like to find more stylists who professionally care for natural hair from the initial growing-out stages to continued maintenance in hairstyling, hairkutting, and a variety of textures.
Chapter 4
What’s Hair Got To Do With It?
By Donna Britt – Columnist, Washington, DC
What hair means to us.
Even when I was a little girl, one fact seemed obvious: Even if nothing else was working - if my clothes were wrinkled or my sneakers scuffed - if my hair looked good, I looked good, too.
Most sisters would agree. When your hair falls just right - when, through some miracle, you or your stylist manages to get each curl or wave to align just so with every other - you FEEL better too. And no woman on the planet needs the uplift that comes from having great- looking hair than a black woman.
That's because any sister who has beautiful hair and knows it has arrived at a hallowed place, indeed. For generations, black women were taught to hate the hair God gave them. Decade after decade, we learned to see the springy stuff on our heads as being "too" something or other - too knotty, too kinky, too thick, too hard to control, just too damn much. In a culture that often devalues black women's wider noses, fuller lips, lush behinds and myriad skin shades, having "troublesome" hair feels like the last straw.
I mean, really. How can a woman feel beautiful if she's convinced her hair is an irredeemable mess? How can she relax and celebrate all that she is - her intelligence, her sensuality, her tenderness - if she's convinced that one vital part of her is ugly? No wonder so many black women treat their hair the way they would treat any "problem" - by fighting it with all their might.
We have fought our hair with arsenals of harsh, ineptly applied chemicals. We've attacked it with smoking combs overheated in open flames, and with blazing hot curling rods. We've tried to tame it by smearing our scalps with every imaginable oil, cream and pomade.
The battle scars of our never-ending hair wars are impossible to miss: breakage, excessive dryness, inadequate growth, even balding. So when a sister somehow makes peace with her hair, when, through proper care and nutrition, she allows her crowning glory to become a glorious crown, indeed - she feels as great as she looks.
Most black women see that as a goal worth chasing. That's why no women spend more time, effort or a larger proportion of their income on their hair than black women. We know that no day feels worse than a really bad hair day.
I learned that when I was 12 years of age. Swathed in protective plastic, I sat in an aqua vinyl chair in Emma's Salon of Beauty in Gary, Ind., filled with the anticipation I always felt at the "beauty shop." I wondered: How gorgeous would I look when this painful process was done? What transformation would I see, once the beautician - whom Mom was paying eight whole dollars to wash, dry, oil, press and curl my shoulder-length hair - was finished?
Emma, my regular hairdresser, was away, but I knew her surrogate would make me beautiful. But how? Would I look sophisticated like the Ebony magazine model with the tower of cluster curls? Haughty like the helmet-haired Diana Ross? Cute like the girls in "Seventeen?"
The stakes were higher than usual because my best friend had accompanied me to the shop. I was hoping to impress Sharon, whose wavy, down-to-there hair required no beauticians, perms or hot combs to make it flow like the Nile down her back. I fantasized that my new, grown-up hairstyle would show Sharon how great we girls who didn't have "good" hair could look. When I felt my hair being brushed toward the crown of my head and then pinned into place, I happily realized I was getting an upsweep - an elegant, Audrey Hepburn 'do.
Finally, the beautician whirled my chair around for me to look at my hair. My super-straightened hair was plastered so flat against my scalp that I looked nearly bald - except for a Ping-Pong ball-sized topknot that made my head look as enormous as Tweety Pie's.
The walk across the room - past ogling fellow customers - was the longest I'd ever taken. Then I saw Sharon, red-faced and bulgy-eyed from her efforts to keep from laughing. When our eyes met, we both lost it, nearly falling on the floor giggling. That time, at least, I could laugh. Nearly every woman has had moments when she confronted a stylist's "handiwork" and could barely keep from crying.
Like the time I got a perm guaranteed not to hurt my delicate hair. Weeks later, my stylist, examining my hair, excitedly called over three or four co-workers. "Look, you have to see this!" he exclaimed, pulling a small handful of my damaged hair out for their inspection. "See how EASILY it comes out!"
Clearly, the men and women to whom we entrust our precious hair sometimes make serious mistakes. Black hair is notoriously complex in structure; it comes in more types, textures and strengths - sometimes on a single head - than some merely competent hair professionals can handle. How often have we seen women who, disappointed by hairdresser after hairdresser, gave up and resorted to wigs, braids, scarves, hats or to just living with awful-looking hair?
Actually, less often than you'd think, hair has too much to do with how a woman sees herself, and with how she's seen by the world, for most women to throw in the shampoo towel. Black women, especially, have the most versatile hair on earth, capable of being worn straight, nappy, wavy, curled, dreaded, twisted or darn-near-bald and STILL look amazing. It's also the most challenging hair to control and maintain. Truly, black hair can be a blessing - and a curse.
How many sisters do you know who haven't fled from an unexpected rainstorm so fast that you'd think the Blair Witch was pursuing her? How many haven't fielded veiled or blunt questions from white co-workers perplexed and fascinated by our hair's endless versatility?
What sister hasn't melted into a salon chair after a long week of working, cleaning, cooking and arranging things for others, grateful to finally have someone take care of HER? Who among us hasn't, at least once, had a stylist twirl her around to see in the mirror a vision whose perfect, gorgeous 'do made not just her day, but her whole week?
On the flip side, who hasn't sat, hour after hour, waiting to be seen by an overbooked stylist in a popular salon - even though she was ON TIME for her appointment? No wonder some of us see the beauty salon as a haven as comfy as our grandma's kitchen, and others avoid it like a pot of month-old spaghetti. But salons, and our requirements of them, are changing - because WE are changing. Most African American women still straighten their hair either with chemicals or heat, and many look fabulous. But impressive numbers are embracing heat-and-chemical-free afros, twists and locks. Our recent acceptance of our hair, as-is, signals a healthy adjustment in our self-esteem, challenging centuries-old notions that nappy, knotty and natural black girl hair can't be beautiful.
Yet the emergence of natural styles that suggest that ALL hair is "good" won't end our beauty shop addiction. A survivor of hot-comb burns, bad perms and 10 hours in a hair braider's chair, I graduated to locks two years ago. I felt like a caterpillar who'd shed at least a dozen false skins, and finally emerged - not as a butterfly, but as myself. I now have a long, versatile, entirely natural style that's all my own hair that I adore - and that I have professionally groomed very few weeks.
Sure I could maintain some version of the style myself at little cost. But why would I? My "loctician" or "locologist" lets me sit back and momentarily forget ringing phones, cranky kids, a perpetually messy house and an insistent career. I chill when she has done her magic and whirls me around; I love what I see: A relaxed woman with a style she loves, whose hair feels clean, shiny and healthy. And whose soul feels the same way.
Chapter 5
Who’s Relaxing – You or Your Hair?
By Barry L. Fletcher
The truth about lye versus no-lye relaxer and application methods.
THE HISTORY