I’ve noticed lately that more and more black women in their twenties are turning to natural hair. Some even say that the internet is fueling a natural hair movement. Case in point: June 1st marked Natural Hair day on Twitter and a concerted effort to make #naturalhair a trending topic. I was recently was talking with Z&A contributor Arielle Loren who noted that many women she knew decided to on the big chop during college. And last month, Jamila Reddy, who blogs at College Curlies, wrote a helpful post for curly naturals. It got me thinking about why I went natural in the first place.
Like many, I also went natural in college. I know why I remain natural (it’s easier, cheaper, I like playing with the coils) but it’s a little harder to remember why I did it. I think it was college angst meets frustration meets inability to afford relaxers. What finally pushed me over the edge was jet lag from a big trip to China (don’t ask why…). For many who decide to go natural, the internet is the best resource. Websites like Motown Girl gave me the courage to take the plunge. Here’s a small sample of women explaining why they went natural:
- Jennae Petersen,Green Your Decor: “There are a lot of things I’m still working to change about my lifestyle to make it greener…. As I moved further and further toward a greener lifestyle, I started feeling guilty about what I was doing to my hair. I knew my bi-monthly relaxer wasn’t good for me or the environment when I washed it down the drain.”
- Patricia Gaines, Nappturality.Com: “Back in early 2001, when I first stopped relaxing my hair it wasn’t done out of some sudden sense of pride and desire to go natural. It was done because I had a “chemical crew cut”. A relaxer had broken my hair off. As a person who revelled in having long, straight hair (my own) I was devastated. Unable to wear my hair short, I first went to wigs, then extensions and weave, in an attempt to preserve what I thought made me beautiful.”
- Solange Knowles, via twitter:
- Chrisette Michele via afrobella: “My hair and I had a really bad argument. She was being sprayed with alcohol and burnt with irons… She was being over processed and yanked and pulled by weave strings and suffocated by glue. She told me if I didn’t straighten up and fly right that she was leaving.”
- Nik,CurlyNikki.com: “One night, my boyfriend sat me down and told me that he’d been observing me during our two years together, and that my mood seemed to be directly correlated with the current condition, or look of my hair…In the words of TLC, I felt ‘unpretty’ when my hair wasn’t perfectly straight. And since my hair doesn’t grow out of my scalp that way, I would always be unhappy and somewhat insecure until I learned to accept and love my hair for what it was MEANT to do.”
- Tonya,New Naturalista: “I went natural back in September because I was just tired. Tired of the chemicals, the long waits at the hair salon, the serious and painful health implications of relaxing my hair every few weeks. It was also about rediscovering what was never shown to me. Unlike our mothers and fathers, most black women my age were “shielded” from our natural hair texture, pressing or relaxing like clockwork in an effort to make our coils manageable.”
- Chris Tia, author of Thank God I’m Natural: “It had to be money and time. Wearing my relaxed hair had become a healthy obsession. It didn’t make sense to me to spend that much money and time on something so temporary.”
- Shelly Davis of kinky-curly.com via afrouniquelyyou: “Janet Jackson’s album cover for Velvet Rope. I loved her curly style and wondered if mine would do the same if I stopped relaxing.”
The best part? We do it for so many different reasons: to confront appearance and image issues, for the environment, for the savings. I’ve been natural for more than three years now myself and, interestingly, for most of that time, I’ve never tried to convince others to try it. For the past year though, I’ve been trying to get my little sister on the bandwagon. Still, it’s at her own time, if she chooses. There’s no need to be, as one blog commenter put it, a “natural nazi.”
