27 Saturday Mar 2010
Posted in AfroSphere
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{images from Arise magazine}
The natural hair shots here are almost aerodynamic in their structure and dimenson. The saturated colour of her lipstick and her accessories clashes in majestic harmony with the crown of gorgeous Afro hair.
With the natural hair the possibilities for beauty are endless. I am biased though. I’ve been part of the natural sisterhood since 2004 and have not looked back since.
13 Wednesday May 2009
Posted in Life
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[Cross-posted from 17 March 2009 on Charcoal Ink, my personal blog]
One of Charcoal’s regular readers, lifeisannoying, left a fascinating comment on a previous post that I’d like to share. Please do not judge her and I hope this can start conversation that’s healthy.
Ok, let me just get up on my soapbox!( shuffles, stumbles finds feet) i was natural from 2001 all the way up to 2006. it was long and very wavy, i loved it, BUT i found that i could not find a man. men thought it symbolised that i was worthy and a bit pious and not down a damn good time (this girl loves a good time!) they would always adress me like they would adress their grandmother. having my beneath the shoulder length natural hair was a turn off for them. so despite loving the look myself and feeling ashamed of compromising myself and my ideals i texturised it bone straight……. you know what happened almost immeadiately??? Guys who knew me on sight before were asking me if i was new in town, or if i only just started going out in the area. it’s sick to admit it and it’s shameful for me, since i loved my natural and miss it, but i like male attention and want male attention and that is what they want………… Trust me i am only alone because i want to be these days. It is sick, that some black men and women feel like this and maybe we all need to politicise our hair again so people can wake up. but me i am just human, principles are fine things……. loneliness is another. Please don’t judge me, if you have ever been truely lonely and hungry for love you will understand why i compromised myself.
lifeisannoying has raised a very important question with comment. I think that (some) black men (overarchingly referring to black men in the UK) here are attracted to girls with ’straight’ hair. And there is nothing with wanting to appeal to men. Women like to look physically attractive to men, it’s natural (and vice versa). I think what is different here is that to me, natural hair should be *enough* for black men who run for straight hair.
It should be *enough* because it is how our hair naturally grows. Any man who cannot see the beauty of natural hair is dunce in my opinion. I don’t apportion blame onto women per se because so much of female identity is still wrapped up in the patriarchy that controls the majority of societies in the world (RE burkhas etc). I think afro hair is beautiful because to me, it is blackness personified before manipulation. It is a shame some black men could not see the beauty of lifeisannoying’s natural hair. Hopefully, natural girls will find black men who accept their beautiful curls for who they are. Because whoever shares my bed needs to accept my Afro for what it is. And trust me, natural girls are freaks* *=not in a bad way, gentlemen!
31 Tuesday Mar 2009
Posted in Black Women in Europe
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Last weekend, I went with a close friend of mine at a hair salon in east London. My friend was getting a weave done, however, just sitting with her was such a ripe opportunity for me to observe how some black women act within the space of the hair salon.
10. The sharp smell of smoke that was piping out of one patron’s head as she sat underneath the dryer! I never noticed how thick the plumes of smoke can get.
9. How the rattail combs poke in and out of people’s heads as they undo their braids underneath their long weaves.
8. The stitching together of weaves could be a metaphor of how we need to stick together as black people. Continue reading
06 Friday Mar 2009
Posted in Black pride, Hair, Women
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Each month, I always buy ESSENCE. Even though I am not American, it still speaks to me as a young black woman although it needs a *lot* of tweaking.
In the March 2009 issue of ESSENCE with the beautiful Halle Berry on the cover, there was a section of the mag that troubled me. The hair section. I have the mag here and I can scan the pages of conflict soon when I get the chance.
Reading the hair pages with famous celebrities, I am starting to feel like ESSENCE does not understand the concept of natural hair for black women. Irony?
Example #1: One page with a picture of Erykah Badu, there is some advice to ‘go to a natural hair stylist’. Okay, at first sight this comes across like good advice, but speaking from experience, you can try and go to a salon and get your done naturally and you WILL receive sneers from fellow black hairdressers as I painfully learnt.
Example #2: On the same page, it advocates you to use hairpieces. I think this is a fundamental error. It is well known that there are massive debates about whether wearing natural hairpieces is actually NATURAL so for ESSENCE to write this in the natural section is very very very worrying.
Just looking from these two examples, I feel like ESSENCE as a magazine is conflicted and does not actually know what the hell it is talking about. It is such a shame. Because black girls barely have any media that speaks to them and for them. The conflicting messages show that the mag itself is conditioned into one way of thinking that excludes kinky hair.
