Good Hair

I just watched “Good Hair” a documentary made by Chris Rock about Black women and their hair. Being graced with mixed chick hair which is a hybrid of the best of both black and white hair I have always flaunted and underappreciated my locks. Duality at its best, because growing up my mother would compare our nappy just out of bed hair to a “sheep’s behind” which from a child’s perspective is rightly disgusting, matted and full of shit! Now as an adult who is of a fine vintage (older) whose hair has started to thin and yet is still stunning by “good hair” terms I never fully got(understood) how blessed I am, till tonight. I get to be athletic and wild and wet and full throttle knowing if it (my hair) gets wet, I will survive in terms of good looks, because by the time it dries my "good hair" will “naturally” behave. It will flounce back into something pretty.
This is HUGE. This is the difference...being chosen. I kid when I write this I am no more chosen then the most nappy headed women but by social pressures I am just damn lucky. Lucky because I don't spend any money making my hair do weird stuff just to be pretty. I luckily don't have to have foreign hair on my head either. It feels like a nasty stinky sweater that is sewn into tight painful corn rows. Torture that is expensive and itchy. In fact I used to torture it with weaves and chemicals and straightening devices that were medieval. Today I am not so stupid or vain or driven to be “white “stylistically. I am not white and I will never be white and I have lost the race trying to be. Having said this I get to be me and it’s been pretty fabulous and I have been blessed by “good hair” or hair that isn’t too much expense or hassle. I will occasionally bump it with some smoother curls with my curling iron. Yes, I do curl my curly hair so that some of my curls fall the way I want but as a rule or compared with most women of color or not of color my hair is easy and free swinging, and inexpensive, Oooh la la.
I guess I should thank the lucky star I was born under. I will right now…Thank you hair genie! Once when I was visiting a friend who was working with Victoria Secret, I joined him at an editing session with the head honchos and I had decided to straighten for the day my hair. Sitting there an executive, who was a woman not so subtly, ran her hands through my hair to see if I had tracks, she tried to play it off that she was checking for texture, but that bitch was looking for tracks and I knew it. It was like being called the N word. I was appalled and immediately disliked her and found myself leaving the room miffed and exploited. Still I had pleasure knowing she didn’t find one single track. I was au natural…

One day I may be bald who knows? Life has a fabulous way of testing us. We never do know what will happen. I will wear my head as proudly as I wear this full head of luscious curls. I tell you I tried to wear my gray (lots of it) but everyone including myself thought I looked tired. Ha…I did I looked very tired and it sort of looked fake. So that transition will have to wait maybe my sixtieth Birthday or something. Till then I will parade my locks as close to natural as possible excluding my coloring the grey out (not so natural) and I will thank my lucky stars for being graced with this hair. It has been kind and it has made my life very good. Crazy that hair can be such a hot topic. I pray every sister gets perspective and gets off the weave “pipe” and the chemical addiction (relaxer) I pray that we each embrace our nappy real gorgeous different self.
It’s uniquely us…to be so nappy and so different. It’s time to be naturally curly centric and happy about it.