Connie
Well-Known Member
I think that this is an extremely biased question in my honest opinion. Now if you had asked a 3rd question like "Would you rather have healthy, well-maintained relaxed hair", then you would get a lot better responses from relaxed heads like myself.
What I would like to know is why do most, not all, but most naturals get all "bent out of shape" with the ladies who chose to relax, texlax, and texturize their hair? Don't you understand by now that one size doesn't necessarily fit all. One method does not work for all considered. I can guarantee you that I, along with countless others who relax their hair, do not look like chickens. (It almost sounded like an assumption you were making here about ladies who relax their hair by the way the question was posed). Granted there are many who do not know how to care for their hair, whether relaxed or natural.
I chose not to use hot tools as a means to straighten my hair and even if I was natural, this is something I would be doing.....everyday! That my dear, is just too much work for me. I relax my hair for easy manageability. I stretched my relaxer for almost 5 and a half months to see what my natural hair would look like, and to be honest, it looks pretty darn good. But that was not enough for me to keep it that way.
Just as proof to what I am admitting here about my hair, here are a couple of pics - the first one is a pic of what my natural looks like at 5 and a half months relaxer stretch and the others are my previously and recently relaxed hair:
Now if anyone with 4a/b hair can wear their hair natural, for sure it would be me and I'm sure many others as well. We just chose not to. And as you can see, since coming to this board, my hair is obviously healthier looking and thicker and I thank each and everyone of you for all your imput and support. Now we are all here for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining healthy natural or relaxed hair, let us please stop bashing each other for making individual choices.
This bolded is why I opted to continue relaxing when I attempted to transition a few years back. I knew I would wear my hair straight most of the time and for my lifestyle that would mean exposing it to heat more than I wanted to.
To answer the OP's question, if I had to choose between damaged relaxed hair and healthy natural 4b hair, I would choose the healthy 4b hair anyday. But I would FIRST attempt to restore my damaged relaxed hair back to health.
ETA: I've actually arrived at a crossroads with my hair lately...natural is starting to appeal to me more for various reasons. Or maybe I'm just having a bad hair day today :-(
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