A NATURAL HAIR STORY
I have a lot of hair. 145 thick, glorious, six inch locs. Sometimes, I wake up in the morning and I absolutely adore my hair. And sometimes, on those humid, annoying mornings, I fantasize about taking a pair of scissors from my bathroom cup and cutting everything single loc off while listening to an angry rap song.
Luckily for me, I am not the only one who has this weird relationship with my hair. In an interview with The Cut magazine, Chimamanda Adichie said: “It’s interesting because I can very excitedly now say that I absolutely love my hair and I wouldn’t change it. But, it’s a relationship that has its ups and downs. There are times when I just don’t have the time for my hair and I let it be a matted mess. And there are times when I think of my hair as this glorious gift from God in all of its kinkiness.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Photo Credit: Boots
Like Chimamanda, my relationship with my hair has its ups and downs. Some days, I run my fingers through my locs and I get a deep sense of pride. On some other days, when I touch the fibrous strands, I get irritated and wonder why I chose to go natural in the first place. But no matter how much my feelings for my hair change from day to day, going back to relaxed hair has never been an option. I don’t have anything against women with relaxed hair, but when I remember the searing pain that I used to get as a child when the thick white relaxer cream was left in my head for thirty minutes so that my thick hair could relax well, I cringe.
Imbole Mbue by Flora Hanitijo for the Guardian
And so, I was pleased when I read an essay that Imbole Mbue, a Cameroonian writer who lives in America, wrote for The Guardian detailing her journey with her natural hair and the political climate in her home country. Imbole Mbue is a writer whose name first caught my attention when she signed a million-dollar deal for her debut novel, Behold the Dreamers. The novel, which is about a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York during the recession in 2009, was released to critical acclaim in 2016. When I was watching a video from the book tour, the first thing that stood out immediately was her full head of hair. In the essay, she shares how she started down the natural hair path.
Imbole Mbue by Flora Hanitijo for the Guardian
“In the summer of 2002, I walked into a hair salon in New Jersey and asked a stylist to cut off all my hair. I was done having hair. Enough with the pain of straightening it with a chemical that scalded parts of my scalp and left others in blisters. Enough with the discomfort of braiding it – eight hours of tugging and wincing followed by painkillers to ease the soreness, or a full day of not being able fully to turn my head.
Free me from this burden, I told the stylist, who stared at me, confused, while I ranted. She tried to convince me merely to trim it, but I told her I wanted it all gone. Reluctantly, she obliged and I walked out that afternoon to the sensation of the wind on my bare scalp. The feeling was ineffable, my newfound freedom unquantifiable.”
In my case, the first time I cut my hair was in 2011. Unlike Imbole, I didn’t cut my hair because I was tired of relaxers or because I was tired of braiding my hair; I cut my hair because there was a new wind of natural hair that was blowing furiously through America and I wanted so desperately to be part of the movement. And so, I was at home one cool evening and I just decide to do it. I stood in my bathroom that was dimly lit with a kerosene lamp and massaged my limp relaxed strands for the last time. Then I went in. I cut my hair, tuft after tuft, and watched my face transform in front of the mirror. I used a pair of slightly blunt yellow scissors, and the process was quick and uneventful. I stopped when there was about three inches of new growth left on my head.
I couldn’t recognize myself.
I hid my head under a scarf for so that no one would see it. I thought I looked like a man. I thought I looked ugly. Then three months later, when my eyes had adjusted to seeing myself with barely any hair, I did something more drastic. I went to the barber’s shop to shave everything off because I wanted my future afro to be evenly shaped. Like Imbole, I remember walking out of the barber’s shop with the wind on my scalp and just like her, I tasted a new found freedom. I no longer thought I looked ugly.
I thought I looked like me.
In the essay, Imbole goes further to give us more detail about her hair journey after the big chop. “I regrew my hair into a short afro and cut it all off again before it reached the length where its coarseness made combing a battle. I did this several times, until I decided to stop with the cutting. Why was I running away from my hair’s texture, I asked myself: wouldn’t it be better – and healthier – to embrace it? It certainly wouldn’t be easier, I knew that, but I decided to experiment nonetheless, determined to confront every knot and tangle and find the beauty therein.”
Just like Imbole, between 2011 and 2014, I cut my hair about four times. I always told myself that it was because handling my hair was too much work, but the truth was that handling my hair was not that stressful; it was just that I had not found the right routine. So, in 2014, I decided to stop cutting my natural hair. Just like Imbole, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I was determined to find a way through the maze of curls.
But in 2015, my journey was halted by my erratic hormones. My hair started coming off in clumps and after a while, I couldn’t bear to look at my hands when I was washing my hair. I finally decided to loc my hair permanently, a decision that drove everyone I loved into two camps: the first camp thought that dada was for unserious people and that I wouldn’t be able to get a job; the second camp didn’t care that much – they just wanted me to do whatever made me happy. I listened to both camps patiently and at the end, I did what I wanted to do. I locd my hair.
Now that I look back, I am happy that I decided to loc my hair, because I don’t have to detangle my hair like my sister who has loose natural hair that she had been growing for the past four years. But I know that if I didn’t have a hormonal problem, I would probably have kept my hair loose because there is something that is absolutely beautiful about seeing a black woman with an afro that just refuses to sit down.
But I know that taking care of a beautiful afro requires a lot of work, patience, love and time. Imbole said in her essay: “My afro is now bigger than it’s ever been. I keep growing it, despite the fact that, with every added inch, the challenge of managing it multiplies.” I totally agree with Imbole. With natural hair, as the length increases, so does the work required to maintain it. And it is usually at this point when many women decide that the struggle is not worth it, and they decide to go back to relaxing their hair. Like I said at the beginning of this article, I do not have anything against women with relaxed hair; I believe every woman should do what she wants with her hair without being judged for it. But to the girl or woman who is pulling her hair and seriously contemplating relaxing her hair just to get away from the stress of taking care of it, this is my advice: Give your hair one more day, and after that, give it another day. Who knows, you may change your mind…
I end my story with this excerpt from Imbolo’s essay: “Perhaps I’ll cut off my hair again one of these days (to try a new style, or just because I feel like it). But, for now, just like my beloved homeland, it reminds me that, within a tangled, twisted, knotty situation, beauty resides.”
Beauty resides in your natural hair. Love on it. Fight for it.
It is worth it.
Share your own natural hair journey in the comments below.
References:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s interview with The Cut magazine: http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/12/chimamanda-adichie-on-black-hair-and-redefining-beauty.html
Imbole Mbue: With every inch, the challenge multiples: me and my afro. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/feb/04/every-inch-challenge-multiplies-afro-imbolo-mbue-hair-cameroon