More Myth Madness

Nappy Hair Myth: You have to have a certain look or texture to rock you natural hair.

This is unmitigated bullshit. It never fails to baffle that black women of all shapes, sizes and descriptions feel it's cool to run around with hacked up, dried out, thinning out perms, glued up shiny foreheaded lace fronts and shiny ass doll hair that ain't blending in weaves with tracks waving hi and a host of other foolishness but when it comes to rocking naturally nappy hair suddenly standards have to be stringent. You have to have a certain texture, a particular length, a certain head shape, specific kinds of features, a certain body type, perfect skin, etc. etc. Nucka pleeze. So your'e saying a chick can run around with a rats nest on her head regardless but not her unaltered hair because ummm...why?

With some of the shit I've seen sitting on top of our heads even some of the shit that was on top of my knuckle head, naturally nappy hair would be a vast improvement. Do some of us think we are hiding away or improving on what we perceive to be our flaws by blending in or employing the ancient art of misdirection? Are we trying to be invisible? Perm is not a cloak of invisibility. It will not make your perceived flaws invisible to you or anyone else. We all have issues. We're women. Society stokes the hot burning fires of our insecurities making us feel like we have to fix shit all the damn time. We have soul searching to do. We have some introspection we have to do but wearing damaged hair, or the illest indonesian, bohemian, 20 inch weave is not going to give us what need. What we need is to be at peace with ourselves. We need to be able to look in the mirror and love what we see so that we don't feel we have to distract ourselves from ourselves or hide amongst the crowd because we aren't good enough to be seen. We need to know that what God has made doesn't require fixing. We need to trust God.

Naturally nappy hair can be worn by any black woman whose hair is naturally nappy. No need to fit into a certain narrow criterion. God made millions upon millions of diverse black folks with naturally nappy hair so apparently it was all good across the board. A head of healthy nappy hair will only enhance your beauty. First though, you'll have to understand that you, everything about you is truly enough. This is not to say that we don't need to work to improve in areas where we really do need to step our game up i.e. health which does affect appearance and state of mind, but if we hide behind hair or whatever it is we hide our issues behind, are we really addressing those things that keep us from being our best selves. I personally found that I was hiding so much behind my hair. If I was feeling crappy about myself or my direction in life, I'd blame it on my hair. I'd spend hours fixing the hair and not the real problem. When I let my hair go naked, one of the biggest excuses I had was gone. I could no longer pretend to be working on my esteem issues by fixing my hair. I had to really deal with my all the things about myself that made me feel uncomfortable.

Wearing your naturally nappy hair is not a panacea, but because we are women, black women and so much has been done to make us feel that our God-given appearance is the reason for our problems, because we have been lead to believe that it is because we are black, it is because our asses are big and our hair is nappy that x, y and z... when you let go of the perm and rock your natural hair, you begin to find out that it was never your appearance that was the problem, the same way people who have been blaming their weight issues for their problems find out it wasn't all about the weight. When they shed the excess weight, they begin to find the problems they've been burying in the ritual of eating, they find the pain they've been burying in the weight. The weight was just a symptom. The perming and covering of our natural texture is hiding how we feel about ourselves. It is symptomatic of deeper issues. We have been told we are not beautiful. We have been in essence, told that we are defective even by those who love us, because they were told they aren't beautiful enough or good enough... Feeling unloved and not cherished and adored even in places where you should be made to feel your most perfect even in your own home, results in a lot of issues that result in behaviors that are not healthy. These behaviors are bandages covering up wounds.

So in conclusion, it's never about texture, face shape and the many other things we say keep us from being able to show the world what we really look like, how God created us, it's about if we are ready to deal with the issues we've been hiding in our hair.