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Why I, as a Black woman, got rid of my hair

Photo credit: Harper's Bazaar
Photo credit: Harper's Bazaar

From Harper's BAZAAR

I have short, almost nothing hair. Zilch.

It thrills me to watch black curds of it tumbling down my black plastic cape while at the barbers. In fact, I find going to the barbers almost reverential, like visiting a church, and as you can imagine there are many rituals. You don’t speak unless spoken to, there is hardly any conversation except for the occasional burst of laughter and rich patois spoken quickly before silence once more descends.

I get to enter this sacred, let’s face it, male space because, almost three years ago, I decided to cut all my hair off. I no longer felt attached to having thick waterfall like waves of achievement cascade down my back. I decided that I had had enough – here’s why.

My hair is a weapon and has been weaponised. It is my salvation and the thing that has, at times, crushed me stone dead. The earliest memory I have about my hair is wanting someone else’s. When I was small our neighbour had two daughters who had perfect butter blonde sheets that swung in the wind. In contrast, I had tiny peppercorns of burnt chocolate, fancied up with plastic baubles and tied in string or thread as my mother would call it.

I was stunted and small while they had length and waves. My face was already the wrong colour, out of sorts in a country where the rain falls hard and we switched the heater on in April.

Our tiny house was full of spice and Jesus paraphernalia, with music that was rich and booming and everywhere were magazines which would carpet the floor. And in those magazines would be images of coffee or caramel-coloured women from America, their jet-black perfect hair, smooth like melted tarmac. I was enamoured early, I craved what they were offering. It didn’t take long to convince my mum that straightening my hair was the right thing to do. Her hair too was always coifed into perfect round curls; she, like every other Black woman, believed that our natural bounce, the thing that made our head stand high, should be reversed. That the hair we were given from birth was wrong. Everyone said so, everyone was right.

You may not have heard of the relaxer but let me tell you that it was a secret message we passed from one to another. Slathering out soft flesh with essentially acid, anything to press out the very thing that marked you out, that made you a target.

Photo credit: Richard Phibbs
Photo credit: Richard Phibbs

I first relaxed my hair when I was seven. Before that I had experienced the pleasure of running my fingers though my hair with no nags once. I had achieved this by ‘pressing’ my hair, which is like using a flat iron, except it was literally an iron in that it sat on the stove and was made of metal and you had to use oven gloves to hold it. This dance, always on the edge of pain to achieve perfection, has been dug into my veins for so long it feels weird to reflect upon now - to see it for what it was.

As I grew up, I moved away from chemicals or excessive heat to essentially buying what I needed - like all good capitalists really. I had extensions, which were weaved into my tender scalp with abandon and now I could finally swish. I was finally, thank you Jenifer Aniston, worth it.

After years of my real mane suffering, I decided to cut my addiction to fake hair loose. This doesn’t mean that I have now the answers. In fact, part of the reason why I cut all my hair off was because I don’t the aptitude or the strength to give my hair the tender care it really needs. To the beautiful natural girls on YouTube and beyond, I salute you.

To cut all my hair off was both an act of defiance and one of being dominated. I no longer fit into what society tells me I should do, but I’m too tired to fight and nurture my hair with the additional love being grown in a climate that is not really my own, creates.

I am embattled and strong. I am tough and weak. My hair is my fortune and feels like my failure. To all these things, I still raise a weary fist of solidarity while breathing a sigh of relief as the clippers start to whir and the first cut is made. There is something within me that would like to create a beautiful natural afro, a crown so large and high it kisses the moon. But I’m not there yet, I may never be, but guess what, just like you, I’m trying.

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