So as you know I’m in transition from relaxed to natural, so with that being said my hair styles have change. My favorite new transitioning hair style is a Bantu Not Out, which is taking sections of hair and double strand twisting and wrapping it in to a not, and in the morning I will unwrap the not and it would have a crinkle curl. This will help the relaxed hair blend with the new growth. I mainly pin it up and go about my business. I had many people give me a WTF look, and I really don’t care! for my hair style is not for them to like.
Anyway my main point of this blog entry is to speak about pure ignorance when it comes to natural hair, and African Americans and feeling inferior. Are we completely brain washed by European values and what is considered being beautiful? During and even before slavery we were deemed an animal because of our physical attributes. Resulting in many African Americans to perceive them as ugly and inferior, and still do and if you feel that you’re inferior you are easily controlled.
Malcolm X recalled his first experienced straightening his own hair: “First really big step toward self- degradation, when I endured all of that pain literally burning my flesh to have it look like a Whites man’s hair. I have joined that multitude of negro men and women in America who are [so] brain-washed into believing that the black people are ‘inferior’….that they will even violate and mutilate their God- Created bodies to try to look pretty by White standards. We hated out African characteristics. We hated our hair. We hated the shape of our nose, and the shape of our lips, the color of our skin…this is how [Whites] imprisoned us. Not just bringing us over here and making us slaves. But the image that you created of our motherland and the image that you created of our people that continent was a trap, was a prison, was a chain, and was the worst from of slavery that has ever been invented.”
It has been proven that your hair grows healthier at its natural state, ladies I want to stress that you’re putting tons of chemicals on your scalp! It has to be correlation between relaxers and health problems among African American women. But I’m not here to convince you to go natural, but to open your minds to black consciousness and that its okay to be natural, our kinks and kinky curls are just as beautiful as straight hair. For going natural is not only just a hair process but a journey of self love and pride rooted all the way back to our African ancestry.
Have an open mind, don’t judge others and there choice to go natural, as a collective let us stop looking at oneself through the ideas of others. Lastly ask questions...for knowledge kills ignorance.
X0x0,
Kitty
Anyway my main point of this blog entry is to speak about pure ignorance when it comes to natural hair, and African Americans and feeling inferior. Are we completely brain washed by European values and what is considered being beautiful? During and even before slavery we were deemed an animal because of our physical attributes. Resulting in many African Americans to perceive them as ugly and inferior, and still do and if you feel that you’re inferior you are easily controlled.
Malcolm X recalled his first experienced straightening his own hair: “First really big step toward self- degradation, when I endured all of that pain literally burning my flesh to have it look like a Whites man’s hair. I have joined that multitude of negro men and women in America who are [so] brain-washed into believing that the black people are ‘inferior’….that they will even violate and mutilate their God- Created bodies to try to look pretty by White standards. We hated out African characteristics. We hated our hair. We hated the shape of our nose, and the shape of our lips, the color of our skin…this is how [Whites] imprisoned us. Not just bringing us over here and making us slaves. But the image that you created of our motherland and the image that you created of our people that continent was a trap, was a prison, was a chain, and was the worst from of slavery that has ever been invented.”
It has been proven that your hair grows healthier at its natural state, ladies I want to stress that you’re putting tons of chemicals on your scalp! It has to be correlation between relaxers and health problems among African American women. But I’m not here to convince you to go natural, but to open your minds to black consciousness and that its okay to be natural, our kinks and kinky curls are just as beautiful as straight hair. For going natural is not only just a hair process but a journey of self love and pride rooted all the way back to our African ancestry.
Have an open mind, don’t judge others and there choice to go natural, as a collective let us stop looking at oneself through the ideas of others. Lastly ask questions...for knowledge kills ignorance.
X0x0,
Kitty
