Before, After, & In Between

In May 2004, I shipped Shorty off to live with his father for a year in hopes that they'd both realize that the previous living situation (me struggling as a single mom with little financial help from a distant baby daddy) wasn't as easy as each of them thought it was. It afforded me an opportunity to save some money and have just enough left over to start taking care of my hair again (I'd quickly dropped professional hair appointments so I could get out of consumer debt & buy a home). I then proceeded to spend a year getting braided extensions put in until I could grow out enough of my relaxer to feel comfortable wearing it natural. It didn't hurt that I looked super fine with the long, flowing hair, especially the set I had when I went to Norway to visit the Norwegian who eventually broke my heart. But that wasn't enough to make me take them out. Katrina was wear the damage really started.

After the storm, there was no one to care for natural hair, let alone do extensions, & I refused to let a natural disaster force me back into the box (the relaxer box, that is). I wouldn't let go of my freedom of choice (straight or natural), and with the stress of the storm plus the weight of the overworn extensions, my hair started falling out at the hairline. I eventually got a friend to put in a really bad weave until my birthday (aka, going back to natural release day) rolled around. The Tuesday prior to me turning 31 was when I nearly lost it.

That afternoon, I went to "my boyfriend from college's" Katrina ravaged home with him. It was the first time he'd been there, and I accompanied him through the process of seeing the devastation. His house had been sitting in flood waters for 4 weeks, and the smell was...unbelievable. Once I got home that night, all I wanted to do was shower and get all of the memories out of my mind, as much as I could. I wanted the smell off me and that meant the weave had to go. In a fit of frustration, Iliterally took a fistful of hair from the back of my head into one hand and hacked it off with the scissors in the other. In one fell swoop, I relieved myself in some small way of the rejection I'd felt from the Norwegian, & cleansed a little of the misery I felt from Katrina. I brazenly went to work the next day with my afro-puff in full effect. I just didn't care anymore what people thought of my hair. Having been through what I'd been through, I felt I deserved to wear it natural...raw really...which was how I was feeling.
Little did I know that just one year later, my hair would be longer but so far from where I want to be with my hair goals.

I know some people might chuckle at the thought of someone having hair goals, but as a black woman in America who's just spent the last year wearing an afro-puff, I'm well aware of the subconcious changes in perception natural hair evokes in people's minds. I had my hair straightened last weekend, so I could have the remainder of the damaged ends cut off, symbolically releasing myself of the residual pain of those trying experiences. I went to work this past Monday & the response was almost overwhelming.

My very white male boss (he's a 6"4, 200 plus lb sterotypical man from Idaho) was passing by my office and had to back track to do a double take. He came back & stood in my doorway for a second & then said with an approving smile, "That's a nice change!" and kept walking. I said loudly from behind my desk, "It's temporary!" I received numerous similar comments throughout the day, all from white men. Needless to say it pissed me off, but I held my tongue with thoughts of these musings on my mind, ideas I'm sure that many sisters in my position have pondered when on the receiving end of such subtly racist compliments:

Whitey: "So, she refused to chemically alter her hair to make it closer to what I'm used to. What's she trying to prove here? She knows she's making me uneasy with her natural hair...must be one of those angry ones."

~I love how you've exposed your chronic White-American frame of thought: white people act as individuals, and black people act as samples of a race.~

~You must come to realize that a perception is not reason enough to categorize people, and because there are other people that share your thought process does not make it reasonable or valid.~

~I have had my hair cut off (1 cm.), braids down to my ass, mircos, cornrows, bad-dye-jub-must-cut-and-start-over and now I'm back to the perm! I just like to change my look!~

~Black women go natural for many reasons.~

~You know we black women must be some exceptionally powerful people the way we just instill fear and all sorts of other foolishness in people by our HAIR STYLES! When are people going to get a clue once and for all and realize we have different textures and different styles. It pisses me off that white women don't get questioned about wearing their hair natural, but black women have to waste time explaining things. Leave our hair alone!~

~I went to an HBCU where hair was a mixture of politics, trends and maybe even sheer laziness (hehehehe). It is such an intensely personal matter that is punted around so publicly and wears me out. At athat point, I decided to [try to de-politicize my own mind].~

~The question is, why are we the only women who are looked down upon for wearing what God gave us???~

~Living naturally does mean that we will not put ourselves in physical or financial harm just to look contrary to our original creation and that we will refrain from denouncing those who do not have the desire to succumb to modern-day peer pressures of America's distorted and oftentimes contradictory definition of what's in and what's out as it relates to being beautiful.~

What none of those men know is I'm in between deciding whether pressing my natural hair straight is worth the superficial acceptance I get from people I don't respect any way just to ease my movement towards my purpose in life. I haven't decided yet, but I'm holding on to my not so straight roots until God tells me to do otherwise.