Happy Holidays Everybody,
How y'all good folks doing out there. Well I just started my Christmas shopping today.. and I'm done. Yeah I know it's the day before Christmas but that is when all the good deals come out. Anyhoo, my sisterlocks are really growing. It seems like every time I go for a retighten my hair is longer. The pic above is a pinned up style I did for my job's holiday party. It turned out pretty good. Now the other pics show a great deal of texture and how the locs still look so individual. What I love about sisterlocks each lock is similar to a strand of hair and it is very versatile.
I wanted to discuss an article I read on What Tami Said at www.whattamisaid.blogspot.com. The article was entitled Colonization all over your face...and hair . The article talks about natural hair and how it rebels against the "perceived" standard of American beauty. What found amazing is the many factors sistahs must consider before going natural, such as...What will my boyfriend think, how will the people on my job react, what will my family say and will I still be considered cute if I get my hair locked. I must admit there is a great deal of weight placed on how African American women wear their hair. Many of us were forced to put chemicals in our hair at an early age to "tame" our bad hair. Lord knows that I regret my mama put a Jherri Curl in my hair at the tender age of 6. My hair was considered to be bad... not to mention I was tender headed. I hated pressing combs, I cried when my aunt would braid my hair, because she was heavy handed and she always braided my hair too tight. So Mama decided to give me and my brother a Jherri Curl. I wore my hair in Jherri Curl for 6 years then I transitioned to a relaxer.
Because I had chemically treated hair most of my life I never knew what my natural hair looked like or felt like. I got a relaxer every 4-6 weeks like clock work. I was only exposed to nappy roots... could only see my natural hair in baby and kindergarten pictures. I think black women are the only women on earth who do not see their natural hair and purposely keep it chemically treated until the day they die. Of course this does not apply to all black women.....just a majority. Do you think we have been brained washed?
When I got my sisterlocks I did not fall in love with them on contact. I felt exposed..I could no longer hide behind the bouncy weaves and long angled bangs. I kept looking at myself in the mirror thinking how horrible I looked. I could not believe that I spent such a large amount of money to look crazy. It took me some time to fall in love with my locks. I was tired of being a slave to the chemicals yet I did not feel as beautiful with the relaxer. I often had to swallow the feeling of being inferior or less cute and hold my head up and march out into the world. Slowly my confidence came and I began to feel that my beauty was internal not external and that if I wanted people to accept me I had to accept myself first.
Natural hair is not for everyone...and chemically treated hair is an option for all races. However, beauty is in the of the beholder. Let's not let the main stream determine what is beauty. Better yet,,, don't be a follower it may be hard but do what is true to you.
