OT - Chellero that siggy is scary!
I am tenderheaded, have been all my life. I was the little girl whose Mom would be chasing her around the chair, the house, the living room, the kitchen, out side....you name it.
I am and was a poster child for Rudy hair. I guess Mom could not handle having two girls 13 months apart with similar hair. She got tired of it and took us before we were out of grade school to get our first relaxer.
Yep, yep, soooo tenderheaded. Man, I have never on any occasion in my whole life had someone do my hair and have it
not hurt. Why my hair gotta hurt? Like Cheleigh, I thought straightening was just something we had to do, and I was press and curl most of the time. I only had a perm for like 4 or 5 years, and was not religious about touch ups even then. It would just get pressed at the roots if we couldn't get a touch up.
I remember seeing a girl with Rudy-like hair (whose hair, btw, was and still is the most beautiful hair in the world to me) all poofy and I asked my grandmother why I couldn't wear my hair like that and she told me that not all black girls can wear their hair like that. So I just figured my hair was the type that had to be straightened.
I also wonder about the 3's since as a child I really envied them because I thought they got a pass on this whole hair straightening business that I was subjected to. The only people in my neighborhood with natural hair (and I mean nappy hair, not press and curl or braided with extensions or something) were type 3s or 2s, so I just figured, without even really thinking about it, that my hair had to be straightened. When I was 17 in 1996 I went to Zimbabwe for study abroad and met 3 college women from Atlanta who were in the same program. Two had locks but 1 wore her hair nappy and out and this was pretty much a first for me. They told me I didn't have to straighten my hair and I was like "word?" The thought of never having to endure torture at the salon again was wonderful. So, that was when I went back to natural.
I guess there's a mix of reasons for straightening our hair. It can be time-consuming and difficult, esp. if you don't know what you're doing. It always looks like straight-haired people have it easy, so the idea is to get hair more like theirs. Of course you don't, really, right? Cuz your hair isn't naturally straight and now you have to be extra careful cuz it's more fragile. Well, all that plus standards of beauty that are not Afro-centered.
@Chellero, WHY?!
) But unless your parents put a relaxer on your hair, why did you get relaxed?
Right now if you look at my fotki I have a pic of my new growth. I'm trying to get a clue as to what type my natural hair is or what it will look like. I'm curiously impatient.
