Last night, I just came across this for the first time on YouTube. Tyra Banks was talking about 'good hair' on her show. Apparently, this episode aired years ago, but I'm just now seeing it.
Don't laugh at me. I don't really watch TV.
It's a five-part show, so there are four other videos with this. She was talking about hair around the time when Chris Rock created that documentary called "Good Hair" (which I need to watch again, by the way). It was an interesting Tyra episode... very informative, inspiring, and sad at the same time.
How many of you have little girls who have gone to school and gotten teased for their hair? Perhaps their hair isn't long enough, or straight enough, or evenshort enough. There was one little girl on the show who was teased because she was black and her hair was too long. Really!? Since when are you ridiculed for having long hair? Oh, I know. Because the other girls in her class are ridiculously jealous of her. Poor thing. She has what most people want and yet she gets handfuls of her hair pulled out at school.
Kids are just so mean.
But what's even more sad is that you can't blame the kids. It's not their faults. It's the parents. However your child acts in school or behind closed doors is a product of what you created. If you are telling your little girl that her hair is ugly and nappy, then she will grow up with low self esteem, tease and bully other girls who have long, straight hair, and when she's old enough, perm her hair relentlessly and burn it all out. A lot of women don't realize that because they've grown up and their mothers possibly did the same thing to them, they are damaging their own daughters as well.
One woman on the show had even started to perm her 3-year old daughter's hair. Three!? Ouch! That's how old my daughter is. I wouldn't even dream of putting such a harsh chemical in her hair, especially at that age. Her hair is still growing in delicately!
I feel sorry for these poor little girls. Their mothers have already taught them that there is such a thing as 'good hair' and 'bad hair', and that if you have 'bad hair', you won't get anywhere in life. That's the negative perception that we all have about our hair. Society will not accept us with our knots and coils. There was an author of a particular book about black hair on the show, talking about why we all have this perception and where it came from. She said that it went all the way back to slavery, when the slave masters had sex with a black woman to get a mixed child, and that child was light skinned with long, wavy hair. That child got opportunities in life that a regular, all black slave child never had. That light skinned child often got a greater chance at life... better food, shelter, clothes, and education. So we've automatically been brainwashed into thinking that if we are lighter and look as much as possible like a white person, we're good. We're on top of the world and we can get the same jobs as a white person. We can fling our hair like a white person. We can be rich like a white person... if only we had good hair.
It's just so sad that a lot of us still have that mentality. It's simply ignorance that we've grown into. We're portraying it to our youth and don't realize it. We have to do better with raising our young girls. I applaud the mothers who have gone natural and allowed their daughters to go natural as well. We should be embracing our culture. I don't mean do anything stupid... run a muck with afros, screaming 'Black Power', bring back the Black Panther party, protest in the streets or anything like that. Just give our youth better self esteem, and that there is no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' hair. If you have some hair at all, you're good. Ask yourself... would you rather be bald instead of having the kinks in your head, and not have the opportunity to wear a wig or a weave over it? I'd rather have something than nothing! Why do you think cancer patients have it so hard in the hair department?
Yes, taking care of our hair is difficult. It is. But that is where we educate ourselves on how to take care of what we were born with so that it becomes easier. This is where some mothers are just plain lazy. Instead of perming the kid's hair, they could braid it or do something less harmful that takes the same amount of time as perming it does. There are so many things to do to a child's hair so that it won't take long to quickly fix in the morning, or even at night. Doing those home perming kits takes about, what... 30 minutes or more for the whole process? In that amount of time, you could have detangled and done a protective style! Oh, and let's not forget the blow drying and the dreaded flat ironing process... that's too much for a little kid to go through. Some mothers are just lazy and lack the knowledge on how to properly care for the child's hair, so they make it as easy as possible... for them, not the child.
This is yet another reason why I am homeschooling my kids, because if either one of my daughters ever come home crying with a chunk of their hair cut off because some jealous brat got trigger-happy with scissors that day, or my son comes home with his rat tail gone, I'm going to go a-wall on somebody's parents.
So parents... let's get our acts together... for the sake of causing more harm to our kids.
(steps off soapbox)
Virgin hair. This is something that I never imagined I'd have. Even though I had what everyone calls "good hair", I didn't actually know or believe that until I stopped perming completely.
I was always infatuated with hair, period. I played with my hair endlessly in high school especially. As a little girl, my hair was just like any other little black girl's hair... except that my hair was long and super thick. In a previous post, I've established the fact that I am not by any means mixed.
I wasn't tender-headed like my sister, thank God, but I didn't always like getting my hair done. I hated the hairstyles that I wore because I thought they were babyish once I'd gotten to middle school. My signature style was mini twists, but they always looked raggedy after a certain time, and I had so much hair that my mother often didn't know what else to do with it. Childhood Years
I wanted my hair straight in high school like everyone else. Of course, we all know what it's like, being an outcast because of your looks. I wasn't allowed to perm my hair until I was 15, probably because my mom did not want me looking too grown, being 13 and starting 9th grade. I don't think she really knew the full dangers of perming, just like every other mother in those days. But I'd made the decision myself, so when I was 15, I got my first perm. I was thrilled. My hair was now straight and flowing like everyone else's, and I was able to comb it much easier instead of struggling and greasing it down, trying to get it to cooperate.
I don't remember exactly if,how, or when my hair went downhill as far as health, because at the time, I didn't know much about hair health, and neither did anyone else around me. I did get trims when I needed them, and I actually did not get perms very often. My mom did know that perming was bad, and if you were going to get one, you needed to do it sparingly, not like the cliche 'every 6 weeks' that women have been traditionally programmed to do. My sister was extremely tender-headed, so my mom had no choice at the time but to perm her hair when she was nine years old. Our hair was already longer than the average, so when it was straight, we were able to see the length better. A lot of people loved my hair, and everyone thought I was mixed. Rawr.
So I wore my hair straight a lot, and gradually started wanting it curly when I went to college. My perm time had gone way down to every six months, literally. I was totally stretching my perms, and I didn't really realize that I was helping my hair. Me, my mom, and my sister had all started stretching our perms, and that was when we realized that we didn't even need the 'creamy crack' at all! Our hair textures didn't even call for it. 2005-2008
So I wore my hair curly mostly through college, creating my own twist outs with permed hair. I obsessed in the mirror every morning with a full length mirror propped up on the door to see the back of my head, trying to get the perfect twist out. I could never get it. My hair was often stringy-like from using the classic pink oil every night. Between my sister and I, we went through that pink stuff like water. I liked the fact that my roots were flat, but I soon realized that they stayed flat enough on their own without a perm. I had almost gone a year without a perm once. 2009 I got married and got pregnant with our honeymoon baby, which is the little hair model of mine that's all over this blog. (LOL!) During my pregnancy, my hair grew even faster than it usually did, of course, because of hormones and vitamins. This is my hair in 2009, after taking out braids. I did not perm my hair the entire time, because I had heard that it isn't good to have those type of chemicals entering your bloodstream during pregnancy.
After I had Syriah, I permed my hair and had it flat ironed. I felt good because I was able to get my hair done right after having a baby and look good again.
But I was really frustrated with my hair. I had a passion for natural/organic things, as well as overall health and fitness, so why was I perming my hair? I didn't even need it. I had gotten tired of sitting for hours and hours at salons, getting burnt when the damn stylist yapped on the phone and left the crap in my head too long, getting burnt from the flat iron of hellfire, and getting little random scabs in my head after all was said and done. My head had this irritating, itchy sensation, and my scalp had become very sensitive. I could hardly touch my scalp without this creepy, prickly feeling. I no longer had the excitement of going to get my hair done. The perm thrill wascompletely gone. Plus, I had been doing my own hair at home forever anyway, and that was working out better than being straight all the time. So by the time I had Syriah in March 2009, my mom, my sister, and I agreed to stop perms completely and rock what God gave us.
Well, of course, you can't just stop perming and then say, oh, my hair will be fine. I'll figure out what to do with it and it'll be alright. No, you've got to do some research! I began to do research things to do while you transition from a perm, and how to manage the new growth. I began to love my hair. I had heard about 'big chops', and I was way too afraid to do that. No way. My hair was about 16-17 inches at this time, and I was not going to lose all my length just like that. I told myself that I would just grow the perm out, so that's what I began to do. 2009-2010
I learned about protective styling, and then I had a new signature hairstyle... twists. I had always been afraid to wear these out of the house because I thought it made me look younger, and I already looked way younger than 21 at the time. But I wore them, anyway. I began to protect my ends, and trim them when needed. I got pregnant again when Syriah was 8 months old, with our son. My hair was healthier then because I was no longer perming, and it grew like a weed. By 2011, I had transitioned for two years, so I decided to begin chopping off the old permed ends. It started in January. I was having a rough period in my life at this time, anyway, and I needed a change. I cut off about two inches around this time, and in three months, I had gotten the courage to whack off literally about 6-8 inches of my hair. My husband was shocked, but he liked the new short look. It was a new me.
No, I didn't cry at all loosing all that hair. I was so ready to get rid of that old dead hair. It was like getting rid of the old me. I had grown tired of the two textures, and it was irritating, seeing the top of my hair nice and lush and thick, and the rest thin, limp, and broken. I felt very proud of myself, and I had a new look. I had to get used to seeing myself with short hair, but it kind of complemented my 'fatter' face at the time. I'd had back to back pregnancies and still had weight that I hadn't lost yet. So my face was still... round. (LOL!) As you can see, my son looked a lot like me as a baby.
I had even cut myself a bang at home for the first time in my life. For my birthday, I had gone to a Dominican hair salon and got it straightened to see how long it was. I originally wanted to ask then to cut it all the same length, but they would have charged more. Suckers. I was already paying 60 bucks just for a wash and flat iron. Ugh. What a rip-off.
The picture of me and my hubby was when I had tried something new with my curly bang... and I didn't like it much. That was our 3rd anniversary. =) 2011
So, that was my big chop. I had cut my hair a little past my ears by that summer and I didn't care. I just wanted my hair to be healthy. I was going through a whole lot in life during this time, and that was another reason why I didn't care how short my hair looked or how many people were astonished. I had transitioned for two years and it was time for the 'big chop'. How much you decide to cut off your own head is always up to you. Big chopping doesn't mean that you have to be bald, unless you truly want to do that.
By September 2011, I was pregnant with our third baby, and my hair started growing like a weed again. This was around the time when our finances had picked up greatly and I was able to begin experimenting with natural products, I was overjoyed. I was tired of not getting the hair results I wanted with my hair as well as both my kids' hair. I bought EVOO for the first time ever this year, and began to use it on my hair and Syriah's, and also on our skin. I saw major differences already. I ditched the Pantene hair moisturizer I was using and the hair cholesterol from the dollar store and began using EVOO as an overnight conditioner before washings. My hair was silkier than ever, and I didn't even need a wash out conditioner anymore. By November, I had also ordered some unrefined shea butter and began to use that for styling our hair. Totally freakin awesome.
Pink lotion wasn't even an option at all anymore. I researched and I researched hard. That was when I realized that I had a passion for this stuff, and that I might as well start a hair blog to help educate people about natural hair care. However, at the time, I was intimidated because it seemed as if everybody and their mama was doing a hair blog, and frankly, I didn't think that I knew enough about the subject yet. But I kept up the research. I joined every last natural hair care website I could find and bookmarked it. I tried different things and got great results. By the end of the year, I was totally satisfied with the way my hair was acting.
So the next year, 2012, I became totally serious. By February, I was 7 months pregnant and loving my hair growth and the way my curls were popping. In March, I finally got the courage to start this blog, and I couldn't have been more proud. I had found something that I'd LOVED to do. My hair health has only gone uphill since then. I have ditched sulfate and paraben shampoos for good. I purchased some Shea Moisture products for the first time ever, and they were awesome. I also found out about Eco Styler gel, and that's become of my best friends. (LOL!)
2012-present
So, there is is, guys. My long hair journey. I have happily been natural now for 3 years, and every day, I'm loving it more and more. I'm proud to say that my hair is now fully a virgin! (LOL!) I'm learning more and more about what works for my hair. I believe that my hair is 3B-3C with a little of 4A. My hair had several textures in it, which as you may know, can be tricky to deal with. Syriah's hair is 3A-3B only, like my husband's hair. I have no idea how long my hair has gotten now, but pretty soon I will schedule an appointment to get a flat iron and an all-even cut so I can see the length.
You know I'm gonna post that update when I finally do it. Haha! It's been really busy around here with 3 kids, but I somehow manage to do something with my hair to keep it from over-drying and going to the pits. I hope I managed to get everything into this blog that I had done with my hair over the years. If not, I shall come and update it when I remember something. Let me know if you enjoyed this post about my natural hair journey!
Oh, and here is a video that I created after this post about my hair journey. Enjoy!
Peace out, curly mamas!
Hello, guys! I think that before I even begin to cover any real hair tips, we need to try to distinguish what kind of hair we're working with on our girls. I was never really much into stereotyping, no matter what it was, but seriously studying our hair really helps when it comes to products and maintenance. If you've started reading up on natural black hair already, then you may have come across this lovely chart.
Now when I first saw this thing, I was like, they have numbers and letters for hair now? Wtf? But once I began to understand it, I see that it does help. Everybody's hair is NOT the same, and everyone's hair does NOT respond the same to every treatment and product. No wonder there's an epidemic among the black/biracial hair community. Women are going crazy, trying to figure out why their hair won't 'act right' and why certain products don't work. We are a colorful people with a wide range of curls, kinks, knots, and coils. We need to figure out how to work with what we have if we're going the all natural way.
As you can see from the chart, number one is the straightest type of hair, basically Caucasian hair. The last strip is the kinkiest, coiliest hair that's on the face of this earth, 4B. That's what people call straight African hair, the hair people think won't respond to anything at all and needs to be 'tamed' with relaxers. This is what people call 'bad hair'. But there is no such thing as BAD hair. All hair is GOODand CAN be tamed naturally, contrary to popular belief. That's only if you know what you're doing, though. Even Afro-textured hair can be tamed and grown to great lengths, as I have seen on YouTube time and time again.
So here's our classic hair type chart. Ladies, the only true way that you will know your hair type is if you are already all natural, or have been on your way for quite some time. If you're still relaxing at the moment, your hair is still chemically straightened and determining your true hair type isn't going to come for some time. I've seen women who have only skipped two perms, and they're already asking what hair type they are. Sorry, honey, it's going to take more time than that for your new growth to fully emerge. You're going to be stuck with half, curly, half straight hair and you won't know what's what.
What type is my hair, you may ask? Um, I believe that my hair is 3B with some 4A mixed in. Yes, there is such a thing as having two textures. That is possible. Your hair can have several textures, actually. My hair is more curly and silky in the front than it is in the back, so I believe that I have two textures. I can only determine that because my hair has been perm free since April 2009. So basically, three years now of trying to figure out my hair, and I'm still working on it now. I'll go more in detail with that another time.
Since my 3 year old daughter Syriah will be pretty much be the star of this blog, you'll be seeing her hair a lot. Her hair is even more silky than mine, thanks to me and her daddy's genes. My husband and I both come from families with what people stereotype as 'good hair', so you can imagine what that's like. Our mothers, fathers, and certain grandparents as well. But we are all straight black.
Another stereotype that needs to hit the fan and blow away completely is the thing that just because you have long hair or silky hair, you're mixed with something. No, sir-ee. That's not necessarily the case. We all know that every one of us are mixed with something down the line, but if your immediate families are all black., then you're not really mixed. Stop trying to show off what's already evident.
Syriah's hair type is in the 3A-3B range. Incredibly curly, long, silky, soft, responds well to water, holds moisture well, has minimal shrinkage, shines like glitter when taken care of. I love experimenting with her hair, and I'm going to continue to experiment with it. I have never used a perm on her, and I don't ever plan on it. I have straightened her hair twice in her lifetime, and that was only to trim the ends and do a growth check. I was very careful and the results were awesome. I'm no longer a fan of heat on hair; it's one of the many things that damage our hair. Oh, and the little boy next to her is my fat head son, Jamian. They have the same texture of hair.
Well, that's basically all I'm going to say for now about our hair types. If your daughter's hair is currently in transition from perms, you might be able to determine her hair type, depending on how long she's gone without getting her hair straightened at all. Her hair has to be wet and free from all product to see the new growth. If you don't have a clue as to where to start with this, you can like this blog on Facebook, upload your pictures there, and I'll try to help you out. Remember, I'm no professional. I can only advise what I know.
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