I look at the pictures of the women in Africa… from different tribes and the way they wear their hair… naturally. Sure they braid, bead, twist or even shave it down to peach fuzz or noting at all… but it’s still growing out of their own heads. They KNOW who they are, love who they are and it shows. That’s what we need to see here in our country and anywhere else for that matter where, course, thick, tightly curled, kinky, frizzy…healthy Natural hair is seen as unattractive or not “good”.

Yes, everyone has the right to fly his or her “freak” flag however and whenever. I’m a mixed race (African-American, Puerto Rican, Dutch, Hawaiian) woman of color and my hair type is 3b. I wear it out and wild, pretty much all the time, I’m happy with it. Still, I meet a lot of black women who say I should relax it, or ask me if it’s my real hair. …telling me that I have “good” hair…that makes me so sad. I have never asked a white woman if her hair was real, I don’t think that happens terribly often. We ask eachother because we are under the impression that only one or two textures of hair is remotely acceptable and oh so very rare. So if you see one of us with it, then it’s probably fake. They treat it like hitting the lottery, as if anything else is ugly, shameful and in desperate need of change. Then to assimilate and PRETEND you were born that way….it sucks! Hiding straightening products, so nobody knows…(sigh)
But I just hate that we have been conditioned to think that we’re only acceptably beautiful if our hair looks like Heidi Klum’s! I see how people look at them, people whose hair IS naturally like Heidi Klum’s. They smirk, giggle or look perplexed. I’m pretty sure they think that the ‘weaved”, “wigged” or process haired women think their “hair” looks…natural. It seems to me that we’re still “buying” what society is “selling”! Now, 25-30 years ago, I would have accepted that but… in this day and age, with all the access we have to the “outside” world…I would think we‘d have evolved to the point of uncovering our natural hair. We have taken our children and made them feel less than beautiful unless they have hair like Heidi Klum and Jennifer Aniston! I wish we could stop burning it with chemicals and smothering our scalps with natural and/or artificial hair, stop greasing it to within an inch of its life! Boycott society’s idea of what true beauty is and maybe then we’ll see more “Plaits and Prada” on the cover of Bazaar or Vogue.

Now, let’s get Beyonce and Whitney, Janet, Regina King, Gabrielle Union, Queen Latifah, Rhianna, Brandy and Kelly Rowland…oh hell, get anyone who’s chemically altering, “cooking” their hair or wearing wigs and weaves, to try and quit the fakery. Let’s see if they can be the pioneers in helping the rest of us love our hair! I want to see Leighton Meester running into a beauty shop to have her hair styled as close to an Afro as she possibly can…so she can pull off the latest “Alek Wek” look. (hah, that’ll be the day) When I see a woman thumping herself in the head to stop the itching from those ridiculous skullcap “pixie” wigs or over-the-top weaves, it breaks my heart. One of these days those thumps to the head may shake something loose and free them from feeling the need to try and look like something they’re not. Maybe it’ll free them into loving their own natural beauty! In the end I know that it’s not as “black and white” as I’m making it out to be and I know it takes more than just walking around with natural hair…a whole LOT more!! Still, ya gotta start somewhere.