oh, word.

i've DEFINITELY been on the receiving end of this particular brand of fuckery. thanks for playing, though.

ya damn right, what she said.

the NY Times recently ran a piece discussing black women and hair, ostensibly attempting to break down why black women choose to either relax our hair or wear it without chemicals. one of my favorite bloggers at What Tami Said broke this article down like a raggedy lawn chair.

i am really starting to go from ambivalence to annoyance at all the discussion about black hair. when i read some articles discussing it, i keep getting that queasy feeling i had in high school when my english teacher, an older white man who'd never been inside a black church, decided to demonstrate for our class what being inside black churches was like. started off okay, and then veered off into a show of him mocking what he didn't understand, with my classmates happily playing along in the call and response.

and i sat there, the only black kid in the room, shocked and pissed.

i just had a conversation earlier this week with the Mister about black women and hair. he made comments similar to those in the NY Times article, about how all women are constantly changing their hair by getting perms, changing the color, or cutting it. i tried to explain to him that when you live in a society that tells you the hair that grows out of your hair is ugly just because it's not straight, the need and desire to conform to that standard weighs much more heavily than the desire a white woman may have to go from blond hair to red or to get a haircut.

there are plenty of black women who decide to stop relaxing their hair that describe the same feelings: relief. self-acceptance.

and there are plenty of women who relax their hair and feel the same damn way.

i just want to get to the point where we aren't constantly forced to talk about it!!

can't the hair on my head be just that, instead of the dumping ground for others' issues, demand, insecurities, and judgment?

The Big Chop...2 weeks later

so about a week and a half ago, i ended my weeks...nay...months of torture and cut off all the relaxed hair on my head.

all of it.

and i gotta admit, i don't regret it in the least.

ok, ok, let me step back a moment from my billy bad ass steeze and say how it all REALLY went down:

i went to the hairdresser with the intention of getting my hair set on small rods again. but i knew that i was in a little bit of a jam with my hair because a lot of the curls had come out and the relaxed hair was a wee bit matty.

it had been two weeks since i'd combed my hair. the situation was grim, my friends!

walking to my car, i was talking to a friend and i bounced the idea of just cutting the hair off. she cautioned me from doing something too extreme and suggested i just trim some of the perm off until i'd grown my hair some some more.

i took that into consideration, but i still planned on talking to my hairdresser about going ahead with the big chop. my main questions were this:

how much unprocessed hair do i actually have on my head and can i pull this look off without looking like The Brown Hornet?

once i got in the chair, however, i was still undecided about what to do. i was still a little skittish about getting the big chop too soon, but i was devastated about how my relaxed hair lost curl and refused to regain it, leaving me these Sylvester the Cat wings hanging off the sides of my head.

you really really really start to resent your relaxed hair while you are transitioning. funny, because it used to be that you couldn't live without your perm, every 6 weeks. now, the same thing that made your hair more manageable was fucking up your life!

....anyhoo...

any wavering i felt completely melted when my hairdresser sat me in the shampoo bowl. and started washing my hair.

well, we all know what happened next, right? large matted clots of relaxed hair. and who do you think really felt like submitting to getting those mats combed out, mats of hair that you had no intention of keeping anyway, mats of hair that betrayed your best efforts at a decent hairdo??

well, i can tell you who definitely didn't feel like it. and so i asked:

"Fran...what do you think about just cutting it off to my new growth?"

she was very positive and very supportive. and she cut my hair.

and i love it.

a quick note on my daily routine:

wet hair in the shower, apply Marc Anthony Strictly Curls Frizz Sealing Conditioner, running my ringers through to detangle and clean. let sit for about 15 minutes and then rinse with lukewarm water. shake excess water out of hair and then apply Vigorol curling mousse all over.

let air dry while getting me and kids ready for day.

it's that simple. this is my result!

if i had known how much easier cutting my hair was going to make my life, i swear i would have done it a long time ago. and at this point, i honestly cannot remember why i was so frightened.

and that is the very real, super true story of how i stumbled my way into a Big Chop.

anyone fearfully considering the Big Chop, you can do this. do your research, look at videos and photos online, and believe you can do this. you will not regret it.

before i cut my hair, i told a coworker how much i liked how Solange had cut her hair. she asked me "why don't you just go ahead and cut your hair too?" and i replied "because i'm not that brave."

huh. turns out i was.

house negros and hair politics

I haven't really talked much about the comments that were tossed around when Solange decided to cute her hair off. the way some of these negroes acted, you would have thought the woman ran around a church nekket while touching herself inappropriately with a bible!

and apparently, that church would be Our Lady of Sacred Relaxer.

It's something else when you see a people so brainwashed into thinking that black hair must be straight hair in order to make a black woman attractive. Even some black women are so dedicated to this notion, that they are willing to come down like a ton of bricks if you don't play along.

"I don't get the whole shave my head thing. It's not edgy, it's attention seeking....Personally, i keep it cut and clean. don't bring no razors near my crown."

and while still pretty negative, that's not nearly as ugly as some of the comments have been. and Solange's response to it all was what led me to start following her on Twitter.

anyway, here's a pic of what so many are talking trash about.

she looks lovely. house negroes can be some of the biggest haters, man.