Basic Information

Last Relaxer: September 2010

Big Chop Date: October 2010

Where are you from: Originally from Houston but currently residing in Atlanta.

Introduction

One of the newest members of the community gave me the opportunity to chat with her. NaturalArtMaven is striving for a healthier lifestyle and she is now focusing on healthy natural hair.

Memories and Experiences

What are your earliest memories about your natural hair, your experience with a relaxer and going natural?

I really don’t remember a whole lot about my natural hair from when I was a child.  My mother relaxed my hair when I was five.  What I remember about my hair is negative.  I remember that washing and “doing” my hair took all day on Sunday (even after I was relaxed, it took a long time), it hurt…a lot and all people talked about was how thick it was.

So from your experience, having thick hair was seen as negative?

I grew up thinking that thick hair was a curse or something bad.  Any time my hair was loose, women always remarked about how thick it was.  “Whoa, that child has some thick hair!”  “Oh, my!  Where did you get all of that thick hair from, child?”  The way they looked at me and shook their heads when they said this, made me think that my hair was bad.  I was and still am, very tender headed and this made it an extra challenge for anyone to do my hair.  I have always hated going to the salon, because stylists are so rough and I always leave with a headache.  I learned to do my own hair to include coloring, trimming and relaxing, in high school so that I could avoid the salon.

My mom is not very skilled with doing hair; she can’t even do her own.  My mom gets her hair done religiously every week.  She says she doesn’t know how to do hair because she grew up in a family with beauticians and barbers and never had to do her own hair.  Someone has always done her hair for her all of her life.  So when I came along with this thick mass of hair and had the nerve to be tender headed, it was too much for her.  I remember that I hated having to wear 5,001 ponytails because the barrettes on the end used to swing and hit me in the eye when I would play with my friends.  Plus, none of my friends wore their hair plaited all of the time.  My friends had silky, straight, flowing hair.  My hair was long, but it didn’t do what theirs did.  I wanted to wear ONE ponytail in the back of my head that swung back and forth when I walked down the hall at school.  I grew up in a mixed environment, with Caucasians, Hispanics, Asians and Eastern Indians at my school.

Attending a mixed school – is there anything that your parents could have told you to make you happy with your hair?

I don’t think so.  Because of the environment that I grew up in, I think I truly grew up color-blind.  I did not understand that my hair was different because of my race.  My mom did tell me that “white” people washed their hair every day because it got oily, but that our hair was dry, so we put oil in it.  She also told me that when they “permed” their hair, it got curly and when we did it, it made our hair straight.  I think after that I was on a quest to find the curly perm.  Lol!  I remember asking once, if I got their perm, would I have curly hair. I truly did not understand what my hair was actually like and why it was being straightened.  I thought it was so it would be less thick.  I was truly fascinated when I did the BC and I still am.  I have serious hand in hair syndrome, and my hair is more kinky than curly.

Bye Bye Press and Curl, Hello Perm!

I had my hair straightened with a pressing comb once, and it was disastrous.  After hours of tears and a burn to the forehead, I ruined the press later that evening when I took my bath.  No one told me you couldn’t get it wet and that particular evening I decided to teach myself how to swim…in the bathtub.  My mom walked in the moment I was coming up from the water.  If looks could kill, this interview would be my eulogy. After the experience, my mom told me I was getting a “perm.”

I was excited to get a “perm” because my mom said that I would be able to wear ONE ponytail.  She still plaited my hair up all of the time and I was never allowed to wear my hair loose, but I went from 5,001 ponytails to 2,500.  That was a success as far as I was concerned, until my hair started to break off.  By fifth grade, my mom decided that she was no longer going to do my hair and turned those duties over to me.  I didn’t know how to care for my hair and always tried to emulate the styles of my non-black friends at school, which lead to breakage.  I would shampoo and not use conditioner (I didn’t even know what it was for), pull my hair back with rubber bands on my wet hair, I used a boar’s head bristle brush to comb/detangle my matted hair after shampooing and swimming everyday and pulled a lot of hair out as well (once I learned to swim, you couldn’t keep me out of the pool).  Every time I went for a re-touch, my mom’s stylist was chopping off more and more hair.  One day I complained, “how come you’re always chopping off my hair?”  She explained that it was damaged and asked me how I was caring for my hair.  She is the reason I started using a wide tooth comb and started using scrunchies instead of office rubber bands.

Trial and Error

Throughout the years, I learned to care for my hair myself through trial and error.  I’ve had chemical burns from stylist’s, I even had a friend wash out my relaxer with conditioner and not the neutralizing shampoo so it was in my hair for a day before I realized what had happened.  My hair has fallen out in clumps, been dry, brittle and ragged and “healthy” and long.  I feel like I have been through the whole gamut of hair woes and triumphs.  The one thing I always wanted, but couldn’t seem to obtain was curls.  Funny, I know, because it is naturally kinky curly.

There was a model that used to be in the Juicy Fruit commercials that had what I now know is natural hair.  I loved her hair and took a picture of her to my mom’s stylist to see if she could make my hair like hers.  She told me she had “good hair” and that I could achieve that look with a perm set on mini rods, but that she didn’t know how to do that.  I went to a stylist at my church and she told me that she had never heard of that but could give me a wash and set on the small perm rods.  I asked her if she would do it, but she refused because she said I wouldn’t like it.  She said that it would look like I had a little afro.  The idea intrigued me and I asked her to do it anyway, but she said no.  Later in college, I used to do what I now know is a “Bantu knot-out” to try to make my hair look like Jill Scott.  If only I had known then what I know now!

Mommy, Help!

Of course hindsight is 20/20. Knowing what you know now, what are some things you wished your mom would have told you about caring for your hair?

Honestly, she did not tell me anything at all.  She would buy me any tools I asked for to care for it, but she never gave me any instruction.  I believe that this is because, she didn’t and still doesn’t know how to care for hair.  She does not know how to care for her own hair, so she could not tell me how to care for mine.  The only thing our hair has in common is the length factor.  Her hair grows fast and long as well.

I wished that there had been someone that could have explained when the hair duties were turned over to me, the structure of hair and general requirements for how to care for it.  There were times that I would use a bar of soap to wash it, because I assumed that what was good for my body was good for my hair.  I never started tying my hair down at night and protecting it until I went to boarding school my junior year of high school.  Living in a dorm with other girls, taught me a lot about how to care for my hair and how to be a female in general (I have all brothers and no female cousins my age).

The turning point came for me two years ago when I decided to change my lifestyle to live a healthier one.  I started eating better and exercising.  I come from a family of vegetarians, vegans, herbalists, etc so living a more natural lifestyle is not completely foreign to me, but I had gotten away from it and gotten really fat. Last fall, it hit me that if I didn’t want to put chemicals in my body and I watched what I put in my body, why would I put chemicals in my hair and not watch what went on my body?  At that moment, I decided to go natural and started to research it.  Wow, I was shocked and excited to find the wealth of knowledge that is online!

What Were You Taught?

Growing up, what types of things were instilled in you about your natural hair?

That it was bad because it was so thick.  I was blessed and cursed.  I had long hair, but it was thick and thick was bad.

At the point when you went to the stylist to have your hair like the girl in the commercial, did you think that perms made you have “good hair”?

No, I considered “good hair” to be like Tia & Tamara Mowry, which looked like the girl from the Juicy Fruit commercials.  The curly hair that they had was what I was trying to achieve.  I assumed that they were mixed and even though the girl in the Juicy Fruit commercial was brown skinned, I assumed she must be mixed too.  Curly hair (type 3-4a) is what I thought was “good hair.”  I also considered thin hair to be “good hair” as well.

On my mother’s side, everyone has long, but thin, fine hair.  My hair was coarse and thick, or at least that is what I thought because that is what they told me.  My hair is not neccessarily coarse.  I have a variety of textures from fine to thick strands and coarse strands at the temples.  My hair is kinky-curly because I have patches of fine curls in the back, kinky hair at the crown and temples, and thick coils on top and everywhere else.  My head is like a kinky-curly patchwork quilt.

On my father’s side, he and my grandmother have very thick, very coarse hair that grows very slowly. It seemed as if it was deemed as “bad hair” and because my hair was more like theirs, in terms of thickness, I thought I had bad hair.  A relaxer is all that I have known, so I never considered it to make my hair good or bad.  In fact, I was always envied and complimented on my hair because of the length and how fast it would grow.  Whenever someone touched it or when I went to the salon and people realized how much hair I had is when I felt negativity.  So I equated having thick hair or so much hair as being what was bad.  I used to wish for thinner hair.  Weird, I know.

In your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine that you would one day shave all of your hair off?

Lol, no.  I’ve always thought that I have a really big head.  Hats never fit and I have a hard time buying jackets with hoods.  I usually have to buy a men’s size if I want it to actually cover my head.  About four years ago I cut all of my hair into a short hair cut and instantly decided to grow it back the next day.  My face was too big!  It was about 2” relaxed and I hated it.  I wore a wig for awhile until it was a little longer.  I grew it out some and then had it cut again into an asymmetrical style that suited my face better.  I would never think I would completely cut it all off and rock a Caesar.

Why not transition, big chopping is so drastic? Weren’t you concerned about what others would think about your new look?

I’ve kind of come into my own over the last couple of years and I didn’t care what anyone else thought.  I was doing this for me and my health and that is what was important to me.  I can’t live for others.  I’m also very impatient and some what impulsive. I decided to go natural about two weeks or so after I had gotten a relaxer.  My hair grows pretty quickly, so I figured I would have enough hair to big chop in a couple of weeks.  The top of my head grows slower than the rest of my hair, so I just needed to wait until it grew out some more.  The day of the big chop, my stylist was not at her shop.  I called her and told her that I was cutting my hair and I needed her to recommend someone who could cut it “rit now!”  She wanted me to wait until she could do it, but I was like “no.”  I told her to recommend someone that wouldn’t jack me “’cause my hair has to go tonight.”  I threatened that if she didn’t do so, I would go home and do it myself and then she would have to fix my jacked up dome.  Lol.  I was afraid that if I waited, I would chicken out.  I had spent all day psyching myself up to do it.  When I walked into the salon and told the stylist that I wanted her to cut off all of the “relaxed” hair, she looked through my hair and said, “but you will look like a man!”  I told her as long as I didn’t leave with a bald fade, I was good.  I told her I expected it to be short like a Caesar with possibly tapered sides.  She was so scared to cut it that she cut it an inch at a time just in case I changed my mind.  I kept telling her just get the clippers and shear it off!  She even cut it into a short style and asked me how I liked it.  I told her it’s cute, but that’s not what I came here for.  Cut it ALL off.  I don’t want any relaxer left.  Please do what I ask.  When she was done, I was completely in awe and fascinated.  I actually thought it was really cute and complimented my face.  I felt liberated and free.  I was so ecstatic and to her relief, I practically danced out of the shop.  She left a little bit of relaxer in the front as “spikes” because I didn’t have enough new growth.  I cut those spikes off within two weeks.  Nothing was going to stop me from being completely relaxer free.  I liked the cut so much that I kept it up for a couple months before actually starting to grow it out.

Sterotypes About Short Hair and Women

Short hair and women comes with a host of negative stereotypes, the main one is that short hair is not feminine as the stylist felt compelled to inform you of. Tell us your thoughts about this stereotype and how do you keep it feminine while rocking the short hair style?

Well, from my experience with my ultra short cut, I would say that it made me look edgier and perhaps more attractive. Many of my male friends told me that I should keep the cut; it was cute and sexy.  Men were stopping me in the grocery store, on the street and seemingly wherever I went just to compliment me. If the time allowed, they asked for my number.  Talk about a confidence booster!  It was always so unexpected and that just made it even better.  Once while shopping on the frozen foods aisle at the grocery store, a man walked by and literally stopped in his tracks and blurted out “You’re beautiful!”  My boyfriend loved it as well and wanted me to keep my hair cut short.

I’m not much of a make-up wearer, but once I big chopped to a brush cut, I made sure I kept my eyebrows on point; keeping them arched.  Other than that and huge earrings, especially on bad hair days, that is all I have done.

Some may think that if you have a brush cut or a Caesar Cut there is no need for products. What do you think and what type of products do you currently use?

The first couple of weeks I did experiment with products to define the curl.  Eco-Styler did the best job, but I’ve never really been a fan of gel and I hate crunchy hair.  It also made my scalp itch really bad and the scratching caused flakes.  For the most part, I did not use products to “style” or “define” my hair and I still don’t.  I’m a simple gal, and I don’t like a lot of steps.  My main concern was for healthy hair.  I knew the hair I had then would become my ends later so I wanted to take care of them.  My first few months were spent experimenting and getting to know my hair.  I struggle with keeping it moisturized and went through a lot of bad hair days.  My regimen is to shampoo every week or week and a half (currently liquefied black soap that I make), deep condition with a homemade concoction and spray a leave-in (currently a variation of the Kimmaytube leave in).  I twist my hair with a shea butter/cupuaçu whip that I make.  My hair hates shea butter in any form except in this mix that I initially made for my body.

What is the best advice you have received about your natural hair and your natural hair journey?

Listen to your hair, it will tell you what it needs, likes and doesn’t like.  Find a routine that works for you and stick to it.  Not everyone’s hair is the same, even if it is the same hair “type.”  What someone else does may not necessarily work for you and vice versa.  Sticking to what is working will save you time, money and frustration.

Natural Art Maven, thank you for taking the time to share your story and your natural hair experience with the community. I have enjoyed reading your story and I look forward to chatting more with you in the community.