You are here > City > Ladies Corner > Monthly Articles

This Months REVIEW!
From permed to natural hair

From the age of 12 on, I could not wait to relax my hair. I had thick, long and unmanageable hair and was so envious of my cousins who were blessed with silky, bouncy and long hair. The comments from my family did not make my life any easier, for some reason Africans are obsessed with hair that looks anywhere near Caucasian's. They would say things like ‘You are so pretty, it is a shame about the hair though…where did you inherit it from anyway? No one has that sort of hair in our family'. It goes without saying that it did not do much for my self –esteem… …So you can imagine how relieved I was when I was told I could finally relax my hair. It was the happiest day of my life. I could bounce it around like my cousins’, tongue it, leave it down and I loved that fact that I could sometimes be mistaken for an Indian…From then on, I relaxed my hair without fail, every 8 weeks until the age of thirty. By the time I reached that age, my hair was so thin and overly processed, that I struggled to even tie a decent ponytail. In the end, I had to rely on hair pieces and weaves to give my hair a bit of volume. It went on until one day, my hair dresser told me that my hair was so badly damaged that she advised to cut it all off and start from scratch. It was then that I decided to shave everything off and start again naturally. I gave out all my relaxers and got ready to grow an afro. It was hard in the beginning as my hair was short and I was not used to seeing myself looking like a ‘man’, but I began to accessorize my head with scarves, hats and big earrings. It also gave me the drive to accentuate on my make-up. As my hair was short, an Iman make-up artist suggested that I emphasized more on my pretty face. It was amazing how many heads I was turning when walking down the streets. My new funky look started to attract my friends and slowly their perms and weaves started dropping too. The irony of all, my cousins started loathing their silky hair and resorted to any means to have an afro like mine. There are so many ways for us Black women to maintain healthy and natural hair. It is perfectly manageable if our hair is given the right treatments with the right oils and shampoos. The image of Caucasian beauty has been so badly engraved in our minds that we have forgotten to love the real ‘us’. Bring back the beautiful dreadlocks, the beautiful braids, the puffy afros…bring back black women!