We Got Mad (Hair) Issues

Recently it occurred to me that I've been that I've been fairly silent on a topic about which I'm fairly passionate and that has considerable significance to Black love - Black hair. Or more specifically, our personal and cultural hang-ups about Black hair. Maybe my silence has to do with its potential explosiveness. Conversations about Black hair tend to devolve into a sort of war between two nations - those who wear their hair relaxed and those who wear it natural. It's a touchy topic. But fully loving ourselves also means loving our hair in its natural form.

That's an assertion that usually rubs relaxed heads the wrong way. Keep in mind that I don't think it's wrong to relax or straighten one's hair. My issue (really our issue) is that the vast majority of Black women have been straightening their hair for so long that we don't actually know what our real hair texture looks like. We are afraid of our natural hair texture. We don't want to see it and we don't want anyone else to see it. So collectively we spend billions of dollars each year on hair care products even though we are among the poorest group of people in the United States.

Imagine if every Black girlchild, around the age of 8 or 9, went to a plastic surgeon and had her skin lightened because she lived in a country in which light skin was considered beautiful and brought considerable advantages in terms of education, income, and marriage (Oh wait, it does.). And then for the rest of her life she avoided the sun and went back for regular "touch-ups" every six weeks to ensure that her skin stayed light. I suppose we could argue that doing such a thing has nothing to do with race-based beauty ideals. But we'd be lying to ourselves. The good news, though, is that it will be easier to lie to ourselves after several generations of Black women and girls have been doing it. Then we can pretend that it's just the way that things are done.

It's hard for a person to admit that she doesn't fully love and accept herself. It was hard for me. It still is. I've been natural for nearly 13 years now, after what seemed like a lifetime of conscious and unconscious hair self-hatred. Now, I'm working on getting over my body self-hatred (Seriously, do these two skinnies need to be sitting across from me eating cake while I sip on a skinny, sugar free, decaf misto?).

Whenever the conversation turns to natural hair, women with relaxed hair get defensive. Do me a favor and relax your defenses just long enough to ask yourself these questions (and don't worry - I've got something to say to women with natural hair too):

1. Do you know what your natural hair texture looks like? Most black women don't. At the slightest sign of kinks, we rush to the salon for a new application of the creamy crack. How can you claim to love you if you don't know what you looks like?
2. Do you know how to take care of your natural hair? That is, do you know how to style it, moisturize it, keep it healthy? Only in the past 10 years have natural hair care products become widely available. That's amazing in itself considering that beauty salons and beauty supply stores are among the businesses most likely to be found in Black neighborhoods. Of course, the irony is that most of these stores devote much of their floor space to selling hair - Malaysian, Indian, Asian, and European hair - to Black women. Apparently, relaxers are no longer strong enough to tame those natural kinks, coils, and curls. We've just resorted to wearing other people's hair.
3. Do you feel just as beautiful with natural hair as you do with relaxed hair? You should. After all, your natural hair is the hair with which you have been fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. And as the church folk say, God don't make no junk.
4. Can you honestly afford the time and money that it takes to maintain your relaxed hair? This really should be the clincher. If you're putting your hair styles on credit or on layaway (or ignoring other obligations - including tithing - because of your hair), then you can't afford it! Now that's not to say that natural hair doesn't take work; if you want to wear anything other than a closely cropped fro, it's going to take some work. And the learning curve is steep in the first few months if you're learning how to take care of your own hair for the first time in your adult life. But overall, I've found it to be much less time consuming and costly.
5. Does your hair want to be relaxed? Not all Black hair is the same. Some people's hair does well with relaxers. But many of us have hair that just doesn't want to be fried, dyed, or laid to the side. For years I struggled to find the right relaxers and styling products that would make my hair stay straight for more than a few weeks (seriously, I once walked into a new stylist for a wash n' set and she told me I needed a touch-up. My response: "I just had one last week."). I finally realized that my hair was rebelling against the chemicals. It didn't stay straight because it wasn't meant to be straight.

I don't expect women to go out in droves and do the big chop. I just want us to be honest with ourselves about the reasons that Black women are the only group of people in the world who talk about wearing our hair in its "natural" state as if it's an abnormality. We have hair issues just like we have skin color issues.

By the way, for the naturalistas among us who have been reading this with a self-righteous smile on our faces, we have hair issues too. Many of us have made an idol out of natural hair. We act as though wearing our hair naturally automatically elevates us to a higher spiritual and emotional plane than our relaxed sisters. Please! Now, it's true that for many of us - including myself - the decision to go natural is part of a spiritual journey (I'll post another article about that shortly). But for a lot of folks, it's just a hairstyle, plain and simple. It doesn't denote self-love or the lack thereof; it's not a symbol of spiritual growth or political sensibilities. They do it because its convenient or in style. Sometimes they do it because they're flat broke and can't afford anything else.

So let's talk about hair. But let's drop the defensiveness, self-righteousness, and all the other stuff that impedes healthy, community-building dialogue. We've got enough issues without it.