This is me, the very day I went natural. Or stopped doing unnatural things to my hair. However you want to look at it. (No shade, no shots fired to my relaxed sisters.) Having had a relaxer since I was five years old, I can’t deny the…fear I felt when my beautician spun me around to reveal a teeny weeny afro. It was jarring. But after a couple of days I got used to it. While I was going through my own transition with my hair other people were adjusting to my new look as well. And they didn’t adjust quietly…
You need to do something with this
I decided to make this transition right before I went off to college and my grandfather, trying to impart some wisdom, told me that I needed to “do something with this.” The “this” he was referring to was my hair (and my nose ring too actually). He told me that I wouldn’t be able to be successful in college or in my career looking the way I looked. Now that is my Big Daddy, so I couldn’t disrespect him, so I just gave him a blank stare until he stopped speaking.
Source: Corbis
You need a perm
I knew I planned on cutting my hair off, so I had stopped perming it. Being that my hair is pretty thick, it didn’t take long before I was no longer able to camouflage the new growth. Even though my kinks were showing, I didn’t look crazy. And even if I did, it wasn’t my uncle’s place to tell me what to do with my hair. Again, I couldn’t disrespect him but I managed to slyly make a sarcastic comment about the ignorance of his statement.
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Well, you look like a man
Ooo from the subtitle alone you can tell that this comment was completely out of pocket. This one came from a guy I was auditioning in college. We were walking on the sidewalk and I noticed that I was on the side closest to the street. Seeing, that the brotha grew up without a father in his home, I thought I’d take this opportunity to educate him. I politely told him, “You know when a man and woman are walking together, the man is supposed to walk on the side closest to the street.” Do you know what this negro said? “Well, you look like a man with your hair.” Whaaat?! He tried to laugh it off and assure me that he was just joking; but needless to say, he didn’t get the part.
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I thought you were mean
Of all the crazy things I’ve heard people say regarding my hair, this one was the most surprising. The girl who said this to me ultimately ended up being one of my really good friends in college. She told me that when she initially met me she thought that I was mean because of my hair. And make no mistake, this was a black girl. She didn’t really have a rational reason behind the statement, that’s just what she felt.
Corbis
You just wake up and go, right?
So this comment isn’t as crazy as much as it’s just clueless. A lot of people assume that women go natural to save time and energy on their hair. But I’d argue that learning how to work with your texture, learning which products to use and learning which styles you can and cannot do with your hair are just as, if not more time consuming, than having relaxed hair. When I was rocking my fro, I spent an hour twisting it before I went to bed and twenty minutes taking it out in the morning. There was nothing wake up and go about it.
Image Source: Tumblr
You’ll probably want to buy a wig for your interviews
God knows I love my mother and I know she wants the best for me but I had to tell her she was way off base with this one. By the time I was ready to graduate college she was starting to sound like my grandfather. In a shocking move, my mother, who is also natural, told me that I should “invest in a good wig” so that I could get a good job. My mom and I are close enough that I could tell her that I had no intentions of doing that. I told her I wouldn’t want to work for a place that didn’t value my work because of the way I wore my hair. Turns out my hair didn’t keep me from getting a job after all.
Are you natural? What crazy comments have people made about your hair?
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