Being in a country that limits my access to hair dressers with experience and products for Nappy hair is not a novelty for me. I have lived in India for over 3 years and most of that time I couldn't regularly relax my hair as often as I would have wanted to. Sometimes I would go over 6 months waiting for a holiday home to care for my hair professionally. So why did I not do it back then under the same climate? Why now?
Firstly I would say because Indians are extremely hair oriented. Long flowing hair is too much of a societal obsession in my beliefs.Fair skin and long silky hair is the epitome of female beauty with your everyday Indian. Watching any television channel for more than an hour, the number of adverts for skin whitening products and how to get longer and flowing hair advertisements is beyond blinding and deafening!
I remember once I had worn a head scarf tied up like the Rastafarian women regularly do ( a style I personally find very sexy I might add) and had to spend half of my morning in university explaining WHY I had worn the scarf... If something bad had happened to my hair? Why did I want to cover my hair if I wasn't a Muslim? To be fair, I was just tired of combing my hair, after a few months my natural hair texture was like a helmet of an afro puff , the relaxed longer portion was too tangled and limp to actually do much with and I could not be bothered to try!
Secondly and much more poignantly; it would be because already with relaxed/straightened hair I had too many Indians touching my head without permission. I would be sitting in clinical posting and suddenly have the weird sensation of having something in my hair. I would try to swat whatever it was away and end up slapping an Indians hand away!!! Apparently they were curious to see if it was real (yes some of them believe that any black person with long hair must be wearing a wig or a weave) or they simply wanted to see what it felt like . Some were polite enough to ask if they could touch after bombarding me with their weird questions.I was once even accused of trying to deceive them about wearing a wig when I once had my hair blow dried and pressed for a party... obviously halfway through the night with the dancing and sweating my hair puffed up and shrank in length ( something my fellow nappy hair comrades have surely experienced)
So imagine what I would have had to put up with if at one of those times I had actually to cut off the relaxed parts and sport my nappy afro!
But why opt to switch from easily managed, permanently straightened, flat hair to the very difficult to comb on a daily basis, space occupying, gravity defying kinky coils at all?
Any hairdresser or styler who has regularly seen chemically straightened hair will vouched to the damaging effecs it has on the hair. Putting aside the perceived aesthetic attributes, chemical straightening creams in essence dehydrates your hair.Afro-textured hair do not have a specific name but a range of slangs exist with the most common being Nappy hair and Kinky Hair. But whatever the name the hair type is already the driest of all hair types. That is why our hair products are usually more oily and hydrating in texture.And why shampooing too often is not a healthy practice for us.
So yes, already being the driest, we go ahead and strip it of most of its remaining moisture by using chemical straightening cream! Leaving our hair more brittle , which is what I grew tired of seeing! Women torturing their hair to acquire a flatter and straighter hair at the cost of seriously damaging their hair and losing most of it. Having people come to me to braid cornrows and have their hair break when I hold it, that consequently breaks my heart because many are doing it to allow their hair to get a time off from the daily trauma and grow healthier!
The last time I was at a hairdresser back in Seychelles, an elderly lady showed up with her hair missing in patches. She had actually come for another straightening of whatever was remaining on her scalp. She explained that her hair broke when another hairdresser had been colouring her hair ( another experience many of us have gone through I am sure). But my question was why not cut off the few limb patches and grow everything back with your natural texture? Would that really seem worse than tugging on those sparse patches into the saddest version of a donkey (not a pony in any universe) tail?
Having my own hair shed from simply passing the comb through the straight strands was puzzling.I religiously hydrated my hair with Almond, Carrot and Olive oil products, even my relaxing cream had a moisturising oil addition. What was making my hair so brittle?
I now spend at least 10-15 mins to detangle my hair (which is what tires my arms, primarily from having those mini hand wrestling matches against my hair and its love to be tangle up) Even using a fine tooth comb, there is barely much hair breaking or shedding. My hair is healthier!! So Mission No.1accomplished
Firstly I would say because Indians are extremely hair oriented. Long flowing hair is too much of a societal obsession in my beliefs.Fair skin and long silky hair is the epitome of female beauty with your everyday Indian. Watching any television channel for more than an hour, the number of adverts for skin whitening products and how to get longer and flowing hair advertisements is beyond blinding and deafening!
I remember once I had worn a head scarf tied up like the Rastafarian women regularly do ( a style I personally find very sexy I might add) and had to spend half of my morning in university explaining WHY I had worn the scarf... If something bad had happened to my hair? Why did I want to cover my hair if I wasn't a Muslim? To be fair, I was just tired of combing my hair, after a few months my natural hair texture was like a helmet of an afro puff , the relaxed longer portion was too tangled and limp to actually do much with and I could not be bothered to try!
Secondly and much more poignantly; it would be because already with relaxed/straightened hair I had too many Indians touching my head without permission. I would be sitting in clinical posting and suddenly have the weird sensation of having something in my hair. I would try to swat whatever it was away and end up slapping an Indians hand away!!! Apparently they were curious to see if it was real (yes some of them believe that any black person with long hair must be wearing a wig or a weave) or they simply wanted to see what it felt like . Some were polite enough to ask if they could touch after bombarding me with their weird questions.I was once even accused of trying to deceive them about wearing a wig when I once had my hair blow dried and pressed for a party... obviously halfway through the night with the dancing and sweating my hair puffed up and shrank in length ( something my fellow nappy hair comrades have surely experienced)
So imagine what I would have had to put up with if at one of those times I had actually to cut off the relaxed parts and sport my nappy afro!
But why opt to switch from easily managed, permanently straightened, flat hair to the very difficult to comb on a daily basis, space occupying, gravity defying kinky coils at all?
Any hairdresser or styler who has regularly seen chemically straightened hair will vouched to the damaging effecs it has on the hair. Putting aside the perceived aesthetic attributes, chemical straightening creams in essence dehydrates your hair.Afro-textured hair do not have a specific name but a range of slangs exist with the most common being Nappy hair and Kinky Hair. But whatever the name the hair type is already the driest of all hair types. That is why our hair products are usually more oily and hydrating in texture.And why shampooing too often is not a healthy practice for us.
So yes, already being the driest, we go ahead and strip it of most of its remaining moisture by using chemical straightening cream! Leaving our hair more brittle , which is what I grew tired of seeing! Women torturing their hair to acquire a flatter and straighter hair at the cost of seriously damaging their hair and losing most of it. Having people come to me to braid cornrows and have their hair break when I hold it, that consequently breaks my heart because many are doing it to allow their hair to get a time off from the daily trauma and grow healthier!
The last time I was at a hairdresser back in Seychelles, an elderly lady showed up with her hair missing in patches. She had actually come for another straightening of whatever was remaining on her scalp. She explained that her hair broke when another hairdresser had been colouring her hair ( another experience many of us have gone through I am sure). But my question was why not cut off the few limb patches and grow everything back with your natural texture? Would that really seem worse than tugging on those sparse patches into the saddest version of a donkey (not a pony in any universe) tail?
Having my own hair shed from simply passing the comb through the straight strands was puzzling.I religiously hydrated my hair with Almond, Carrot and Olive oil products, even my relaxing cream had a moisturising oil addition. What was making my hair so brittle?
I now spend at least 10-15 mins to detangle my hair (which is what tires my arms, primarily from having those mini hand wrestling matches against my hair and its love to be tangle up) Even using a fine tooth comb, there is barely much hair breaking or shedding. My hair is healthier!! So Mission No.1accomplished
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