Since I seem bent on wasting this entire day with productive procrastination, why not discuss a topic that is important but nowhere near pressing? Yes! Onward!
I'm not sure that this post applies to most of the people who read this blog. Why? It's about black hair.
I'm half black (SURPRISE!!), and I've always felt this most keenly when it comes to my hair. I've always felt mostly alone in my unending struggle against my hair. And if this sounds trivial to you, well, I envy you the ease of having your hair be something trivial. For me it's the one thing about me that can't be dealt with easily or in small steps, and it has plagued me my entire life. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother attempting to comb my hair as I screamed. Over the course of my short life I have tried, literally, everything to manage my hair - braids of all types, chemical straighteners, oils and styling products, dredlocks, even just going totally afro-natural and trying to own it. I have shaved my hair off completely and grown it back out again. And no matter what, I am always defeated by the sheer mass, the utter intractability of my hair. This last year I have resorted to the most boring of braids so that for once I just didn't have to think about it, but the truth is that I sort of hate braids. Getting them put in hurts and getting them taken out hurts, and both steps take hours, and nice braids are heavy but getting cornrows makes me look very much like my little brother. I have always dreamed of having a hair appointment that wasn't full of pain and ibuprofen. I am lucky in that my mother raised me to not feel like permanently relaxed hair was the ideal; I really like natural black hair because I think it is unique and can be gorgeous if you do it right. I just have a low success rate when it comes to translating that to my hair, which has the kinks of black hair and the coarse heaviness of Colombian hair.
(Note: For all that I am a big proponent of girls shaving their heads at least once during their lives for the experience, I would still rather have hair than have no hair. I accept that I was raised in a culture where short hair is more masculine and long hair is more feminine, and I'm not really trying to fight that particular battle. It's just that functionality is more important to me than looking nice. That is why I have shaved my head in the past and why I loved it: my hair drove me to it. And it may again. The freedom was amazing, and that was almost all I cared about.)
It's not just that I spend a lot of time and stress on my hair, it's that I spend SO MUCH MONEY on it as well. I am a very low-maintenance person, and even I spend easily $100 per appointment.
(Note #2: And let's be clear about these appointments. I spend money in order to make my hair manageable, not prettier. I am not talking about going to the salon to make otherwise perfectly fine hair a different colour, or curlier, or whatever. I am talking about making impossible hair usable.)
And now that I have semi-regular obligations that require me to look like a polished adult rather than a scruffy student, my choices have been getting more and more expensive. Some black women spend $100 every few weeks in order to maintain very clean, professional styles (or bloody ridiculous ones, but whatever). All that time and stress and money - where is it going? Someone is making an outrageous profit off of all of this.
This article is related to what I'm talking about. It talks about how messed up the black hair care industry is, how irritatingly fringe it is, and how black women constantly misspend their money. I like it because it is well-written and solidly thought out, and mirrors the same trends of responsible consumerism that have been appearing in more mainstream culture. I appreciate that.
...And we shall see if the $60 worth of products I bought from their site make it possible for me to actually stop getting my $%#& hair braided all the $%#& time. If I could just have curls! Curls that I could comb sometimes! Curls that respond to gravity! Curls that I could wash and maybe put up in a ponytail! CURLS ARE WHAT I WANT.
Hahaha... I really liked this post. My black friend has been educating me over the years about black culture (something that an Asian chick wouldn't know anything about), and hair is a big issue. Personally, I LOVED your dreadlocks when you had them, although I could see why professional standards of dress might not allow that. I also LOVED it when you had your hair natural, too. I think that suits you great.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that you have to battle your hair! Best of luck figuring that out.