Introduction

I started taking the idea of blogging seriously as I began my journey of transitioning my chemically treated African American hair to my natural kinky stuff.

I found that as I did more research on just how to wear my hair it took me down paths that I never thought to go down before. I had to sort out my feelings about natural hair. As easy as that may sound, for African Americans our hair is so much more than the coverings on our heads. I'd been chemically altering my hair for more than 20 years and I was a little girl that last time I saw my natural hair.

The initial decision was really very easy. I was completely tired of chemical relaxers. I was tired of buying them, I was tired of the time it took to apply them and condition my hair afterward, but most of all I was tired of the continued thinning of my hair in the back of my head. Over the years that particular spot on my scalp fluctuated from a few inches to 1/2 and inch. It was consistently being overprocessed. As I always applied my own relaxers, without help and without knowledge, I just continued to process it and process it. I finally decided that enough is enough and haven't used one since late 2007.

But as my hair started to grow, I had to deal with other things, not the least of which was my own attitudes toward my own hair. Even though I was born in the '70s and I remember my mother and everyone else around wearing afros, the political and social consciousness of it was never apparent to me. I mean, I sat and listened to the adults play spades while Earth, Wind, & Fire's musically social messages played in the background but I was much too much young to understand what the lyrics were trying to teach me and the adults ust loved the music. I preferred Parliament and Funkadelic, as I do to this day, but those social messages were lost on me. As I grew threw the '70s, everybody was wearing afros or braids, and I didn't have anything else to contrast what I was seeing. Some had great, thick afros. Some had wonderful cornrows flowing down their back with beautiful colored beads on the ends. I rarely saw "permed hair." That issue wouldn't raise its ugly head until later on in elementary and middle school.

I just plain didn't know what to do with my hair as it grew and the new growth met the chemically relaxed hair. I didn't have the slightest clue on how to keep my hair moisturized like I did with the perm. Soooo, I hit the Internet running, but not very fast, I must say. My sister eventually got tired of looking at my dried out "Angela Davis" and cornrowed by hair. I wore my hair like that for the majority of these last two years. Because my hair was braided, and my sister is a wonderful braider, I didn't have to look at my natural curls, unless of course, it was time to take the braids out, wash, condition, and get ready for the next beautiful, braided style my sister would come up with.

But braiding takes time, taking braids out takes time, and it was time that I was getting tired of spending. I wasn't very regular about covering my braids up at night before I went to sleep. After a couple of weeks of sleeping on my braids, they'd start to look frizzy and frayed. This time when I hit the Internet, it was in search of how to wear my natural curls without having to get braids. I found the cutest ideas, but I found something else too: a social commentary on the attitudes toward African American hair. By non African Americans and African Americans ourselves. At first glance, I wasn't interested in such deep topics, as I was only looking for some different ways to wear my hair. And I found one I love, two strand twists. Easy to do, easy to maintain, this was my new "do." Enter the attitudes.

My first attempt at twisting my hair resulted in large twists and I wrapped me a scarf around it and hit the streets. Well, I wasn't prepared for the reactions that I got to my hair. Hostile stares, looks of curiousity, etc. What sealed the deal was an incident at the grocery store. I was talking to one of the checkers, you know the one who watches over the self check out lanes and she took one look at my hair and refused to look directly at me again. I'd offended her not with my words, I'd simply picked up the wrong hot dog buns, but with my hair. My hair was making a statement, a statement that I was totally unaware of. I walked out completely affirmed in my decision to go natural. And I went back to the Internet, this time with renewed interest in the social commentaries about hair.

This blog is my experience of being an African American woman in America. My views on hair, our experience, skin color, and a lot of my general weirdness thrown in for fun.

So I hope that it is enjoyed, that it helps, and that it amuses. Anything that I may type that is offensive to others, I apologize in advance but I also encourage anyone offended to look within themselves and puzzle out why it was offensive.