Am I my hair, is my hair me…
I was born with curls, yes curls, a brown girl born with a head full of curls, and I cannot tell you how much I heard about these curls as a young black girl coming of age in the 60’s. Good hair, blah, blah, blah…then as a teenager, younger woman it was ‘What are you mixed with…’ Being sassy-mouthed I would usually say something such as, ‘Blood, sweat and tears…’ Hee, hee…
At about 14, I cut my hair, wanted an afro, and I knew that the longer my hair was the wavier it was, not so curly, so cutting it made it a curly fro…for the next, oh I don’t know, give or take a few years my hair was a couple of curly inches, I loved it like that, wash and go…every now and then I would run into those who wanted to debate whether or not I had a ‘Geri Curl’…no I didn’t, wanted to say, Geri had nothing to do with this, but chose not to, because I didn’t want to piss anyone off, folk are made sensitive about hair, I recall being in Hawaii and a woman telling me I was a curly headed liar, she thought I was secretly ‘geri-curling my hair, I was shocked that I made her so mad…very recently as a 50ish woman I was told by someone else that someone else told them that I was faking, yes faking, having good hair because it was not possible to be black and have hair like that, I kid you not this is true, as if I sat up every night, plastering curls on my head to fake out the world…ummph ummph ummph…
I know what it is, I am brown skinned, not dark, not light, just brown and people have been conditioned to think that only light-skinned black folk can have hair like mine because they are throw-back house Negros or something, obviously they have never met people from Somalia, but I digress…any who…
About a month ago, I decided that I was going to lock my hair, it was something I had wavered about for the past few years but had never done, for several years I had allowed my hair to grow past my shoulders and wore it pinned up mostly, then I cut it all off and wore it au naturel, now that it has grown several inches again, I was going to get an authentic Black hairdo…Lord help me, well I went and I paid and the beautician locked it…I went home, did everything she told me and within two days, most of my sad little locks had defiantly become curls once again, my dominant curls had overcome my recessive locks…for about two minutes I was disappointed, and I must confess it was due to the 85 dollars I had spent and not the locks, I must confess that once was my hair was locked I didn’t look like me any longer, my sons ranted and raved, thought it was the business, my husband and granddaughter looked at me as if they weren’t sure who I was, and I felt weird…so not myself…then duh, it occurred to me…God had made me a curly haired girl when my hair was short and a wavy haired girl when I my hair was longer and that since I was as Black as I could be, that made my hair authentically Black Hair…hellooooo….
I am not my hair, but my hair is part of me…
Angelia
