It was after Imus’s remarks about nappy hair that I decided to forego the extensions that my hairdresser added to my “natural” ’do to provide increased length and volume. Actually, decided is not exactly accurate. I had an appointment for a Saturday morning to get my usual twists with extensions added. On Friday night, after I had removed the current crop of added human hair, my hairdresser called and announced that she was overbooked and couldn’t see me until Monday. I had only two options: stay in all weekend or give myself a hairdo. I washed and braided my hair that evening. The next morning, I unbraided my hair into a decidedly nappy afro.
I called my sister. “I have a fro. I think that I like it, but I need input. Can I come over?”
My sister has a glorious head of locks and I trusted her to tell me true as to whether I was rocking the fro or just delusional.
When I walked in, she gave me her emphatic approval of my new/old style. Since then, I’ve been sporting truly natural hair with no extensions. I’ve rediscovered my own hair.
My first adventure in natural hair occurred when I was in the ninth grade and had gym class three days a week. The gym teacher was a tall, lean woman with close-cropped hair and the demeanor of an army drill sergeant. The first day of gym class, I was consumed with the dread of the chronically fat child, certain that I was about to embark on a thrice-weekly cycle of humiliation and physical torture. Our gym clothes were royal blue, one-piece, belted jump suits. For added humiliation, the legs ended about mid-thigh. I looked like a blue dumpling wearing a belt.
Prior to my enrollment in gym class, my mother would hard press my hair every two weeks. The goal of a hard press is to straighten out the natural curl and kink of black hair. In 1969, the primary tools in this operation consisted of a fine tooth iron comb, hair pomade, a stove, and your mother.
Every other Saturday, after washing my hair, I’d sit in a kitchen chair and watch my mother heat up the metal comb on the stove. Trying desperately to adhere to her admonishments of, “Hold still,” I’d close my eyes as I felt the heat approaching my head. My mother was quite skillful with the straightening comb, and unlike some of my friends, I bear no lasting scars from this beauty ritual. So although I wasn’t particularly fond of having burning heat applied to my head on a regular basis, I had adjusted reasonably well to the process over the years, until gym class.
The worst enemy of pressed hair is moisture—water, humidity, steam, or sweat. The ritual of gym class involved a lot of running and a lot of sweating, followed by a hot shower before getting dressed again in our regular clothes. The sweating, ably aided by the hot shower, would undo all of my mother’s careful work and my hair would revert to its natural state of kinks and bends.
At first, my mother would attempt to repair the damage with another session with the straightening comb, but she soon grew tired of the every-other-night beauty ritual.
“You are old enough to straighten your own hair. When I was half your age, I not only did my own hair but I straightened your grandmother’s hair and all of my sisters’ hair too!”
I tried; I really did, but I couldn’t seem to master the technique. If the comb wasn’t hot enough, the grease wouldn’t melt and the hair wouldn’t get straight; if it was too hot, the grease burned my scalp and my hair! My head was a mix of nappy clumps of grease-laden hair and bald spots.
Salvation came my way on the evening news. There was Angela Davis in all her natural glory, with a fro like a halo around her head. In an instant, I knew what to do. That Friday night, I washed and sectioned my hair, sprayed each section with Afro Sheen, and braided it tightly. The next morning, I carefully loosened each braid and fluffed my hair with my new tool, the afro pick. My halo wasn’t nearly as magnificent as Angela Davis’s, but it had clear potential.
