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?

kinks on the scalp and in the mind

"Don't remove the kinks from you hair, remove them from your brain." - Marcus Garvey

"You sho' is UGLY!" - Shug

i'm starting to understand why some people consider natural hair to be political or controversial. it all starts when someone who has his or her own thoughts about hair, beauty, gender roles, and relational norms imposes those standards onto you. and then, and here's the shell game!....when you resist that tide, BAM:

controversy.

i had a talk with the man i kiss about transitioning my hair. he took it in stride. he even told me he completely agreed with my decision to lock my hair. i thought to myself "that was probably the easiest conversation a woman has ever had about making a drastic change to her hair!"

but the one time i told him it was my intention of cutting my hair off completely, he must have blocked it from his mind. i mean i know he heard me, but as with most things that make no sense to him, he apparently just blinked through it and waited for me to stop making noise.

this past sunday, we were watching the BET awards and saw kanye west and his girlfriend amber rose. my kissing mate said "WHO is that! her hair makes her look like a dude!"

i said "you think so?"...thinking to myself with a body like that, she would never be confused with a man, but who wants to point that crap out to your kissing mate and set yourself up for sitting through an extended ogling session?....

"i was totally going to cut my hair off like that," i finished, almost offhandedly.

"yeah, right." he answered, equally offhandedly with a smattering of panic i believe i heard along the edges.

"no really! i was totally gonna..."

"YEAH.RIGHT." he finished.

which, in my mind, equated to "good day sir, I SAID GOOD DAY!"

i let it go, only because i'd changed my mind already anyway. but still.

does any other group on the face of the world get as much static about hair than the black woman? and while it's true that black men experience their own share of criticism if their hair doesn't fit a certain acceptable image (corporate fro, anyone?), i believe black women more often than others experience the critical eye when it comes to our hair length, texture, and style.

will it ever be possible to move past the belief that extremely short hair is masculine or boyish, no matter how feminine and attractive the woman beneath the scalp is? am i missing the point by wishing for this look to be socially acceptable because isn't the point to not really give a good damn what other people think so long as you like what you see?

easier said than done. no one wants to feel less attractive, let alone to their mate. and stepping outside societal norms is a little scary. ok, a lot scary. but it's a journey worth taking, in the long run.

am i right?