This week on The Truth @bout Natural Hair With Anu, Ms. Prestonia helps a reader learn how to help the thinning areas around her temples grow after years of stress on that area. Here’s what our resident natural hair care expert has to say.

Hi Anu,

I’m enjoying your column. Would you recommend JBCO (lavender in particular) for use with locs? Are any conditioners a good idea where locs are concerned?

Many thanks,
Kenya

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Over ten years ago, before natural hair became a huge trend for black women, my older sister Lydia was running around the campus of Spelman College curly and proud. “I was lazy enough to just not get a relaxer. I’d never had to really deal with my hair before on my own, so it was kind of a defacto decision,” she said. But the cultural security blanket of being at a historically black college in Atlanta protected Lydia from the trials of having natural hair around people of other ethnicities, specifically in corporate America.

Soon after graduating she started working as one of the few black female engineers at Delta Airlines, where she first encountered an adverse response to her au naturale coiffure. Changes in her natural styles were met with comments bordering on insulting.

“It was like, ‘Oh, your head changed’ or ‘Did you get a hair cut?’ As if I was another person. It was almost like if I had come to work with some really colorful wig when in actuality it was just a two-strand twist.” One co-worker at her second corporate job said she looked like “she stuck her finger in a light socket” in response to one of her natural looks. Eventually my sister, like many black women, decided her best option was to keep her hair pressed to reduce attention on anything other than her work quality.

When I was a child, African-American women like Melba Tolliver, Cheryl Tatum, Sydney M. Boone, Dorothy Reed and Renee Rodgers received national attention for the discrimination they faced while wearing Afro-centric hairstyles to work. While the black community is more accepting of natural hairstyles—now no longer solely seen as a black pride statement—the largely white corporate world isn’t totally there yet. But change is evitable and it hasn’t stopped black women from all walks of life from getting the big chop.

“Hairstyles all depend on your lifestyle, what you want to wear it for and if it suits [you],” said Amanda Charles, a natural-hair stylist at Time Studio in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn. She says her clients run the gamut, from corporate types to artists who ask for different styles to reflect their personality, but also must fit in with a professional setting.

“I’m thinking a lot of people are going to be going natural; a lot of people have been saying their hair is breaking with the relaxer and they just don’t know what’s going on,” Charles said about her clients. “[Both] chemically treated hair and natural hair require regular maintenance to remain healthy, but natural hair is definitely doable for the office and women are just now realizing that.”

This week on The Truth @bout Natural Hair With Anu, Ms. Prestonia helps a reader learn how to help the thinning areas around her temples grow after years of stress on that area. Here’s what our resident natural hair care expert has to say.

Hello Ms Anu Prestonia,

I am a 33-year old female who just decided to go natural over the past 9 months. I remember as early as 9 years old, getting a jerri curl and then a few years later I started to relax my hair. I haven’t stopped chemically processing since I was a child. Needless to say, my hair and scalp have definitely paid a huge price. Since I did the big chop in July, I am learning a whole new side of my hair; but I am also learning just how damaged it is and that is difficult and frustrating.

My relaxed hair would grow no longer than my collar bones and I spent 8 years in the army. Those years of being in Iraq and the putting on and taking off of the head gear (including wool berets) slowly started to thin my temples out. At my worst, I had to cut my hair so that I could slick the hair down and hopefully cover the balding. It has been three years since I have been out the army and my hair is still bald at the temples.

Right now, I am very patient with the grow out process of my transitioning hair, but I am very impatient with the thinning and bald spots. I wash, condition, and keep my hair as moisturized as possible. I just started using Mega Tek and JBCO products in hopes of speeding up the growth process of the temples. I always loosely wrap my hair at night and do all the things I believe I should be doing. I would like to move beyond the baldness so I can focus on the rest of my transitioning hair, since that is the most embarrassing for me. Do you have any tips for women who are having a difficult time growing the thinned/bald temple areas? Am I going the wrong route by using those products I mentioned? Thank you!

Sincerely,
Clueless but slowly learning