Yes, it’s a weave. I’m not even natural.
So why not just be natural instead of pretending to be? Well, the answer is a bit complicated. (And no, it’s not because natural hair is the latest “trend” I just had to try.)
It started because, after reading and writing about the emergence of the white standard of beauty, I began to think more deeply about what I considered to be beautiful myself.
I have always been relaxed, and up until the age of about 12, I honestly didn’t even know that my hair was naturally curly. I thought relaxers just made your hair not “stick together” like my brother’s did. I hadn’t even seen a black girl with hair that wasn’t relaxed until I got to high school.
Natural hair was just not something you had.
Even today, some of my older African friends and family members still refer to it as “untamed” or “wild”.
Was this because that’s what we were told so many years ago? Were they still holding on to those words so tightly that they had become their own?
How could I live for so long believing that straight relaxed hair was “just the way it was supposed to be”?
More and more questions like these filled my head, and I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
I wanted to do something about it.
I wanted to rebel against the notion that straight hair was “just better” by going natural.
But could the decision to go from relaxed to natural hair be that simple?
I have lived my whole life with relaxers, and it’s been working pretty well for me. I’ve got long, manageable hair. Was I willing to just give that up so quickly?
As I weighed the pros and cons for relaxed vs natural hair, the relaxed side was no longer tipped by the idea that straight hair is “just better”, which was great, but it made my decision much harder. The scale was almost equaly balanced with the natural side strengthened by the beauty I’d found in my natural curls, but the relaxed side counteracting this with the manageability straighter hair provides.
So with the scale stuck at equilibrium, how do I decide?
I struggled with this for a while, but then I thought, do I need to decide now when there is weave?
So I did it. I decided to go against the traditional long, silky weave and install my first ever set of “kinky” extensions. And no, it’s not a contradiction. It’s my way of showing that big coily hair can be just as, if not more, beautiful than straight hair. In fact it’s so beautiful, I’d pay for it.
So yes, I am relaxed and need a weave to look natural, but does that matter?
This weave is proof that it’s possible for me to choose relaxers for the ease they provide but still love the look and feel of my natural hair.
I like what Daris Mathis, a seller of natural looking hair extensions, has to say about it- “If enough women have embraced the natural hair aesthetic to the extent that they have created a market for Afro-textures virgin hair, the war has been won.”
So does this mean I can continue to fight this war in the comfort of a removable weave without ever taking the big step to actually go natural?
I still don’t know. It’s a decision I still have to make.
But in the mean time, I’ll keep struttin’ this fro.
They don’t have to know it’s fake.
