HAIR & BEAUTY NATURAL HAIR SPECIAL


thing. I strongly beg to differ. As black women we have such issues surrounding our beauty and image. We’ve always been relegated to the scrapheap of a century of beauty ‘bests’ and are always the one in 20 models on a runway, or one in 30 faces across a swathe of different magazines. Tis tells us a lot about what the world thinks of the way we look, and our con- tribution to the world.


CREAMY CRACK What also informs us is the need for wom- en to have alternatives. In my own story, I stopped relaxing my hair 12 years ago. My scalp was being burned, the skin some- times resembled a crater formation island, with eruptions, lava floes, cracks and fis- sures and sometimes the pain or itchiness just wouldn’t stop. You get the whole sor- did, sorry story. But then I stopped using the ‘creamy crack’ and opted to just keep my hair short, and let it transition back to natural hair growth. What happened? You guessed it. Te


sisterhood was less than sisterly. I remem- ber walking into a salon in the heart of a black community in Maryland and ask- ing the suspicious stylist to cut it all off. I wasn’t scared or worried, I just knew it had to go, and I had to get back the hair I had grown up with until I was about 14


60 | NEW AFRICAN WOMAN | WINTER 2011


“I get compliments on my hair being beautiful, being thick, being healthy, and it’s just great when I hear those who’ve seen me do the growth process compliment my journey”


years old. Well, with all the damage, it never quite came back the same as it used to be, but I was happy to see it. Subsequent visits to other institutions


of hair maintenance revealed that the industry does not commonly care for their clients’ locks. Tere were hairdressers who swore at me, who roughly combed my thick hair in order to show me the mistake I was making in keeping my God-given curls natural. Tey wanted me to understand that if I kept it the way it was, I was facing a lifetime of pain and misery, which could easily be relieved with a relaxer. Indeed, the sisterhood has been the


gatekeeper. If you are not weaving, re- laxing, pulling, straightening, adding, braiding or frying the life out of your hair – you are just not in the tribe. In order to look good, or be thought to look good, something must be done to your hair. It needs to be in some altered state to be accepted. Te politics of these hair wars are profound and deep-set in many black communities, as evidenced by US comedian Chris Rock’s documentary film


Natural beauty: Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede (above left) and Solange Knowles (above)


‘Good Hair’, which was the talk of the town when it was released in 2009. Tere are now, however, a number of


salons all over the world dedicated to the care and maintenance of natural hair. Ex- amples include the famous Khamit Kinks in New York, and Jabu Stone Hair salons in South Africa. Jabu Stone now not only has branches in South Africa, there is also one in Gaborone, Botswana. Johannes Khitikana, promotions manager at the Gaborone branch, says that the demand was such that Jabu Stone had to open in the Botswana capital. Even though there is more awareness


and people are starting to embrace their natural hair, there still remains a general mindset that natural is a lesser beauty op- tion. A number of women have had a few sad, but not quite surprising experiences. For example, since going natural, Ra-


feeat Aliyu of Abuja, Nigeria, has received mixed reactions. “Te best compliments I have received


are from people who were not black,” she says. “Aſter the big chop, I kept my head covered in scarfs and head-wraps because


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