When people ask me "so, how long have you been natural?" they're usually met with blinking and sputtering until I eventually manage to squeak out "well uh...it's complicated...er...five years?" I'm embarrassed to say because my hair doesn't look five-years-natural-long.
I've been natural for five years now, but I had no idea about how to look after my hair until about three years in.
Let's start at the beginning. As a child, my mother was the caretaker of my hair. It was her responsibility to make sure it was washed and neat for school, and that it didn't misbehave in public. I remember how I hated the Sunday evenings spent seated on the carpet as she tugged at my hair with a comb then wound a double-stranded piece of black thread around a section of hair when all I wanted to do was to go and play with my dolls. My dolls, of course, had long blonde hair which could easily be combed. And comb their synthetic blond hair I did, and with great enthusiasm for one of them ended up bald.
Anyway, at school there were girls with real, long straight glossy Barbie hair. It wasn't a battle to look after; it didn't need to be ordered to stay down. It was admirable.
So with a few words whispered here and there, commentary on my 'difficult' hair, admiration for another girl's straight blonde locks; images of supermodels with the same straight, flowing hair..I began to understand some things about hair.
Firstly, I began to understand that hair had high value in the language of beauty.
Secondly, I understood that the longer, glossier, softer and straighter your hair was, the more beautiful you were considered to be.
And lastly, I understood that I did not have that kind of hair.
So even though my hair grew well, relaxing eventually presented itself as an option. I remember my first time having it relaxed. I was sitting in a ‘home salon.’ Basically a lady down the road had converted part of her house into a hair salon. It was full of noisy women and noisy music. I remember noticing a container of relaxer (that relaxer, you know the one) with a young girl on the cover, probably around my age. Her hair was long and straight and glossy. My mother followed my gaze and she gently told me that I shouldn't expect the same.
I understood then and I understand now that she was lovingly trying to manage my expectations, to spare me disappointment. I understand that she took me to have my hair relaxed because it would be easier to manage in that state. She was a working wife and mother of two…who could blame her? It was either my wilful hair which would take a long time to do, or easy-to-manage hair which only needed to be touched up every few months. I couldn't articulate it in so many words, but I understood that my kind of hair – the hair that I was born with – couldn't be managed. It couldn't look pretty. It was a problem to be solved by the magical process of relaxing.
By the time I was in my teens, I was still relaxing my hair out of habit. I didn't see an alternative, and frankly I was never one to spend time...cultivating my appearance. But, no matter how much I wished and hoped, my hair just wasn't long and it never remained straight..
Instead it would break, it was dry and it was dull most of the time unless I had just left the salon, in which case I looked like a penguin caught up in an oil slick. I avoided water like the plague, believing it to be my hair’s worst enemy, or so it seemed. In addition, I was lazy to care for my hair. I may have had hopes and dreams, but I honestly didn't put in the research or work to truly care for it, even when it was relaxed.
At the age of 19, I was finally bothered by the state of my hair. It was a time when I was starting to question a lot of things about the world, and who I wanted to be in it and I started to scrutinize my appearance and the interlinked identity. I remember feeling second-hand embarrassment for a future, alternate version of myself who would year after year relax her hair in the quest for the 'ideal' kind of beauty, even when her hair never ventured past shoulder length. I didn't want to become that person.
Relaxing for me started to look more like a desperate knock-off of something I was never meant to have: straight hair. So with these thoughts at the forefront of my mind, I marched off to the nearest salon and demanded that they cut off my hair. All of it. I didn't have a road map or an instruction manual. I just knew that I wanted my own hair, and I wanted to start afresh.
I'd never heard of transitioning.
I didn't want locs. My mother had had those for 9 years so I had experienced them vicariously.
I didn't even know if I wanted my hair to grow long, I just wanted to claim it as my own, to wear it how I wanted to and how it was meant to be. I wasn't inspired by the ‘natural hair movement, and for a long time I shunned the YouTube videos and hair blogs, dismissing them as an "overload of information supplied by vain women with too much time on their hands." I wasn't trying to make a fashion statement or a political statement. I was making a personal statement. I was choosing to be my own definition of beautiful and appropriate.
And I still didn't know how to look after my hair.
So for the first 2 ½ years, I happily did what I felt like doing. So prepare to be horrified:
- I used to wash my hair with bath soap. Several times in a week. Then comb it wet with an Afro pick until it looked neat. Sometimes I left it unkempt, wild and tangled for days on end. I slept on a cotton pillowcase without wearing a scarf. Then in the morning I would dry comb it until it looked neat. It was painful, and breakage was business-as-usual.
- I used to blow-dry on a whim...rather frequently.
- I broke all the rules of safe protective styling, wearing braids and pretty much forgetting about my hair.
So although I was natural, I'd transferred the same lazy habits from my relaxed days, and there was a price to pay for being careless. I was deeply ignorant, not even knowing what I didn't know.
It was no surprise therefore, that after almost 3 years of being natural, I started to notice that my hair wasn't growing as much as I'd have liked it to. Flashbacks from my childhood suggested that it was capable of growing well, so what went wrong? I wondered.
So I tentatively dipped one toe into hair blogs, vlogs and forums, then another and another until I was completely immersed in the online world of natural hair care. I started to learn, picking up the lingo rapidly and experimenting with styles like Bantu knot outs. I remember devouring Naptural85's videos in a weekend, fascinated by this world which I had previously shut out.
I started to learn my hair's personality - and am still discovering things. One of the first things I discovered was how much my hair loves water, and how water is in fact, essential for my hair. Where there were only tangles and knots there suddenly emerged coils and curls; softness and elasticity where there was brittleness and dryness.
I wish I could say all my little hair experiments turn out well, that my two-strand twists always look good or that my ends are split-free, but I'd be lying. I have the attention span of a flea, and I learn through trial and error, trying to have fun in the process. My hair goes through seasons and I constantly need to change things up to find out what I need to be doing. It's a lesson in patience, endurance and flexibility, but the rewards are rich, so I make sure to celebrate new growth and good hair days too.
I know that there are many natural hair blogs out there, and honestly I think there should be even more! The day there'll be 'enough' hair blogs is the day you Google 'beautiful hair' and natural-haired ladies pop up in the image search results alongside the usual glossy-straight-haired women. Each head of hair is different and each person brings their own experiences to the table. My progress is the result of watching a diversity of vlogs and reading many different blogs. So this particular blog is a place for me to chronicle my journey and to let you know what has worked for me or what hasn't. I know I can't be the only one who started out lazy, crazy and clueless, and who is slowly working their way out of that state. That's OK, I hope this can be a safe place to be honest, have fun and maybe even learn a thing or two!
So welcome, and enjoy!
Much Love,
Fadzi
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