I Am Not My Hair pt.2

I was happy with the result, no more running out of the rain like a cat. My hair was now permanently straight (at least until the afro hair roots started to grow again, we in the community call this re-growth, lol). They told me that I was eligible for another relaxer after 8 weeks minimum. Then the relaxer could only be applied to the roots of the hair; the new, tough afro hair in dire need of taming. The only downside, at the time, was that you had to fork out 40 to 50 quid every 2 months. Which prompted you to buy a damn good blow dryer and take the best care of your hair possible just to make that 40 quid worth it's while. I could go up to 4 months without a relaxer because my hair was surprisingly easy; it stayed moist, it grew easily and it didn't get split ends.

I also found out that the burning was subjective; my sister told me that she didn't feel a thing when the relaxer was in her hair. What the hell? Her scalp was like concrete while mine was silk chiffon. I wasted My mother wasted a few more hundred pounds in the next 2 years on me so I could sit in the salon and burn the shit out of my scalp on a regular basis.

I think it was Christmas of 2008 when I decided that relaxing was full of shit. I mean before that I had been dabbling with the idea but it was a lot of effort to get rid of the relaxed hair. Effort involving cutting most of it off, I didn't want to think too much about that. I went to the hair salon as usual and the relaxer burned the shit out of my scalp as usual... it was f**king painful, it left f**king scabs. And I thought 'why should I ever have to put myself through that shit?', that was it, my decision was made. I just wish I made it before I went in. I could've saved my self 50 quid and some hair, lol.

The funny thing about afro hair is how much it shrinks when you wash it, literally. The hair shrinks as a reaction to water, a bit similar to they way caucasian hair curls when wet but this is more extreme for black people. When I wash my hair it shrinks so much it reminds me of primary school haircut, the one I had when I was 'fresh off the boat' from Ghana and hardly spoke any English. It's really short, lol. Nowadays we have the godsend that is the blow dryer, I can go from freakishly short hair to cute short hair ^_^. But before that, when I was in primary school my mother would braid my hair.

She used to section my hair into 6 then apply a generous amount of blue magic to my hair. It's very greasy and very heavy but it works. As she applied the magic (lol) to my hair she would comb out all the knots with a Matador; the only comb that didn't break or bend in my hair. The thing that gets me about my hair is that even after conditioning it still has knots. It hurt then and it still hurts now, but I'm getting used to it all over again. She would do this to all 6 sections then the real work began. I would get black thread ready with a knot at the end; something thick and strong enough, something that wouldn't break easily. I would give it to my mother and she would wrap it around my hair. She used as much thread as needed until the whole section of hair, from the root to the tip, was wrapped in the thread. 

The best way I can describe the end result is that it looks like six sticks glued onto my head. It's really tight and I feel like I've had an instant facelift. Literally, I feel like my eyebrows are touching my hairline. Luckily I only have to wear it for a couple of days.

So, this is how I grow my hair now. Utilising the wisdom of my ancestors ^_^. The idea makes sense when you think about it. By pulling the hair and creating that tension it forces the root to grow to relieve the stress. You get used to it, although having said that I had to take an ibruprofen the last time my mother did my hair; one side of my face was throbbing like a son of a bitch, lol. The things a girl is willing to go through for her hair.

I Am Not My Hair pt.1

India Arie, Testimony: Vol 1 Life & Relationship. It's a great album, truly. I very rarely listen to the actual words of a song, mainly because they're all the same and sometimes because I get distracted by all the hoopla. But not with this, no, I Am Not My Hair made perfect sense, it was clear, she was clear. I even like Akon on it and I DON'T LIKE AKON; it's nothing personal, I just dislike his voice. She describes the numerous processes her hair went through, all because society decided that afro hair wasn't attractive. She starts off with a presser curl, then a Jheri Curl and finally a relaxer before her hair breaks off. Not a pretty sight, trust me. There's nothing worse than the day you realise that there's a whole chunk of your hair missing all because you liked you hairband a bit too much.

Having lived with an afro all my life because I'm black (applause), I know that there are just some things you can't do to it. It may look tough because it's so bushy but it's actually very brittle. DON'T put too much heat into it, DON'T apply more than one chemical process to it at a time and DO condition like your life depended on it.

Each generation has their own schtick, we don't know when my grandmother was born because for Ghanaians, in those days, there wasn't a need to know. I suspect they were busy trying to live past the age if 5. When we went back for her funeral I saw some pictures of her in her hay-day, she had thick, lush hair and because she was having a special picture taken she wore her hair straight. I asked my mum about it and she said that she had pressed her hair with one of those old school hot combs, probably the ones that you have to heat on the stove, then she curled it with metal rollers.

My mother was born in the late 40's. I found some baby pictures of her when we went to the funeral too, but she didn't think much of her hair back then. She remarked about how tough her hair was (has always been) and how her scalp was chronically sore for one reason or the other. By her late teens she'd started relaxing it because it was an easier way of maintain the highly sort after straight hair. She had few hairstyles in the coming decades, but they revolved around faux afro wigs like the lady in the black and white photo.

She started braiding my hair for me in '95 when my sister and I first came to live with her in England. I had a boys hair cut back then. A 1cm long No.1 haircut, because in Ghana, school girls have boy's hair cuts. Don't ask me why, it's one of those unanswered questions, like why Mariah Carey decided to get a boob job. I think I first relaxed my hair the summer before Sixth Form (College), I was tired of walking around with my afro hair. I didn't know what to do with it and I stood out, mainly because of the way I wore it but partly because I was the only student in my year group that had afro hair that long.

For those who don't know, a relaxer is a chemical treatment used to straighten obstinately curly hair. The first time at the salon was an eye-opener, the hairstylist distributed the relaxer from the root right to the ends because my hair was all afro (virgin hair). I think she took about 15 minutes to get the relaxer in, I don't know the right amount of time but I know now that it's best not to dilly-dally. I hadn't washed my hair for 2 weeks in anticipation; that's not as abnormal as it may seem, not washing afro hair for that long I mean. It began to tingle as soon as she was done applying the relaxer. Several minutes passed and that tingle started to spread enough that it become an itch I wanted to scratch, desperately. I resisted the urge because the hairstylist used gloves as she applied the relaxer and I'll be damned if I was gonna stick my, unprotected, hand in my itchy head. While I was busy thinking about not scratching, the itch started to burn ever so slightly. And then it grew, the burn I mean. It brought heat on top of heat. It spread like a wildfire on my scalp, increase in coverage and intensity simultaneously. It burned like hell.