So, it’s definitely been a minute now and I’m about halfway into my senior year of high school (yay!), and things have been piling up on my plate, but it’s a couple days before Turkey Day (yum!) and while I am on my mini-break, I thought I’d post, so expect some more during this week. Anyhow, on with the topic of the day, natural hair. I had never intended to be sitting here typing out a post on this subject, but a new thought dawned on me a few weeks ago and I’ve been enthralled with it ever since, all the while wondering why it had never hit me before. I was laying in bed late one night and was watching a Youtube video entitled “Relaxers and Weave” by one of my favorite truth-telling Youtubers. Anyways, as he was talking about the women who wear their hair relaxed and in weaves and whatnot, I couldn’t help but to reflect on my own hair experiences, which I can admit, are not very extensive. Let’s take a blast to the past, shall we?
It’s beautiful, why do we hate it?
I can remember some things about my hair, but the one thing that always stood out for me from my younger elementary school days was that I hated my hair. Now you may be wondering, why does a small carefree child of 7 or 8 hate their hair. Well for me, it was a matter of what other people in my class would say about it. They said it was short and I always wore it the same way and that doing that, made me look plain and ugly. It hurt my little feelings and I went home to my mother and told her about it. She saw my point of view and at once got me over to the salon. It wouldn’t be until much later I realized my mother’s reasons as to why she wanted my hair to be straight. When she finally did tell me she said she had been doing my hair up until the point I relaxed it and she was tired of dealing with it. I can remember sitting in the salon chair as my stylist looked at my hair, she said, “This child don’t need a relaxer, it’s fine just the way it is. She has good hair”. Then she looked down at me and asked, “Are you sure you want to do this because if you ever decide to grow it out, you’ll have to cut it all off.” Being eight years old at the time and having that eight year old tunnel vision and the need of instant gratification, I nodded and so the lye began…
If you don’t know already, the Black Hair-care business is a steady money making business. Black women are known (stereotypically sometimes) to spend more than 200 dollars on their hair for various services to be done to it, i.e weaves (which include but are not limited to: sew ins, glue-ins, clip-in hair extensions, micro-braiding, lace extensions, tree braids, etc), relaxers aka straight perms/creamy crack, color treating, press and curls, lace-front wigs, the list goes on and on and women will pay through the nose to get their hair done, even if bills are going unpaid… In these posts mainly I will talk about relaxers in comparison to natural simply because that’s all I’ve ever had to deal with.
Dark and Lovely, eh…?
For the last about ten years, I have been going to the salon every two weeks and relaxing my hair every 2-3 months, burning my scalp with harsh chemicals. But why? Simply because straight hair was what I was used to. At the sight of ¼ inch of my “nappy” roots and in that chair I’d be. Yeah, it’s definitely called “creamy crack” for that very reason, once you start, you get addicted without even knowing it. I cannot tell ya’ll how much money has been spent in these last ten years… (let’s see: 26 weeks times $120… Times 10 years…) $31,200 is about how much collectively has been spent in my relaxed years, just on hair. Now imagine what that number would be for a woman who had been relaxed since she was 2 or 3 and continue to relax all her life (yes, it happens). Business sure is booming… (‘_’)
$$$$$$$$$$$$$…
Natural Hair Post #2 Coming Soon!
Tae.
A Girl Named Tae. 