The next motherfucker I hear call mixed hair "good hair" I'm gonna fuck up.
Rant over.

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The next motherfucker I hear call mixed hair "good hair" I'm gonna fuck up.
Rant over.
I’m really enjoying this ‘fro before locking it up in braids this weekend♥
Societal discomfort...relaxers as an appeasement to society
Disclaimer: Please do not think that I am implying that every woman with a relaxer is trying to please someone else and/or has issues with personal expression. This is purely my experience, and it cannot be taken away or lessened.
As an adult I now know that, during my childhood, the only true reason I wanted a relaxer was to (a) Look like the girls in my classes who bragged about their flowing tresses, or (b) look like the black female celebrities I saw on TV. During my childhood there were very few representations of black women with natural hair--both in the media and in our communities. It was deemed as childish, unprofessional, and just plain not attractive.
To summarize my story, I didn’t get my first relaxer until I was 13 (quite old in my culture). At the age of 13, I was beginning high school, while most girls got their first perms in grades 3 or 4. I remember as child those little girls with the same kinky textures as mine (but masked and stretched through the relaxer process), badgering me to get a perm. I remember my mother saying my head was too young for those chemicals, and that I was beautiful either way. Despite being “beautiful either way,” my mother satiated my desire for a perm through weekly straightening (gosh, that hot comb, hot grease, and ear burns—brings back memories, anyone?). Even straightening combs didn’t give me the bone straight hair I saw on my classmates. Plus it was quite damaging, thinking back on it. Regardless, I was never happy with my hair.
When I finally got my first perm, I thought the sun had finally come out. I thought it would be easy—now my hair is straight, thus it’ll be pretty. And it was pretty and full—for a while…until it was damaged and began to drop. My mother styled my hair in transition styles and the last year and a half of high school was spent with my hair in braids and/or kinky twists. It wasn’t until the morning of graduation that I saw no “presentable” way to fix my kinky hair, so back to the creamy crack I returned. I had a nice relaxed bob for graduation, and a cute up-do for prom. Started college with the same relaxed hair (that had actually grown!), and it continued to thrive until a horrible experience at a Dominican hair salon that left my hair irreparably damaged. There was nothing left to do, but to go natural again. I went natural for about 18 months with braids and twists, and then I decided to cut off my new growth. I had a sizeable afro, but my father, oldest brother and boyfriend (at the time) told me that the afro was “ugly” on me (their words, not mine folks), and so, unsurprisingly, I returned to the creamy crack in less than a month.
Do you see a trend folks? Each time I returned to relaxers, it was on the prompting of others—first my classmates, then society/culture telling me that you need a relaxed style to look presentable for such occasions as proms and graduations, and then my brother, father and boyfriend—essentially the most important men in my life—telling me that it lessened my attractiveness. What I’m trying to say, is the desire for a relaxer was never about personal expression for me, it was about making other people comfortable with my appearance.
It wasn’t until after I broke up with said boyfriend and went through numerous life experiences and travels that I realized that I am me! I don’t need to do things to make people feel comfortable with my existence and presence! Either deal with it, or lose it! I chopped off my hair, cried, and that was that. Dealt with my dad and brother, and to each their own. I still struggle with self-esteem daily, but I have promised myself that if I ever returned to a relaxed way of life, it will be on my own accord and not to appease or satiate anyone. Which makes me truly doubt if I will ever return to relaxers.
You know what?
As much rage as I feel about this, I know that this is true for some poor young Black woman out there.
Because let’s be fucking real, with all the anti-Blackness out here, who hasn’t felt like the only way to be is to be light skinned?
I know I have.
I even fuckin bleached my skin when I was younger because I thought being lighter would get me better things in life.
I felt ignored and unattractive because I was the ‘too dark to be considered anything else other than Black’ Black girl.
And the Black community has HARDLY done anything about this bullshit.
Because we still ain’t past the “it’s just my PREFERENCE that I consistently shit on dark skinned Black girls and revere light bright and damn near white women!!!!” bullshit.
We have yet to have ANY sort of major media put the darker skinned woman on the status that she should be.
So you know what, THIS IS A BLACK GIRL PROBLEM.
And Black folks, we done failed BIG TIME on making this a priority.
^^^^
^^^^^
And I'll include in this the craze over softer-textured hair. While I am what most black people consider "light-skinned" (especially among my family), I have the nappiest of the nappiest hair, and I get a lot of shade about it from black men. If I hear another black DARK SKINNED NAPPY-HEADED male rapper (and men on my Facebook) say "I want a long-haired thick red-bone," I will personally come to their doorstep to give them SEVERAL seats.
Anyone know any good youtube-ers for nappy hair? (I guess it's called 4c/z whatever)
By 4c, I mean the thickest of the thick, coil-iest of the coil-iest (NOT curly), very dry hair. I feel like everyone on youtube has a much softer, less kinky hair texture than I do and I can't figure this out. I also have HUGE moisture problems (no matter what I use, once my hair dries its dryer than the Sahara desert--not attractive), so if you know any good youtube pages (or webpages) on how to deal with that, please drop a line under this post or in my inbox!
-Thanks!
In the mood for questions...
Questions, anyone??
Struggling with that "beauty" thing...hair-typing and hair angst
Hey y'all.
I'm having quite a week. You ever have those weeks where you just don't feel pretty? Well, for me, sadly, my "feeling pretty" is usually wrapped up, some way or another, in my hair.
I'm having one of those weeks. One of those weeks where I am *yet again* spending too much time looking at the curly fro's on women whose textures aren't like mine, and still feeling "less than."
As much as I day by day learn to love what God gave me more and more, there is still that gnawing in the back of my brain that comes around at the most CONVENIENT times: "Why don't nobody like your hair texture?" Why is it that people praise going natural and "being real," but the bulk of natural hair videos geared towards coarser-textured-women like myself focus on "defining the curl pattern" and/or products that will "create curl."
Why are we all wrapped up in hair typing? I find the whole 3/4/c/d/e/Z foolishness to just be miserable--because the natural order of racial hatred is to rate "type 3" hair better than "type 4" hair and so on.
But, most importantly, why can't this loud, proud, "sassy" black woman feel PROUD of her coarse, "nappy" hair ALL of the time, instead of just SOME of the time?!?!?
Carmen (via Photo: Carmen @ 10 months natural | Introducing.. My Beautiful Sisters (my babies) album | India-Shuanta | Fotki.com, photo and video sharing made easy.)
Gorgeous!
I just wanted to say that I love your blog and I enjoyed reading your point of view on the republicans mourning. :)
Thank you! It took me a while to formulate it...but I based it solely on my own observations. Glad you enjoyed!
Republicans...what exactly are you mourning?
I'm writing this post as an outsider in America--by outsider, I am referring to the fact that I am a foreign student that has been living here for nearly four years and has made many observations.
Something can be said about objectivity. As an outsider, I would dare to assert that I am more objective that someone who is American, has been living here their whole life, and can perhaps even trace ancestral roots further back--whether it be to slavery in America to OWNING slaves in America. But I digress.
Nonetheless, with the recent brouhaha (and for most, celebration) over Obama's win, I have seen numerous melodramatic facebook statuses, notes, and tweets from republican supporters lamenting the President's second victory. Some of the "mourning" was seen through posted photos of upside-down flags, asserting that November 6th was the day America "died" (their words, not mine), calling Obama a muslim despot, proposing that they will "move to Australia or England" (which I find humorous, since the UK has tax-funded socialized medicine, and Australia has an atheist female governing with socialized medicine and gun-bans...butttttt again I digress).
Either way, it seems pretty evident that republicans are ANGRY. But, I dared to comment on the post of a good friend and asked, "What is it you are mourning?"
"America has died!"
"...How? What died? What's changed from the old America? Because isn't that what you are mourning?"
"Our values, our rights--everything our forefathers stood for is dying! We are killing it!'
...Oh?
I won't take forever to go over basic American history, but I will say this--I will make a devastatingly drastic assertion, but one that I stand by.
Republicans are mourning the death of a white-dominated America.
The reason that republicans are so in mourning, even more so than ever, is because the typical republican is any combination of the following factors: White, evangelical Christian, rich, racist, homophobic, sexist. Even further, the typical republican candidate pans to any or all combinations of those factors as well. And this election demonstrated that America is having NONE of that.
Thus, republicans aren’t just mourning, they are scared.
The fact that a campaign based on a combination of those factors did not appeal to the majority of Americans is terrifying to a white Republican majority (soon to be minority). Just look at the statistics: over 90% of blacks, over 70% of Latinos, and over 70% of Asians voted for President Obama. That isn’t a fluke—that is a sizeable portion. Yes, you can argue that many blacks voted Obama due to race, but I believe those persons are more than canceled out by whites who voted Romney just because he was white. So that is irrelevant. The point is, when you look at the major ethnic, non-white groups in America—they supported Obama almost unanimously. They helped to carry this election. And that, to the typical white, Christian republican, is terrifying.
And of course, because whites are still the majority, you can’t win an election without ‘em! So Obama also got white voters too—signifying that there are also white people who don’t co-sign the racist, separatist mess the Republican Party puts forward. Oh, the horror!
Obama also gained the majority of the woman’s vote, even if it was slight. No, republicans, the Christian ideology that “being raped is God’s will” apparently wasn’t received too warmly by the American female populace. I don’t have a statistic on the LGBTQ vote—but I can comfortably assert that Obama probably carried that group as well. Things such as endorsement of gay marriage and the repeal of a military ban on gays has a way of making the average LGBTQ person favour the democratic side.
Obama has been president for the past 4 years—and America didn’t implode. To presume that it will in another 4 years is ridiculous. So if you, a republican, are mourning the death of America, then it can’t be the death of physical America…no! It is the death of the America you prefer—the America in which your constitution was written by men that owned slaves…the America that was built upon the backs slavery, Native American destruction, and persecution (both social and physical) of minority groups for the advancement of the white populace.
The reason why you want things to go back to the way it was, is because that’s what you preferred! An America dominated by whites…you don’t want to see this changing racial and ethnic landscape in which whites are quickly becoming the minority. To you, that is not America.
And a movement towards that, by extension, signifies the loss of America.
I always give a side-eye when a white person says about me and a white guy, "You guys would make such pretty babies!!"
Like dude, so if I had some purely black babies they wouldn't be as pretty? Hmmmm
Currently reading posts under the tag "#White privilege"...and getting even angrier.
"White people deserve white privilege"...I'm not making this up.
I was going to write today about whether or not I'd allow my future daughter to perm her hair (as a child). However, a statement made by White Love Interest (or former love interest, at this point) completely changed the nature of what I want to post. We were generally talking politics (he's a conservative democrat, I'm not really anything because I'm not American, but if I was I'd be a moderate democrat). Somehow we got into a humorous discussion about whether or not men or women are better, and what we feel about gender privilege in today's American society. I was leaning on the edge of, yes, women are less fairly compensated than men, while he was more towards the side where, while he acknowledged that men make more money, he felt it was because they had a working advantage (not having the risk of pregnancy, etc). Then, at one point, he said, "It's like how people always complain about white people, and how they have instant privilege because of history. My opinion is they managed to conquer all those other races in the first place, so they essentially deserve that privilege."
I'm honestly not making this up. When he said it...I was so in shock, I literally felt like I had the wind knocked out of me. He literally said this to me, this black girl with an afro. And, even now, this usually robust, argumentative black girl with an afro is breathless and I still have no words.
I feel once I have more time to process this (as in, more time than an hour, since this literally just happened like an hour ago), I'll be able to write more about it. But right now, I'm going to just remain shell-shocked.
If my daughter took care of her hair, she could do whatever she wanted with it. It's not my head, I can't force her :)
I've fought with this question! As much as I wish now that my mother had never allowed me to get the perm I so desired (as she did with other things I wanted but she thought weren't "best" for me), I also know the mind of a young girl and the desire for independence and self-expression. My worry for my future daughter is that she'll feel like she needs to perm her hair in order to fit into the mold, as many young girls do. Being a parent is a such a task...
Guys, would you allow your daughter or future daughter to relax her hair?
Submit to me please?
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