written by Love Isn’t Enough co-editor Tami Winfrey Harris; originally published at What Tami Said
My hair is remarkable.
This weekend, I went home to the Chicagoland area for a party. My hostess had welcomed old friends and family into her home to celebrate the life of her sister. Folks crowded into the basement and hugged and laughed and hollered and drank, while a soundtrack of classic R&B and jazz pumped from the stereo. Our host was Kentucky born and bred. Armed with his family’s secret barbecue sauce recipe, he laid out a soul food feast: rib tips, collard greens, baked spaghetti…Another “down home” cook brought to-die-for red velvet and coconut cakes. It was a great time. I hear a Cha-Cha Slide line broke out after I left.
But I find it curious that amidst all those black folk, on a night steeped in African American culture, my natural African American hair was a topic of discussion. My longtime friend, whose sister and brother-in-law hosted the party, kept introducing me to new people as “my bohemian, Earth Mother friend…see, she has natural hair.” Now, there is nothing wrong with being bohemian or an Earth Mother, but I am hardly Erykah Badu. And it is telling that, though we’ve known each other for more than 15 years, my friend never found me hippiefied until I began wearing my hair unstraightened. It is as if now my appearance bears an explanation–that my hair is the most salient thing about me.
Spurred by my friend’s introduction, people peered at my hair—a three-day-old twist out, turned chunky ‘fro by the humid, packed house. How do you get it to do that? It’s not doing anything, I tried to explain. Or rather, “it do what it do.” It’s just my hair. It’s just our hair. Even the two women at the party who also wore their hair natural were perplexed. Both kept their kinks hidden—one under weave, the other, on this night, under a hat. I’m going to wear my hair like yours when I am brave enough.
I am always saddened by evidence of how far removed my black brothers and sisters are from this part of our physicality. It is not that I begrudge people the ability to wear their hair however they wish. But long, natural hair, left coily and kinky and loose on a black woman should not be an anomaly—unrecognizable to even other black people.
Because we are so divorced from our natural hair, our children are, too. Last night, my nine-year-old niece asked me how I get my hair to “stay like that.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“You know…like…down…most black people don’t have hair like that…just…I don’t know…like that.”
I understood. One of my nephews had asked a similar question less than a week before. “You weren’t born with your hair like that were you? What do you do to it?” The unstraightened black hair my niece and nephew see is worn by men, who keep their hair cut close. Most people in our predominately-white town have straight (or straightish) hair that reflects their European ancestry. Most adult black women they meet are permed or weaved or otherwise straightened. At nine, my niece has “grown out of” natural hair and now gets her hair “pressed” as many of us did as we grew into our pre-teen years. She experiences her own natural hair only as long as it takes to get from shampoo bowl to flat iron. My hair must seem odd.
I explained to them both that my hair is like theirs. I pointed out a picture of my niece as a toddler with a big, curly ‘fro that looked a lot like my hair. I explained that most black people have some version of hair like mine–some curlier, some kinkier. They simply straighten it, but they don’t have to. It’s just one choice. Our hair can do cool things in its natural state.
It is one thing to explain this to children, but disappointing to have to give similar speeches to adults. How can we say we love our black selves if we don’t know a basic part of our bodies? Not knowing what black natural hair does is sort of like not knowing you have five toes on one foot.
We love our hair
This weekend, my mom asked me to show Sesame Street’s much-talked-about “I love my hair” segment to both of my nieces. We watched together. While my eldest niece was ambivalent, her four-year-old sister was captivated. Play it again! She gasped when one of the brown muppet’s hairdos seemed to match her own twin afro puffs. Her hair is curly like ours! (My youngest niece notices that our hair is alike, because I tell her so. Your hair is in twists like mine…neat! Your hair is so pretty in those cornrows! I try to compliment her on her natural styles, because I know, too often, adults will only coo when it is straightened to its full length and flowing.)
My niece asked me to sing along with the new muppet character and then announced that “every time, when I come to your house, we’re going to watch the video and learn the words to we can sing it.” And we have. Last night, I called the video up on my iPhone and we sung together:
Don’t need a trip to the beauty shop
‘Cause I love what I’ve got on top
It’s curly and it’s brown and it’s right up there…
My niece kept singing the song like a mantra for half the evening: I love my hair…I love my hair…I love my hair…
I don’t know how my little niece will wear her hair when she comes of age. She is free to make any choice: straightened, kinky, short, long, bald…whatever. I hope, though, that growing up with an aunt who is proudly natural will have some effect (I cut all my permed hair off shortly after she was born.). Whatever style choices she makes, I hope she will make them with full knowledge of what her natural black hair looks like and can do. I wish for her that she will continue to truly love her hair.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
You said it better than I ever could!
Thanks for writing this. As a kinky-haired white girl, I can relate to much of what you wrote. My mother would put my curly wild hair in painful rollers, stuck to my head with plastic spikes. Then I would have to sit under a dryer for two hours. About 15 years ago, I threw away my blow dryer, grew my hair out and now just fluff it with some gel and let it dry curly. It’s a freeing feeling! I love my hair too!!!
Lovely post, I would love it if you could link it up my on hair story link up.
I know that everyone have a hair story to tell and what a perfect dayfor you to write about yours.
I am loving my natural locs and I wish future generation of women won’t feel forced by the mainsttream ideal beauty to put on hair that is not theirs just to please others.
Thanks for posting this post.
That video’s awesome.
I still can’t quite get over reading about African-American women’s experiences with the whole natural hair thing. It’s this odd cognitive dissonance – I don’t doubt what you say is true, and yet it seems so impossible that it can be.
Just about all the African/African-descended women I see wear natural hair styles. Until the Internet, I’d honestly just assumed that the African-Americans I saw on TV descended from different African peoples, ones with straighter hair, because all the African-ethnic people I’d met I’d met in Africa or in Australia – where they were either African immigrants or the children of African immigrants, and wearing natural hair styles is the norm here and in the parts of Africa I’ve visited.
Natural hair is beautiful.
I “went natural” years before I had children, but I’m so glad I did. My children now think natural black hair – mine is loced – is just right. They tell me all the time how beautiful my hair is, and my three year old wants hair just like me! But the funny thing is her hair is nothing like mine – it’s fine and much more straight – I have to do a lot of teasing to get it looking like an afro. But no need among either of them to think straight is better – having a mother with non-straight, permed, or weaved hair, and many other black women in their lives that are the same, makes a big difference. But yes, having adults, black adults, asking me if its all my hair, or just being so shocked at how I do it and manage to “keep it up,” is very sad.
” But long, natural hair, left coily and kinky and loose on a black woman should not be an anomaly—unrecognizable to even other black people.”
BRAVO!
Well no matter what your hair style, you’re the best bohemian, Earth Mother friend blogger that anti-racist parents have. Wish white supremacy could be all just be washed away with a quick shampoo…
I think that things have actually gotten worse. Now it seems as if you either choose natural hair or a lace cap wig or weave made of Asian women’s hair or what I call “Barbie” hair. These are the styles one sees on almost all the black celebrities and now these looks have become accessible to the average woman as well. I asked my husband to describe a black female colleague to me today and he said that she has straight-ish hair, but couldn’t tell whether it was her own. As you more eloquently said in your post, that is like the norm now. At least with relaxers you know what you are looking at is hair that has been processed. The worst for me is when in the effort to show diversity some ad/poster-maker features women from all of the “races” – the Asian and white women (sorry, everyone else) sport their natural hair, the black woman is wearing a long, straight wig or weave. Uggh. It is nice to see models like Oluchi, Phina and Kiara – their features are ones I recognize in the black people I know – but then they all have these (ridiculous) weaves stuck to their heads. Sorry to have gone off on a rant. I just feel so frustrated about the whole thing.
I have been natural for over 10 years now and its sad but true that you have to tell people (your own) that their hair, underneath it all aka perms or whatever…it nappy. As a race we have been so misplaced. When we reveal what weve been given naturally, we are viewed as a foreign entity or treated like an “alien species” as if our hair is seperate being. Its really sad that we dont like what we have, or we think it is too much trouble. Even though many of us have been freed from the creamy crack, we still fight to free our minds of the negativity that comes from the years of hair slavery. I hope that in the future we can learn to educate others about the joy that comes with being able to be who you are, roots and all. And maybe…just maybe..our hair will become our norm.
This is a beautiful post. As a woman who has been natural all my life, I can relate to so much of what you’ve written here. I think you are setting a wonderful example for the children in your extended family. Also, while such things are entirely overdue, I love the muppet video, and I love that children of color all over the country are seeing it and are therefore able to weigh it against so many other images in the media that may them feel that natural hair is something to look forward to losing when little girls come of age.