Well...first black women need to stop the weave dependency for their own sake first, out of pride for themselves because weaves and wigs basically do not look good. I see weaves & wigs on black women 95% of the time. It's like an epidemic and all of them look terrible. Most of my close friends wear their real hair, but that is a reflection of me surrounding myself with people who are like-minded.
On the topic of men, the men that I date prefer real hair and they mean it. They do not date women who wear fake hair. One of my guy friends said he would never marry a woman with a "weave habit." Black men accept it for the most part because they have no choice...look how prevalent it is.
As far as protective styling, if it takes wearing a weave or wig for years to grow very long hair, I will never have very long hair then.
All races wear weave, but black women are the ones who wear crazy unnatural looking wigs and weaves - silky straight Brazilian hair that looks unrealistic, lacefront glued Planet of the Apes hairlines, and I'm sorry, but these braids are getting out of line, too. My son asked me why girls are wearing YARN as hair. I brushed him off because I could not for the life of me explain why a person would wear yarn as her hair, but when I went to his school and saw the little girls, I realized that yarn braids look a mess. They do not even resemble hair to me at all. I mean, now we're putting plastic, yarn, wool, other people's hair, and who knows what else in our heads?
It's getting to be too much when people are indignant and no longer give a care about how we appear to the world. I understand the whole "it's my hair" comment because I say the same thing about being relaxed, but I now see how the actions of some affect black women as a whole.
