141. Black Girl Drama

 If there's a more integral and stressful part of a little black girl's identity than her hair, I don't know what it is. Hair care should be added to the list of lessons black girls get when they hit puberty.  By third grade I was wishing my mother would let me do my own hair. I was out of college before I actually figured out how.

For the first ten years of my life, my mother would wash my hair in the large sink in the basement. Then we'd spend the next hour combing it out and blow-drying it. Back then my hair was probably 24 inches long and I was tender-headed as all hell, so this was not my favorite process.  When it was over I was left with what my uncles called my "lion's mane."  I don't remember that I hated having it done, but I certainly never liked it.

In 6th grade my friend's mother told my mother that she got her hair pressed and that it made it much easier to manage. For the next 3 years I was faithful to the hot comb. Changed my life.  My mom would drop me off at the beauty shop on Saturday mornings and I'd wait my turn to press&curled up.  Strangely, I don't actually remember wearing my hair straight at the time, but I was definitely getting it done.

By the time I went to high school I had up/downgraded from a press to a relaxer. Again, life changing. The smell, the process, the time, the cost, the scabs, it's all some stuff you gotta experience for yourself to fully get it. But I was fond of my relaxer.  It made it possible for me to effectively do my own hair, really for the first time in my life.  I could wash it and blowdry it myself without reverting to the lion's mane.  So I was happy.

The first time I cut my hair, I was in tenth or eleventh grade. I had had the relaxer for a few years and I was used to having long, straight hair.I decided to cut the front into a bob and kept the back long. It was a huge deal.  At the time I couldn't conceive of cutting all of my hair short. This was a baby step. By 12th grade I had grown it all back.  I kept it long for the next 5 years.

My senior year of college, I decided to grow out my relaxer and go natural. After about six months of growth I cut off most of my hair. It was about 6 inches long. The first few months after the cut were the most baffling hair months of my life.  I had no clue.

I knew I had curly hair, but I had no idea how to get it to actually be curly. I mean it kinda was.  But I had a bit of a limp, curly 'fro going on.  Not cute. I still frown at myself a little bit whenever I look at my graduation pictures. Those were The Lost Days, as far as my hair is concerned.

Nowadays I think I have a handle on my hair in all its incarnations. I can rock the curls long or short; I can flat-iron it out and wear the bob when it's not too hot (can't handle the humidity without a relaxer); I've even figured out what to do with my hair when my curls have been flat-ironed to death and have to be re-grown from scratch, something I've done 2 or 3 times.  And of course there's an entire team of favorite shampoos, conditioners, and the all-important leave-ins that help maintain my hair in its various forms of flyness.  (Thanks to you all.) 

I say all this to say... It's happy hair times in my world... which I think is a special thing to be able to say as a black girl.