Natural hair blog that celebrates the positive expression of positive black aesthetics. Don't forget to visit our natural hair directory, and shoppe.
herStory
Lady Kinnks is the main contributor, but we frequently have guests like you to share your natural hair experience.
I had the pleasure of co-planning a natural hair gathering with Kenyata and Malaka . Can you belive we had over 80+ people show up for hair fellowship? Read more about her story…
I am not my hair.
Corny, right? But honestly I’ve never been the person who put too much thought into hair. In fact I often refer to it as a completely separate entity. I, Malaka, spent an hour curling her hair only for her hair to decide that it rather be flipped. Go figure. I give a huge deal of credit to my mother for me and my sister’s attitude toward our hair. It was always “just hair” nothing that was super serious. I watched my mom over the years go from jheri curled to long and relaxed to short and relaxed to all of a sudden one day it was just gone. She went to her stylist at the time and demanded that it all be cut off. I was sort of taken back by it. Though it was “just hair” that would grow back should she want it to it was gone. All of her features that seemed small and delicate before were now big and while still beautiful it was…different. I was in middle school at the time and I remember telling a friend that I would “NEVER cut all my hair off like that.” And for the most part I didn’t. I, like my mother went from one crazy hairstyle to the next. Long and stick straight, shaggy cuts, blunt bobs, cherry cola red (I fought hard for that one in middle school) and I would tell everyone who asked why I did whatever to it that it was just hair, it’ll grow back if it doesn’t I’ll just go buy some. It always grew back thank God.
Then after high school and one semester away in college I got sick. The doctors didn’t really know what was going on but I was in pain and I was stressed and my hair that I didn’t pay much attention to started falling out. Doctor after doctor test after test for almost 2 years and finally an answer, I have Fibromyalgia. Fibromy-what?! I got all the books and websites and everything I could find and wow yeah that was me. I had an answer but now what? Oh here are some pills and the insomnia that’ll ease up eventually and the near constant pain you should try exercising that’ll help. Yeah…I can barely get out bed and you want me to do what?
My hair texture is dry and curly, when I was younger my mom would use African Pride and of course my hair was healthy and long. Low and behold when I got the privilege of doing my own hair I broke it all off. Using everything from Pink Moisture and World of curls I was greasy as hell, like that soul glow commercial from, “Coming back to America”!
Then when I started working I save up enough money to start getting my hair straighten and colored every two weeks, but that was a waste of money for me as my scarf I use to wrap my hair with always gave me migraines and my hair curled up the same day from taking a shower.
Read More
This week’s inspiraton is not a music video, but a news story.
Its so weird hearing about your dirty laundry on the news like featured on our past post I can’t Sweat My Hair Out. Yeah - us Black women have some issues of self hatred, but we’re working on it…dang! It is however, an amazing feeling to know our issues are American issues. They are no longer just discussed in the privacy of our home, but on movie screens and late night news. There is no where to hide!!!
After watching Rochelle Ritchie’s story on Going Natural (video posted below) my eyes filled up with tears . This video, unlike Good Hair didn’t just talk about our imperfections, but provided a solutions… I won’t ruin the story for you…just watch below…
Read More
From the humid and lovely city of Houston, Texas I am Aaronni. Growing up I begged my mother for a perm from the age of 6-9. She would constantly tell me “Aaronni your hair is beautiful, you don’t need a perm.” But as a girl who was the ONLY girl in school with out a perm, I refused to believe her. So at the age of 9 I got my first perm and I loved it…for a while.
Fast forward to March 2009.
Read More
I guess my natural hair “journey” started long before I decided to go natural. Before I went natural, I never recall seeing a lot of women with natural hair besides those with locs. So I associated “natural hair” with locs, and locs just wasn’t something I was interested in for myself. Growing up I always wanted long hair, and I had finally gotten long hair, but it was still very boring. I hated going to salons because I hated sitting under a dryer for hours, and just sitting in a salon for hours made me crazy. I would style and relax my own hair at home, and only went to the salon every 3-6 months to get my ends trimmed. I had the same clique experience most of us had growing up, being told that kinky, thick, “nappy” hair was “bad” and wavy or straight hair was “good”. Not only was my hair “nappy”, but my hair is very, very thick. I would get my hair pressed until I was old enough to get a “kiddy perm” – either way my scalp was getting burned. I started developing seborrheic eczema on my scalp as a pre-teen, and began getting my hair pressed at the recommendation of my dermatologist, along with using cortisone ointments almost daily. One pool party sent me back home begging my mom to let me get a relaxer again. Since my eczema was under control, she said okay and I went back to relaxing my hair and applying the cortisone ointment from that point on. I tried the Toni Braxton cut in my junior year of high school (1995), and hated it, so it was my mission to just grow my hair as long as I could. Fast forward to adulthood….
In June 2008, my husband and I became regulars at local outdoor concert series that features Old School R&B, NeoSoul, Hip-Hop and Jazz artists, and drew a mostly Black audience. As I would sit in my lawn chair, just people-watching, I would notice women with natural hair in a variety of lengths, colors and styles. And I was in awe – just loving the fact that there were so many possibilities with natural hair. But me, I was stuck with my relaxed hair that quite honestly I had gotten bored with. So that sparked my interest and curiosity. I would spend the entire time pointing out hairstyles to my husband – “Do you like that? What about her hair? Do you think that would look cute on me?” He told me that he liked the natural styles, but that what men really find attractive about a woman is her confidence. As a man, he could care less what hairstyle I had, as long as it was neat, clean, and I felt good about it. That was just what I needed to really start looking into it.
Read More
