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.
On December 30, 2004 I began the process of locing my hair. Before that day I had been considering the drastic change from head full of perm to a head full of locs.
Growing up I was always told by my grandmother that “your hair is your beauty” and for her that meant long straight permed hair down your back. Growing up my home was filled with women and each one of them in my opinion was addicted to the perm. Since the age of six, every six weeks or so my mother and I would make the hour long trip to New York from Connecticut to visit what was known to us as the queen of hair dressers. I can remember watching as she would mix this white cream and then apply it to my mother’s hair and an hour later she would walk out with nice straight bouncing hair and a huge smile on her face. I remember wanting the same feeling and wanting that lovely bounce. I thought that was the only way your hair should look. I begged and begged my mother at the age of ten to perm my hair, eventually she gave in and I was introduced to the world of not only bouncing straight hair but a burning scalp to go with it. So from the age of ten to the age of nineteen I was what I now know as addicted to the feeling and look of what the perm did to me and my self image.Read More
Candi Fulcher
As a young child, I had no frame of reference for “other.” Where I grew up everyone was like me, they played outside till the street lights came on, got their hair pressed in the kitchen for church on Sundays, and when playing tag tried their hardest not to be it. But in the second grade, I learned what “other” was and I was it.
In second grade, my family moved to a predominately white neighborhood, where I was one of five Black students in my school. While I focused on how different everyone acted, they were focused on how different I appeared. For my peers the largest difference was not my skin but my hair. They were amazed by my versatility. They could not understand that in one month’s time, I would have braids, twist and even hair as long and as straight as theirs.
I stopped relaxing my hair in January of 2004. It was after I had to take a semester off from school because I couldn’t pay the tuition. I don’t know if it was because my hair was the only thing I had control of at the time or if I just didn’t feel like dealing with it; but which ever it was going natural was the best thing I’ve ever done.
You never realize how important something like hair is, how it shapes who you are, how much it affects your self esteem until you have taken your hair out of its “comfort zone”. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a perm, and I’ve never had hair issues or I never thought I had hair issues. No one made fun of me because my hair was “nappy” or “kinky”. If anything I never heard these words in reference to my hair until I went natural. I gradually heard these things and being Ghanaian I heard other things that black culture may not be so privy to. For instance my aunt telling me I look like a Gollywog or Motalewaa -a Gollywog is similar to a gremlin or troll in African culture and Motalewaa is equivalent to the folk tale Americans know as Rumpelstiltskin. Read More
It was to the point that, if my hair was not done, I wasn’t going to school. Go out in public in-between micro braids, NEVER! What would people say if they saw how short and nappy my hair was? I would look like a slave.
Extreme, of course not—ask any black girl! My close friend thought I was crazy. “Get over your self,” she rudely yelled, “it is just hair”! Her annoyance made me question my concerns. How could she understand? SHE was Black and Puerto Rican. She had good hair, she could wet her hair, apply gel and look flawless. All the boys showed their interest. I on the other hand needed my hair to be fixed, it grew-in broken.Read More
