… I had no idea how to do my hair. None. Because I always went to a beauty salon as a kid, Jesse’s Place where my hair was pressed bone straight, braided, or relaxed regularly for years. Not once that I can remember was my hair allowed to just be the way it grew out of my head.
This is from Karnythia’s post on The Angry Black Woman about Hair, Blackness, and Beauty. She’s right. Accepting natural hair on yourself or others is all “moving away from the idea that there is only one aesthetic.”
Which brings me to a point I’ve been trying to articulate for a while. Just because a person wears his or her natural, it doesn’t mean that person has accepted the idea that there is only one aesthetic. Generally natural folks are chill, so-called conscious people, but I’m pretty sure you’ve met a hooligan or two.
We are and we are not our hair. If you choose to straighten your hair chemically, that’s your choice. But let me emphasize that it’s a choice. Often, as Karnythia’s experience relates, little black girls don’t have that choice. Different from little white girls whose hairs don’t have to be ‘tamed.’ Different from little boys. Going natural, for many, is exercising the freedom to choose. Going natural, for others, is a last resort to ‘taming’.
Don’t be fooled by the outer appearances.