On Curls and Kinks.

This is my hair on a good day.

She is one of the great loves of my life, but for some reason, I have been unable to give her a name that is fitting enough to describe her magnificence. (If you have a name for her, please comment lol).

On a notsogood day though, my hair is unruly and sticks out in many awkward angles. I love it.

Every time I wear my hair out, which is 80% of the time, I get looks. It feels like people are not used to seeing hair that looks like that. The bolder people ask if they can touch it. I don't love that.

When I first began my natural hair journey, I did it because I was sick and tired of burning my scalp with relaxer chemicals; so sick, that I cut all my hair off and decided to start again.

I had been "relaxing" my hair since before I could remember and so I didn't really remember a time when my hair was not chemically altered to make it bone straight.

I did not know what to expect, I did not even know that I was inadvertently joining a movement, all I knew was that my relaxed hair had to go.

The longer I wear my hair like this, the more I realize how weirdly uncommon it is. It makes me sad to see that many young girls don't even know that this is how African hair -Nigerian hair- grows out.

Not long after I went natural, I began to face people who claimed that my hair was unprofessional because of the way it looked, or not made, even though I had spent hours in front of the mirror fixing it.

When I got weird looks in America, I chalked it up to racism and surmised that I would not have to deal with this nonsense in my own country. Lol. I was sooooooo wrong.

This caused me to realize that as Nigerians, we have embraced a Eurocentric standard of beauty. A standard of beauty where "good hair" or "professional hair" means straight hair, and therefore any black woman who must present herself as professional or the pinnacle of beauty must have some version of this hair that cannot naturally grow out of our strands.

At the beginning of my journey, I googled "professional hairstyles" and the search engine result showed me ALL WHITE WOMEN. On the flip side, when I googled "unprofessional hairstyles", the majority of the search results where hairstyles that showcased black hair in its original form.

This of course is changing now because black creators are intentionally putting out content that modifes this narrative, but it does not mean that the general perception has changed.

So I wear my hair out in defiance. Defiance against a system that does not accept it as normal, or beautiful, or wonderful. I wear my hair intentionally each day as my stone in the water, creating ripples. I wear my hair because it is mine, and I should be allowed to.

NB: This post is not slander against braids or weavons or even relaxed hair, and should not be perceived as that.

Thank you for reading.

Peace out.