ON HAIR AND THE NATURAL CONVERT

by Tobore Egborge | May 15th, 2011 | 16 Comments    

 A few years ago I decided to go back to my natural afro hair after a particularly traumatizing hair incident. Along with two of my friends, I purchased a $40 discount coupon for services at a very posh upper east side hair salon where I proceeded, under the suggestion of a ‘hair consultant’, to get highlights on my already over relaxed hair. The bill came out to about $200 and my hair unceremoniously fell out over the next few days. Not to be outdone by this earlier act of stupidity, I decided to maintain my straggly strands in braids rather than chop them off. I was not emotionally ready for a shaved head. I took out the braids after a month or so and discovered my hair had taken on a whole new life of its own: or rather it had given up on life. I couldn’t comb it or part it and the few strands I had left were so damaged they clumped together and formed a locked cap over my scalp. My roommate took one look and pulled out a pair of scissors.
 
Five years later and after two unsuccessful attempts, I finally decided to commit fully to wearing my hair in its natural unprocessed state . I stopped using a texturizer, which is essentially a mild chemical relaxer and grew my hair under braids for about six months. It is now at that awkward length where it is too long to wear as a low cut and too short to hold in a bun, so I’ve resorted to holding it in double stranded twists. I now find that I am at the same stage where I failed twice before. It’s the problem which most black women face when reverting to natural hair: boredom.
 
Apart from dealing with the biases of others, including outdated attitudes about professionalism and beauty, the major obstacle when reverting to natural hair is simply a lack of information about resources and products for the care of kinky black hair. An internet search on “Black hair” returns results mostly about the care of permed or relaxed hair, they provide little information, however, about styling tips and products to better manage super kinky hair. Unlike our mothers during the 70’s Black Power movement, the new generation of nouveau afro wearers are no longer content with the traditional blow out held back with a hair band.
 
Celebrities like Macy Gray, who once sported a spiked highlighted afro, and Solange Knowles who was recently seen in an afro kinky weave, constantly set trends and redefine the boundaries of beauty that we mortals are eager to emulate. I for one am still on a quest for a safe way to put highlights in my afro.
 
On a recent trip to Nigeria, I was excited at the prospect of having access to more creative ways to wear my new hair. I remembered that, growing up, my friends and I would marvel at the hair of the black actresses and musicians we saw on American or British programs. We thought it must be something in the air that made their hair grow so long and so straight because no matter how much we relaxed our hair, it never looked like that. We didn’t know then about weaves and their magic. A lot of my classmates maintained their natural hair in school especially because it was mandatory to wear braids or cornrows and besides, hair relaxing was an expensive habit. It was with this memory I returned, imagining perhaps naively that techniques for manipulating afro kinky hair would have been perfected by now. I was sorely disappointed however, as the entire country is weave obsessed! Even the men, though they deny it, have come to expect that when a woman goes into a hair salon she comes out with a full head of hip length straight or wavy hair, and know better than to start asking questions. At a lunch meeting with an old male classmate, he observed that my hair was wrapped up and wondered why I had not had it “fixed’, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
 
From the latest lace-front weaves to the best human hair, everyone was an expert or knew someone who was an expert at styling weaves. People were often surprised by my hair and I was mostly amused by their reactions – someone even called me a ‘rasta’at one point. I was, however, unprepared for the reactions I got from hair dressing establishments. At a ritzy place in Lagos, where I had gone to get my hair conditioned before putting in braids, the stylist started out by trying to comb out and detangle my dry hair. She placed a comb in and pulled as if she was starting a generator. Now, those of us with coily (yes, coily not curly) hair know that this does not work. After I screamed out in pain, I instructed her to use a wide toothed comb and only comb with copious amounts of conditioner in my WET hair. The lady at the hair braiding place was similarly unsympathetic.
 
She approached my hair with trepidation then placed her hand on the back of my head and pushed it forward, took a good pinch between her fingers and pulled it to the left then to the right as if searching for lice. She told me she would have to charge extra because my hair was too coarse and it would hurt her fingers while she braided it. The nerve!
 
The ugly truth is that as black women, we know very little about our hair. Often, the reason I hear for going the way of relaxed hair is that it is more manageable, easier to style and, for those seeking corporate positions, more professional. Of course we know that women of all races process their hair. There is nothing wrong with that. When done safely, it is a great way to create style options and keep things interesting and fun. The problem arises when one’s agency is compromised and processing hair becomes an obligation to society rather than an individual expression of beauty or fashion. These two ideas are often entangled of course, because the idea of beauty or fashion is usually defined and propagated by society.
 
Last year, Chris Rock’s documentary, “Good Hair” created a bit of a controversy when he exposed the so called secrets of black women everywhere. He was criticized for portraying African American women in a negative light. A viewer on the Oprah show wrote: “It is not necessary to let every white woman know all that we do to compete and be accepted today”. He rightfully responded by saying that the need to conform was a generational one and that the younger generation is less concerned about keeping secrets and more concerned with being themselves.
 
Madame C.J Walker, God bless her heart, did a good thing for her time and generation when she came up with the hot comb and ushered in the press and curl styles of the early 1900s. I can only imagine the amount of research and testing that went into the invention of the hot comb. But that was over a hundred years ago. Times have changed and are still changing. Most black people in my generation certainly feel less pressure or the need to conform the same way our mothers and grandmothers had to. Rather, we are thirsty for more original and up-to-date ways to express our individuality. Hair styles have evolved drastically over the last century from the advent of relaxers in the 1950s to the twice processed Jheri curl of the 70’s and 80’s popularized by the likes of Michael Jackson. In the last twenty years or so we have seen more and more black women revert to their natural hair mostly in the form of dreadlocks (which has become more accepted in the workplace).
 
For those of us not looking to keep locks or cornrows, there is a bit of a challenge when it comes to styling our hair. Oprah’s hairstylist, Andre Walker advised that those choosing to embrace their natural textures should be aware of the limits for styling their hair. I believe however, that we need to demand more research on products that enable us manage our hair better and implore stylists to be more creative and less afraid when dealing with coily hair.
 
There are a number of salons in the U.S that do cater to natural hair however, be prepared to cough up big bucks for those services. I have come across a few resources for do-it-yourself styles on YouTube: tips ranging from how to trim afro hair to styling tips such as roller sets, flat ironing and blow drying are demonstrated by women who set up video cameras in front of their bathroom mirrors. An article published in Essence magazine in 2008, shared information about some websites that specifically cater to the care of black hair.
 
Nappturality, one of the sites mentioned, was particularly impressive with an array of styling tips as well as methods of classifying different hair textures based on the tightness of the curl or coil. My hair has been relaxed since I was three or four years old and only now in my adult life do I have the experience of putting my hands through its natural texture and feeling it; actually feeling it: the elasticity, the thickness, everything. And I love it. It is not an easy transition to make and definitely not for everyone but for those who choose to go natural, it is quite a liberating experience. It is my hope that as more people join the natural hair revolution, certain myths about afro hair will be debunked and more services and products will cater to the specific needs of this beautiful, yet often ignored hair type.
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Article: Tobore Egborge
Photographs: Jd Okhai Ojeikere

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  " IN OUR SOCIETY’S EFFORT TO MAINTAIN AND PRESERVE AN UNWRITTEN CODE OF “DECENCY,” IN AFRICA, ARE WE ALSO SILENCING WOMEN AND THE UNIQUE WAYS THEY EXPRESS THEIR INDIVIDUALISM THRU ATTIRE?"
  
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