It's not nappy, just curly

[Kurlee]

Yup. I know someone from high school that is growing his hair out. He posted recently "I'm puerto rican. I'm not supposed to have this kind of hair!" He does not like having kinky hair. Mind you, this is the second time he's posted this on fb. the first time there was a big fight and he couldn't possibly see why people were upset.

Oh, and he's on this board too. Don't care if he sees either. I told him it was offensive the first time and apparently he doesn't care so.......

those kiddies

 

[Je Ne Sais Quoi]

those kiddies

Kurlee yep, i saw what you did somewhere else on this board So crazy For what it's worth i think it is very lovely but the responses by some are doing the most.

 

[PJaye]

This.

My eyes were opened the first time I had a gym membership years ago where you see women au naturale - no gimmicks. I've seen latina hair with just as much kink and curl and many of use here, but they will spend hours with the flat iron and would never been seen in public with any type of curl in their hair. Its not just a mater of hating Black women's hair, they hate their own!

I can believe it because in NYC, many of the Dominican salons will take their Hispanic clients in a back room to apply and rinse their relaxers behind a closed door.

 

[Je Ne Sais Quoi]

I can believe it because in NYC, many of the Dominican salons will take their Hispanic clients in a back room to apply and rinse their relaxers behind a closed door.

Oh the shame of it all

 

[MizzBrown]

Well there is thread in this section where a girl just big chopped and she and everyone else who responded to the OP in the thread is ELATED that her hair isn't type 4 like she thought when she was relaxed. Some people even went as far to say "Not a nap in sight. Your hair is beautifiul." So having a nap in sight, would mean the hair isn't beautiful? Made me wonder about how women on this forum who are very much aware of the sensitive sentiments some women on this forum have about how their hair type is conceived by society are totally insensitive. The ignorance about "good hair" vs. "bad hair" is ingrained from childhood and isn't going anywhere soon.

I said there wasnt a nap in sight. I did NOT say her hair was beautiful.

That was your obvious, typical thread and I knew EXACTLY how many thanks she would get based on her hair type.

I'm a type 4 by the way and knew where that thread was heading when I saw her silky hair....on top of that, silky and claiming type 4. I see posters claiming type 4 when they are NOT, on purpose. I like my napps and got a cotton ball on top of my head just like you.

 

[TrueToHair]

........................

 

[niqu92]

I haven't seen you on the bored in like weeks. Perhaps we are just traveling in different threads lol

lollol maan ive been so busy with school cause its the end of the semester so i have all these exams and projects due and when i do sign on i always go to entertainment and off topic forum cause theres always something going on in there do satisfy my drama requirement for the day lol im barely in the hair forum

 

[greenandchic]

Yup. I know someone from high school that is growing his hair out. He posted recently "I'm puerto rican. I'm not supposed to have this kind of hair!" He does not like having kinky hair. Mind you, this is the second time he's posted this on fb. the first time there was a big fight and he couldn't possibly see why people were upset.

Oh, and he's on this board too. Don't care if he sees either. I told him it was offensive the first time and apparently he doesn't care so.......

What the hell type of hair is he expecting to have? European I guess, just like some of us like to claim to have an "Indian" great-great-great grandparent.

I can believe it because in NYC, many of the Dominican salons will take their Hispanic clients in a back room to apply and rinse their relaxers behind a closed door.

I've seen them hide relaxers in their shopping carts at the grocery stores.

I said there wasnt a nap in sight. I did NOT say her hair was beautiful.

That was your obvious, typical thread and I knew EXACTLY how many thanks she would get based on her hair type.

I'm a type 4 by the way and knew where that thread was heading when I saw her silky hair....on top of that, silky and claiming type 4. I see posters claiming type 4 when they are NOT, on purpose. I like my napps and got a cotton ball on top of my head just like you.

I've been seeing that since NP.com circa 2002. I've wondered if they claim it because they 1. really believe they are a 4a, 2. have some sort of shame about having that type of hair or 3. WANT someone to correct them and say they have 3c type hair and complement them about having "good hair".

Then again, I claim 4a though some people will say that I'm not. I'm really a mix, but I usually say 4a if I have to give one answer.

 

[Kurlee]

Kurlee yep, i saw what you did somewhere else on this board So crazy For what it's worth i think it is very lovely but the responses by some are doing the most.

i can't stand the good hair/bad hair nonsense. It's so . . . .. dumb

 

[Je Ne Sais Quoi]

I said there wasnt a nap in sight. I did NOT say her hair was beautiful.

That was your obvious, typical thread and I knew EXACTLY how many thanks she would get based on her hair type.

I'm a type 4 by the way and knew where that thread was heading when I saw her silky hair....on top of that, silky and claiming type 4. I see posters claiming type 4 when they are NOT, on purpose. I like my napps and got a cotton ball on top of my head just like you.

I'm sure it's the "pc" thing to do I guess

 

[GaiasDaughter24]

those kiddies

Thank you!

What the hell type of hair is he expecting to have? European I guess, just like some of us like to claim to have an "Indian" great-great-great grandparent. .

No friggin' clue but apparently not kinks.

 

[Aviah]

Just saw your update. Glad you didn't say anything OP.

 

[Je Ne Sais Quoi]

i can't stand the good hair/bad hair nonsense. It's so . . . .. dumb

I agree. And it pains me that it's a must that I reinforce how beautiful my daughters hair is because in the real world it isn't silky and curly enough for some.

 

[PJaye]

I've seen them hide relaxers in their shopping carts at the grocery stores.

I don’t get it. What’s the point? Do they get a special cookie at the end of all that covert action?

 

[Nonie]

I understand your point of view. We shouldn't take shame from the word and and thereby think of certain hair as a negative thing. Correct? I have a bunch of thoughts swirling, so I'll try to list them. Please don't think I'm trying to "correct" or "one-up" anybody, but I want you to understand where I'm coming from.

1) I brought up the professor because this guy spends his life in etymology (Old English, Norse, German). The connotation of the word made sense to me. For me, it's like when a lot of black people say that white people have "dog hair." They're doing it to be negative. The only difference is I don't see white people "owning" that term. But then again, I feel the same way about the n-word. I don't see why you should embrace a word or phrase that was once used as a slur against you. That's just how I feel.

I've never heard people say white people have dog hair, but then again, maybe it's coz I didn't grow around an environment where hair was such a huge topic of discussion or discontent. And for the record, the N word which rappers have adopted and spell with an -ah will never be acceptable to me. It never entered the English language as a neutral word. Different topic altogether.

2) There's too much overlap with the word. In this thread alone, some people used it to describe their God-given texture, but another person said that it means "unkempt." Even what you cited refers to the fact that the slaves were unable to "groom" their hair. So which is it? A beautiful, God-given hair type, or something that someone needs to "correct" because they didn't take time to groom their hair? See where I think it's problematic?

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Clearly you missed my point. Our hair was a thing of pride. You should perhaps buy the book Hair Story and see how people in Africa wore their crown of glory with pride. They groomed it and it looked hawt. Why? They had combs made for our type of hair. They were able to groom it. If something you NEED to make yourself look and feel good is taken from you, you will not feel good about yourself. Like if there were no water, no soap, no deo and you got all funky, would you still stand tall and feel good about yourself? No, you wouldn't. You would hate how you are and would wish to be different because you don't have the means to make yourself feel good about yourself.

So it was with nappy hair. The only combs available when our people arrived in the West were fine-tooth combs that can comb through white folks' hair but cannot go through ours. Not to mention we traveled for a long time tied down with our hair shedding and matting and doing its own thang as it mixed in with pee and poop. So that by the time we got here, our hair was already in a bad state. It would still have been a feat to groom it even if we had the tools...but not only didn't we have tools, no one gave us time for ourselves. So our people covered their hair. Why? Because we are a proud people. TrueToHair. Showing off unkempt hair isn't how we roll. It wasn't because it was nappy that we were ashamed; it was because it was unkempt. It was unkempt because there was not available to us a means to care for it. So we were ashamed of our unkempt hair.

Until you can grasp this distinction, then you'll never get it.

It's like people with oily skin who hate having pimples. They hate their skin because they don't know how to deal with it to make it beautiful. But the minute the find a solution to their breakouts problem, then their skin is no longer a problem. Why? Because they can make it beautiful and they also come to find it doesn't age and so discover just how wonderful oily skin is. Until we were able to comb our hair, we had every right to be ashamed of it. And so the word NAPPY which described the pattern our hair made began to be associated with unkempt hair not because that's what the word meant, but because everyone who had nappy hair back in slavery days could not comb it and so stayed unkempt. Put another way, "Do you know why slaves with nappy hair had unkempt hair? It's because there were no tools that could go through the tight coils that are characteristic of nappy hair. So the hair was just left to do its own thing and it coiled around itself and locked and never looked good."

 

[Nonie]

Continued coz my post got so long....

I gave the synonym of poor people to make it easier for you to see the distinction but clearly you still missed the point. Here's another analogy:

Does the fact that I can speak 3 languages well make me cleverer than the American who only speaks one? Not at all. I am able to do so because I was immersed in a culture where those languages were spoken. I appear clever but it's only because I had the access to the means to master those languages. Similarly, white people and mixed people were able to have hair that looked good because they had the means to groom it and make it look good. If the American who speaks only English had grown up in the home I grew up in, he too would have spoken 3 languages and maybe more coz he may not be as un-driven as I am. Just like if the nappy-headed African who was stolen from the Motherland had access to combs, s/he too would have had hair that looked good all the time and so his or her texture would never have been associated with "unkempt".

So once again, the word NAPPY means tightly coiled. And if you turn it to mean anything more than that, you might as well disown kinky, tightly coiled, tightly curled, CNapp...and just live in denial about the pattern that 4B folks have in their hair because all those words refer to the same texture. *shrug* Those of us without hangups about the word are very happy to have nappy hair because it just happens to be the most versatile hair there is and can be made to look like any other pattern with just a few tricks here and there.

I know that you're saying black people need to stop using it as a slur or viewing it as a bad thing (and you could say LHCF or Nappturality are "ahead of the curve," about a quarter of the screen names here celebrate the word as a TEXTURE). But I also have no doubts about the way other people are using the word (there's a 20 page thread on a white boy calling the girl from Hunger Games "nappy," as if there's something wrong with that). I guess my point is that people are going to have to be prepared for both. It's not like the mindset can't change (I recall a time when type 3 wasn't accepted. It was all about the bone straight hair). It just takes getting people to stop being so ignorant on such a large scale.

*p.s. thanked your post and will look into that info further.

You know, I don't let other people determine how I think or live my life. If you go to countries where male chauvinists rule, you will be considered a second-class citizen. Will you buy into that BS and start accepting that being a woman is beneath being a man? Or will you just roll your eyes and be above that BS? So what if some people use nappy INCORRECTLY? What skin off my nose is that? If someone came at me calling me a nappy-headed African, I'd just smile and say, "You got that right. *snaps finger*" If they THINK nappy means unkempt or rough or ugly, uhmm...who's the idiot here? Perhaps they should first learn English and THEN we will have a discussion.

It's like someone who was talmbout how she'd be so hurt if someone called her a monkey. Really? Why? Are you a monkey? Is the person coming at you with that name in charge of your life/existence? So why would you even give those words the time of day? If someone called me a dude or called me an Asian or called me a tree or called me American or called me English or called me Jamaican or called me a house or called me a stone or called me a fly or called me the sky or called me a flower or called me an angel or called me water or called me soup or called me butterfly or called me queen or called me giant or called me dwarf...should I take offense or feel flattered at such inaccurate nonsense? Or should I just be like OOOOOOOKKKK and just think to myself .

I dunno, I think some of y'all just have way too much time for BS. If someone were to say that my hair wasn't nappy (which it is DUH!) but said that it looked more like pubic hair or looked like fungus or looked like flies on sh** or looked like worms rotting... Like really? Am I supposed to give that information any attention of sorts? Y'all are something else. I'd have to be so insecure in myself to let other people's opinions or IGNORANCE actually control my emotions.

I have shared how someone rightfully made fun of my hair at work on a day it was looking awful. Even I knew I looked like sh** but even then I didn't let her dissing attitude ruin my day. And this was a case where even *I* was uncomfortable with how my hair was looking...kinda like how people who have never been natural might be uncomfortable sporting natural hair and therefore sensitive about any negative comments. But I am way too important to be letting silly comments ruin my day (Ask the Maker if you don't believe how important I am). I turned that dissing around and made the mocker feel like an a$$. And that's what folks need to start doing. It's like people make fun of how I say words because I don't say them American. I pronounce my T as T's and not as D's. A lot of times, it takes so long to communicate something because I'll meet some silly rabbit who just wants to scrutinize every word I say so that we spend a few seconds with him repeating how I said something. I think if this happened to some of you, you would become so self-conscious that you'd clam up and stop talking. I'm stubborn. I don't try to fit into boxes that people try to put me in. I know who I am and I do me and continue to be me. And you know what's so funny, at the end of the day, I find that the same people who were initially trying to "bully" me into becoming what they think is IT seem to just want to follow my suit and soon enough, I'm the one they want to emulate.

Knowledge is power. And as long as you enlighten yourself and understand what the TRUTH is, then no amount of BS can ruin your day. If anything, you may just find that these same goons will start to look to you for info and enlightenment. And a lot of times, bullies live off knowing their bullying is hitting the mark. Why let them win? And especially why do so when they are the ones missing the mark? Why allow your self to drink from the bowl of ignorance when you're so much greater than that? Don't you guys know that jealousy can make people mean? Perhaps it's because you're still unaware of how much you have that is worth being jealous about that you miss jealousy when it's staring you in the face. People who feel good about themselves don't have to knock others down to feel tall. You remember that, you will recognize inferiority complexes when they come at you wearing stilettos to feign superiority.

 

[PersuasiveBeauty]

I was about to come in here acting a damn fool and call people out about that other thread that everyone wants to tip toe around... But I dun seen Nonie professor snape lookin self up in here and I got myself together real quick. (girl I love you... and you give the sweetest advice, but that avatar of yours stays checking me)

 

[Kurlee]

I've never heard people say white people have dog hair, but then again, maybe it's coz I didn't grow around an environment where hair was such a huge topic of discussion or discontent. And for the record, the N word which rappers have adopted and spell with an -ah will never be acceptable to me. It never entered the English language as a neutral word. Different topic altogether.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Clearly you missed my point. Our hair was a thing of pride. You should perhaps buy the book Hair Story and see how people in Africa wore their crown of glory with pride. They groomed it and it looked hawt. Why? They had combs made for our type of hair. They were able to groom it. If something you NEED to make yourself look and feel good is taken from you, you will not feel good about yourself. Like if there were no water, no soap, no deo and you got all funky, would you still stand tall and feel good about yourself? No, you wouldn't. You would hate how you are and would wish to be different because you don't have the means to make yourself feel good about yourself.

TrueToHair. Showing off unkempt hair isn't how "

love it!!!