Posted by yz on Monday, October 20, 2008 in

My hair is extremely thick. Luckily it’s also very soft. For the first thirteen years of my life I went through hot-combing, braiding, heavy beads, biswahilli (rd: cornrows) and then there was the endless combing. No matter how soft your hair is, no one of African descent can escape the kink after a wash or after a day out when, not if, your hair has shrunk. When the hair is bigger than your actual head, combing is especially tedious. When the hair is bigger than your head and you are six, it becomes the most painful part of your day. So I asked for it to be cut off please and thank you. I asked at a bad time I think. My mother placed a chair outside, right where I could see my sister and cousin shooting for mangoes, got my grandmother’s scissors and proceeded to give me the first and worst haircut of my life. I wore my raincoat with my hood on for a month but I was traumatized forever. My haircutophobia became an issue when I started to throw a tantrum that made the Seed of Chucky look angelic every time someone approached me with a comb. I got my way and ummmm, let’s just say I had an almost Rastafarian look going on for a while. Eventually my mother got tired of people giving her looks because of my hair and gave me a new option that we could both live with. Straighten my hair permanently and I get to do whatever I want to with it.

That is why I permanently straightened my hair, no more seemingly endless painful combing, no more sitting on the broken chair in the kitchen with the hot comb on the sigiri (rd: stove?) tears rolling down my face as my mother and grandmother keep repeating, “beauty is pain”. I’m only telling this story because a friend posted something about hair, and why she had an afro. “i keep my hair this way as a symbol of my non-conformity. to show that i am true to myself and my roots. to look like a soul sistah, etc, etc”.

I had never, ever, not even for a single moment looked at relaxed hair as conforming but once I did I could suddenly see where she comes from, kind of the same place that the 27th did when he was talking about women’s magazines. Good hair is wavy and soft, bad hair is the essence of kinky, and why? Because kinky=black= slave= bad. There are probably people out there who straighten their hair in order to be white but that’s the way the world’s been working for a while now. Subconsciously wanting to be white is just something that you have to factor in as one of the evils of being not-white.

Hold on, I think I lost myself. It’s not about wanting to be physically white. That’s not what I mean. I mean that it’s more about wanting what seems that much easier if you’re white. Does that make more sense? We want to be successful and we do what we need to do to be successful. The most successful are still mostly white. It is what it is. It being Survival of the Fittest and they’ve been the fittest a long time. In order to survive and then be part of this Fittest group, we’ve had to adapt in order to survive in their world, become something they can relate to.

Here is when my optimistic approach to life is a possibly bad thing because I honestly don’t think the world is like that anymore. We don’t have to bend over backwards to be accepted as equals quite so much anymore. True, there are still more than a few great strides that need to be taken. Still, at least we now have the option about deciding who we want to be and it does not have to be a symbol of anything other than you. And we have the most choice. We can be bald, not so bald, rock that afro, or straighten it. Whatever you’re feeling on the inside, your hair can show that. It’s like having an etch-a-sketch on your head. Left wind to erase then right wind to draw something new and different. Etch-A-Sketch Heads, that is what we are.

Viva Etch-A-Sketch oye!