Black Hair

Random little "rant" I guess you can call it.

I have noticed throughout my life that I am generally treated differently depending on the hairstyle I have, I know crazy. I tend to get more attention and respect from white people when I am wearing a wig (like the short and long ones I wore the past month). I also notice that white people and Asians are quick to compliment my hair when it is in a straight wig or weave. I guess it is because it reminds them of their own hair and therefore I am easier to "relate to." I also feel as if in a sense when my hair is straight people make different assumptions as to the "type" of black girl I am. I am less intimidating, less "radical" and probably exude less of the stereotypes that are related to black women (loud, angry, intimidating and not "dainty").

Once I stopped wearing the wigs, and put my hair in dreadlocks it was an immediate difference as to how I was treated. Most evidently, the compliments ended from white people and Asians (keep in mind I do not live for compliments but these are things that I notice in my day to day), and instead it was mostly other black girls that complimented my hair. I also noticed that the way people interacted with me was with less patience and more hostility, especially in stores and restaurants (with the cashiers an waitresses). I guess that this hair is too black for most people.

The most intense difference in the way that I have been treated when it comes to my hair is when I first cut my natural hair off last summer and was left rocking my "short nappy hair." Luckily, the community I live in is super diverse and open minded, therefore I got a lot of kudos for having guts and cutting off what society considers our femininity. I only started to notice that having short natural hair was "odd" when I came to Northeastern for orientation. (It is hard to explain the things you notice as a black women, and for most it seems like you are being "dramatic" or making things up but a lot of the things you notice are unexplainable) Anyways, at orientation I felt so much like the odd one out, if I didn't have a butt I know people would have thought I was a boy. I felt like I was being judged even before people knew me, and for those people willing to get to know me I could sense the surprise when they discovered the type of black girl I was (opposite of the stereotype).

For some reason being black and things related to black people (hair, culture, behavior) are uncomfortable to the majority. "Black things" are only acceptable when they are not on black bodies. "Kim Kardashian braids" became a major trend, when in the black community that has always existed and are called cornrows. The Kardashian's were praised for their curvy bodies when as black women our curves are either exploited, fetishized or considered to be too masculine (ie. Serena Williams). And it is sad to say that the majority of the time, in the black community, black men do not help alleviate the often unfair expectations people have for black women. I was watching a video in which someone asked what black men thought of black women with natural hair and most guys said they only like natural hair when it is not short or "nappy". They preferred hair that resembled the hair of white women. How do (some) black men only like "natural hair" when it looks nothing like what our natural hair looks like?

I have noticed as a black woman that you often feel this pressure to contort around what everyone considers as acceptable. If you permed your hair until it was straight, spoke lowly and with constant eloquence, stayed out the sun to avoid tanning and did workouts to make sure your thighs weren't too big, then the world would tolerate you. Notice I said tolerate, because having black skin cannot be fully accepted no matter how far backwards you bend. It has taken me a while to accept who God created me to be. I spent my early childhood trying to contort and got to a point where I could no longer understand why I had to be the one to do that. Why would I need to change anything about myself when this is exactly how God made me? And therefore, while it never gets easy being a black girl I have to understand that I will always be the odd one out, and I can either rock my short naps, big thighs and loud mouth or live a life imprisoned by the opinions of others.