We need to really examine our aesthetic tastes as a community and question the difference between our “preferences” and indoctrination.
Black women idolize looser hair textures. This idolization stems from generations of being berated and abused by white slavers and colonizers for our features. Fast-forward several hundred years and our community unfortunately still sees straight, wavy, and loosely curled hair as the standard for what human hair should look like. We mark ourselves as the race of people with difficult hair that is resistant to nurturing or carefully curated regimes.
The “ease” that hair-care is supposed to have supposedly has a very strict parameter, and we fall short of it — inherently of course. We resign to this thought as just a fact of life.
My question is this:
Why is OUR race the one with the difficult hair?
It does not make sense that Black people of all races would be the ones ‘cursed’ with unmanageable hair. We set ourselves up for failure with this line of thinking. We self-fulfill our hair’s supposed resistance to being styled by talking down to ourselves.We need to take it easy. Most of our anger and frustration with our hair comes from unrealistic expectations. Our hair is not hard to take care of and it is not unmanageable. We just need to learn what works for our hair texture, and give ourselves time to maintain our tresses.
The little I remember from my relaxed days was relatively high maintenance care. I had to wake up early to comb my hair out or treat it with heat so that it could lay flat. I would relax my hair every 6–8 weeks. I had to sleep a certain way if it was freshly curled. THAT was troublesome in comparison to what I do now: wash my hair every 2 weeks, maintain twists for 1–2 weeks, or literally take maybe 90 min to braid/twist my hair (this can be maintained for as long as I want). And I have really thick hair.
Frankly, I’m tired of the mindset that Black hair is inherently wild like a feral cat. Those who use this destructive language against themselves and others, must be called out, because this mindset does not just end at self-deprecation. It affects other kinky haired folks within earshot of the insult to our innate traits.
My hair is not unmanageable. My hair is not wild. My hair is not ugly. My hair does not need taming. My hair brings me joy.
I want you to play make-believe for a moment.
Imagine a world in which Black people have dominated the world, and indoctrinated every race in the world into believing that we are superior to them, and second only to God. If straight-haired races and ethnicities used our hair as the standard for their hair care, they would call their hair unmanageable. Their framework for how their hair is supposed to lay, react to certain products, and be in a manicured state would be completely different from what is actually true about their hair. We already laugh at White people who try to style their hair into dreadlocks. They have to literally mat their stringy strands with wax, glue, and dirt for it to even somewhat resemble the beautiful, kinky dreadlocks a typical Jamaican Rastafarian would effortlessly rock upon their crown.
My hair is not inconvenient.
Do we chemically straighten, or hide our hair with straight extensions, because it is convenient? When people say this it suggests that black hair is inherently inconvenient. This is not true at all. If it were true our pre-colonial ancestors would have found ways to straighten their own hair sans the presence of white supremacist ideals.
Don’t get it twisted.
Our African ancestors did not just slap cornrows on their heads and call it a day either. People who managed comfortable lifestyles wore elaborate styles on their heads to show status, beauty standards, and wealth. Women in particular took hours to get their hair styled to their liking, as many of us do today. Getting one’s hair braided was as intimate and necessary then as it is today.
No one got the bright idea to emulate European hair until that negative rhetoric was spoon fed to us.
