When I started wearing my hair natural, without hot comb or chemical straightening, it felt so right for me. Key phrase: “It felt so right for me.” For the last fifteen years, I have been happy with my choice. My hair is now a little past my waist in length. My husband is quick to quote that I am, “Nappy and happy.”
My hair has become its own ministry. I’ve explained where locks are mentioned in the Bible when I’ve had my hair discussion at the beginning of the Girl Scout year with my Brownie Scouts. I have to have that discussion to get all the hair questions out of the way so we can be about Girl Scout business the rest of the year. “Is that your real hair?” “Why do you wear it like that?” “Will you ever cut it?”
It is an important discussion to have with little girls of Africanesque features. The media still tells them that those features are not considered attractive. Before disagreeing, take a look at the hair care products that are advertised on TV and in magazines. The “better” looking hair is considered soft, silky, “manageable” and straight. Even in ads for hair coloring products, the African American models most often have chemically altered hair. That and the constant fight to pull, perm, and tame the tot’s tresses gives her the implicit message that she needs to be made over—that God made some serious mistake that has to be corrected—before she faces the public. That is the concept I fight and one I take seriously as that negative message has an impact beyond hair texture for children.
My job and my hair’s job is to reinforce Pslam 139:14: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Children need to understand that God doesn’t make garbage. That includes each of them from head to toe.
A person’s choice to wear artificially straightened hair—with all the consequences that entails—is their own choice. Inevitably, I am asked about my hair. Usually Black women who may be described by one of my friends as either Tres ghetto/gauche country, will ask if it’s all mine and how I get my hair like this—as if they really don’t know. These are usually women with very hard straightened hair that is partly shellacked with gel to the scalp, bleached copper red on the ends with hard hair ribbons cascading from somewhere on top or from the side of their heads. Yes, Virginia, some people really do wear salad bowl waterfalls on their heads!
These ladies will ask, not for my answer but to make a statement, which is usually an explanation as to why they would never wear their hair locked.
