Natural Hair

So, I've been meaning to document my hair journey and hair state of mind for a while. In September 2010, I decided to cut my hair. I finally gave in to the urge after a long time of wanting to cut it but not being bold enough to. (see this post from 2010)

After getting over the initial shock, I loovved my short hair!

....but after a while I started missing my hair and just let it grow back.

I had initially planned to do a rihanna type mushroom cut when it grew back but somehow I got into this natural business. I have a couple of friends, one of who is Michelle, who has been natural  for years (and has a really cool natural hair blog) and they along with Solange, numerous youTubers and bloggers got me to consider going natural.

So, I played with my TWA for a bit. This was fun and frustrating at the same time because most of the time I didn't know what to do with it but I got excited everytime I found something that worked.

Right now my hair has grown much longer and fuller and I don't know what to do to it anymore. When I tell my natural friends this, they're like "Dami noo, don't quit! you're using the wrong conditioner/oil/pre poo..." I have been overwhelmed by the amount of product you need to try out as a natural head. In the beginning I was so ready to go out and buy after seeing like 100 YouTube videos, I was convinced I knew all I needed to. I went out and got some Shea butter from Nigeria, coconut oil, natural this, natural that. But after a couple of months I am convinced they cannot work on my super hard and unruly hair and I think I give up.

I read DatfunkyFro's blog (which is really cool by the way) and I came across this post. I am definitely not natural in my head yet. I still imagine myself with sleek relaxed hair and as much as I loove how beautiful natural hair can look, I might have to accept that my hair will never look like that and even if it could, I will always lust after sleek hair and being able to leave my hair out in a weavee!

I will probably cut my hair again at some point and I might not relax it just yet but the thing with hair is I think people take it too seriously with #teamnatural/short hair Vs #teamweave/relaxed hair. As long as you keep your healthy, I don't see a problem. Too much of everything isnt good, so obvs don't over relax, over-straighten, over-braid/weave or whatever to your hair. I'm one of the people that accepts the benefits of living in the 21st century, be that relaxers or the Internet.

At the end of the day, keep your hair healthy and rock it how you like it!

Peace, love and beautiful locks!

Beauty and the Black I

So I saw these two very sad videos posted on facebook this week.

• This is a study by two psychologists using children aged 3-7.

• And a documentary called dark girls. Its abit long but do try to watch most parts of it.

Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.

• And there was the research  published last week by Dr Kanazawa, a lecturer at the London School of Economics. He's findings were based on a survey of white, Asian, black and native American men and women who were asked to rate each other’s attractiveness based on photographs. In his article, Kanazawa wrote: "Black women are … far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women."

So, other races think black women are ugly, black men think dark skinned girls are less attractive and black dark skinned women also think dark skinned women are less attractive....!!!

Err..what hope do we have then? If nobody loves us, we ought to love ourselves first. I will put up a follow up post on this later.

But for now, dark skinned girls rise! Just because somethings are the way they are now, doesn't mean they are how they ought to be. Some profound writer wrote "We never see things the way they are, we see them the way we are".

Black is beautiful, we just need to start seeing it.