It's easy to feel alone in the city. For some reason when making decisions both small & large we can feel as though we are the only ones that have ever experienced it. Last night I learned how wrong this belief can be.
I hosted a Curly Girls/Naturals Meetup & sat down to the great company of 10-12 women who have natural hair. It was a small celebration of sorts. We shared hairstories and to my great suprise I heard echoes of my own experience as we went around the room to share how we ended up perm-less. Some women said it was an emotional decision that led to the cut. For some the BIG CHOP symbolized nothing at all but it did make life easier by allowing the hair to be more affordable & easy to maintain. Some shared that they had been called "ugly", their physical appearance was recently compared to looking like Arsenio Hall in the film COMING TO AMERICA and told their hair looks like a "trash basket". Unfortunately that's just the tip of the iceberg. But the whole meeting wasn't to dispose the negatives. We saw that
although there is stigma there is also a lot of positivity, support & understanding within the community of natural girls as well.
When I cut my weave out & chopped my straight hair off in 09' I was definitely NOT trying to make a statement. Nor was I on a "Black Power" trip. I didn't even make the observation that I was "going natural". I was a broke, confused, nomadic 20 year old. Frankly, I just didn't want the weaves anymore. Just as many women pointed out last night, going natural made the most sense to me at that point in my life. Will we all be "natural" forever? Is it just a phase we're going through? A trend? Something cool to post on Youtube? Or a new franchise to feed on the pockets of women? Who knows?
Oh and BY THE WAY: We didn't ALL LOVE "Good Hair" the documentary and we're not all super-bohemian, perm-bashing hippies either.
One thing I can say for sure is that we love ourselves & have come to accept what we have naturally and that's good enough for me for now.
-Dobs
