a freshly waxed car. My boss and corporate America are falling in line as I have left them no other choice; the decisions here are mine to make. As for those beautiful brothas I spoke of, many will and have decided to pass on me and the napps and you know what, that's alright with me as I'm quite sure in my own hard-won self-esteem that those particular brothas don't have the strength of character necessary to hang anyway. As India Arie sings so eloquently,
"I AM NOT MY HAIR".
However, now that I have attained HAIR PEACE, I am more me than I ever was before which means now I can allow my self to have HER PEACE.
INDIA ARIE AND I WISH YOU
HAIR PEACE TOO!
(So do you, whatever that may mean ;)
Click HERE for the poetic version of this journey which I have entered into a poetry contest on the amazing blog "Bloggers' Delight...To Write"!!!
After being at war with my hair for more than 40 years, I decided back in December 2007 to start the New Year by rebelling against expectations set for me by folks I know and many I'll never meet (read: society). I decided to cut off the thin, chemically processed, abused hair I had been sporting most of my life and allow myself to discover what my natural hair texture was like. It is important to note that all my life for as far back as I can remember I had been convinced that I had thin, weak hair that was destined not to grow and to break easily. Looking at my siblings (1 sister and 3 brothers) who all share my DNA though not my hair led me to wonder if I was adopted. Confirming that I was not, I was left thinking that just maybe the problem was not my hair itself but instead the damaging things I and others were continuously doing to it. Once my decision to cut it all off and start fresh was made, I found that I felt absolutely liberated by it...a feeling which only grew in intensity over the next several months.
