There will be photos at the end of this. I promise!
I was really inspired to write this after finding
Veronica's natural hair blog linked from the Feministing.com Weekly Reader.
Like so many women of colour who are now natural (or "nap"tural) I had been in the practice of having my hair permed since I was about 6 or seven. I do have some memories of my natural hair, from when I was much younger. My mother would braid my hair in cornrows or plaits and secure the ends with those big plastic bubbles and clips in the shape of hearts and candies. My recollection of relaxing my hair as a young girl involves images of "Dark N' Lovely" boxes filled with tiny bottles that contained curiously coloured liquids. Having relaxed hair wasn't really a tortuous period of my life. Yes, i did experience some breakage, but when I did, i would just have my hair braided with extensions and allow it to rest. I think the reason why my mother did it was to make her life easier when it came to combing it and braiding it. Which is understandable.
As I got older, I was able to make appointments at my mother's hairdresser. It was just something that had to be done, I guess. Like getting groceries and taking out the garbage. I had to "get my hair done" as soon as the roots began to show. Whenever I experienced long periods foregoing touch ups to my roots (during my first few years of university especially) I would be asked the question "what are you going to do with your hair?" Most of the time, I didn't really care what I did with my hair. I was a low-maintenance kind of gal when it came to hair. I would just comb out the roots and pull it back into a pony with the same hair clip I had been using for something like 7 years. Getting my hair relaxed was more of a thing I did to keep my mom from asking me what I would be doing with my hair. I really began to hate getting my hair relaxed because 1) I always ended up with the same hair style that was given to my mother 2) I hated sitting in a salon for 3 hours listening to celebrity gossip, flipping through the vapidity of glossy fashion magazines.
In the winter of 2007 I became fascinated by natural hair, and had a strong desire to learn about my own, to chop it off. I had become a new card-carrying member of feminism in my fourth year of university and wanted to practice my beliefs in a radical and visible way. That year I had won a scholarship to study abroad in Jerusalem for the winter semester of 2008. I had my final relaxer a week before my flight to Israel. Unbeknownst to my hairdresser, that would be the last time I was planning on seeing her.
While studying in Israel, the months past and the roots of my hair grew in, thick and strong, unlike the frizzy and splitting processed ends. I fell in love with the thick hair and I longed to feel only that texture in my head. I had decided in the spring that once I was back in Canada, I would cut my hair down to the roots and sport the TWA until it was long enough to be put into locs. My first day back in Canada brought an interesting encounter with my mother after my disclosing a desire to cut my hair and grow locs. This is just my guess, but I think that Christian Jamaican immagrants have some kind of animosity with natural hair... especially loced hair. I pretty much had my mind made up though. I continued to grow my hair throughout the summer by learning to braid it myself. And once I had moved back on campus for my final year of university, I bought a pair of hair cutting shears and cut my hair down to the roots, making the most intimate discoveries about myself.
I loved my hair. I loved the thickness. I loved the curliness. I loved the thick naps that would develop after leaving it uncombed for several days. I loved how I could wash it almost every day. I loved how having natural hair freed me from being bound to having someone else do my hair for me.
And I think that's one of the lies that white patriarchy has perpetuated: that a black woman must not do her own hair and must allow someone else to shape it for her into something that is acceptable and attractive. And as long as white patriarchy has black women believing that their hair belongs in someone else's hands, the standard of beauty will be displaced from the self of the black woman and into the image of the dominant. And when a black woman takes her hair into her own hands, people start talking. That's what happened to me. Everyone in my church back home seemed to find out that "I cut off all my hair" as if it were a surprise that I allowed my own hands on my own head. Like I was tresspassing on someone else's property. It's funny how people think that a black woman's hair in its natural state is "radical". I think what I want to do is exploit that notion
Now... I'm not saying that women who process their hair are essentially oppressed. Not at all. I'm just saying what's true for me. I had to go a physical process of reconciling my personal politics with my body. I just had to reclaim my hair in this particular way, to take the scisors myself and cut away at the other hands that were in my hair. Women can reclaim themselves in whatever ways empower them (a notion that can get complicated, I know). This was my way. When it comes down to it...
it's just hair... but it also isn't
JUST hair... in that weird paradoxical way. You know?
I've neer been so in love with myself since I started growing it out in Jerusalem (Zion, if you want to look at it from a Rastafarian spiritualistic way. I've come to love my body and my beauty and my womanhood and my blackness. And interestingly enough, this self-love was something that I never experienced in my days as an evangelical Christian who was pretty devoted religiously. My inate low-maintenance radical amazon woman was bound by the possible questions of others "what are you going to do with your hair?" And the answer, by default, had to be straightening it because that's just what black women do, right?
Well, I've changed my answer to that question. What am I going to do with my hair? I'm taking control of it. And I'm going to let it loc up in its funky, freeforming kind of way. I could never do the manicured loc lifestyle. It really stiffles my desire for low maintenance and maximum political effect.
But anyway. I'm going to stop rambling and get to posting some pictures!!
Fall 2006
You can't deny that it looked good!
I just never had the desire or felt the need to maintain it until I was sent to the hairdresser by my mom.
This was taken on either my 19th or 20th birthday. I can't remember.
I used to like taking portraits of myself when my hair was fresh from the salon.
Then the novelty of straight hair would wear off and it would be back in a ponytail until my next visit to the salon. Hahaha!
This is when I had braids. Fall-Winter of 2005
I'm gonna knock you out!!... with my words!
This is the headwrap that i donned on the several days of extreme heat in Israel. I wanted to keep my hair out of the Middle Eastern sun (which was pretty harsh).
These are the plaits that I rocked for the summer of 2008
I was transitioning and plotting to cut my hair as soon as I moved back on campus
Yes, you can laugh at my goofdom.
I grew accustomed to wearing this hat throughout the summer when I felt like butching out
And on those summer days when I felt femme, I would don this hat.
Regardless of my constantly changing gender presentation, it's always pretty easily acheived.
This was taken during the Xmas break of 2008... so several months after my big chop.
Yes folks, I like to fuck with gender. Deal with it.
So now you have the lo-down on where I'm coming from.
