Thursday, January 05, 2006
New year, new me. OR It's all my mother's fault.
I chopped all of my hair off. Well, most of it.
This isn't really all that fascinating, ordinarily, but I've been trying for long, straight, silky beautiful hair forever.
Somehow, my mom knew how to braid my hair when I was a kid. I was a typical little black girl, with multiple braided ponytails and colorful barrettes. I have no idea how an Italian woman learned to do black-girl-hair, and neither does she.
It was a horrible experience for both of us. I got a number of head yanks and smacks with brushes. She told me my hair was so thick and coarse, she hated it. She wished I had straight pretty hair like white people. So did I.
I got my first relaxer when I was 12. It was horrible. My hair was thick and stringy. Then, when I washed it, it was just a frizzy poof.
We would go to all sorts of ghetto-ass shops to get my hair done. Once, a woman burned all my hair off on the sides. My hair started behind my ears, and my scalp was red and raw. I looked as though I had glued SOS pads to my head. (Look like a bunch 'a spidas was having a meetin on my head) A boy I had a crush on told me I had scarecrow hair. That still makes me tear up. Seriously.
My mom then starting perming my hair for me. Which is even worse than it sounds. Really, how good can a perm be that you buy for $4.99 from Walgreen's and do it in your kitchen? People go to school for that shit!
She always got the extra strength stuff, for coarse, resistant hair, and left it in longer than you were supposed to. She melted my hair with a curling iron, all the while assuring me that this time I'd have straight hair like white people. "Straight as spaghetti."
And my dumb ass continued this search for the elusive straight as spaghetti white people hair. I started going to this high end salon in Milwaukee. My stylist told me I didn't even need to straighten my hair. Supposedly, it had a nice texture. But, I'd have to cut all the straight part off and start all over. OHO no! I must have long hair. We started doing this new process from Japan where they used heat along with the chemicals to make your hair super straight. And it did. But it took at least 3 or 4 hours. HOURS!
I'm not really sure what I'm babbling about. This is turning out to be a huge big deal for me. I've done something I swore I'd never do. I'm a slow fucking learner. Why did it take me such a long time to realize my hair looked like shit? I suppose. There are still ladies out there in their 40s with hair-sprayed giant bangs, so I'm not that bad off.
I guess it makes me wonder how much more of me is composed of these weird biases of my mom's? She's a fucking nutcase.
This isn't really all that fascinating, ordinarily, but I've been trying for long, straight, silky beautiful hair forever.
Somehow, my mom knew how to braid my hair when I was a kid. I was a typical little black girl, with multiple braided ponytails and colorful barrettes. I have no idea how an Italian woman learned to do black-girl-hair, and neither does she.
It was a horrible experience for both of us. I got a number of head yanks and smacks with brushes. She told me my hair was so thick and coarse, she hated it. She wished I had straight pretty hair like white people. So did I.
I got my first relaxer when I was 12. It was horrible. My hair was thick and stringy. Then, when I washed it, it was just a frizzy poof.
We would go to all sorts of ghetto-ass shops to get my hair done. Once, a woman burned all my hair off on the sides. My hair started behind my ears, and my scalp was red and raw. I looked as though I had glued SOS pads to my head. (Look like a bunch 'a spidas was having a meetin on my head) A boy I had a crush on told me I had scarecrow hair. That still makes me tear up. Seriously.
My mom then starting perming my hair for me. Which is even worse than it sounds. Really, how good can a perm be that you buy for $4.99 from Walgreen's and do it in your kitchen? People go to school for that shit!
She always got the extra strength stuff, for coarse, resistant hair, and left it in longer than you were supposed to. She melted my hair with a curling iron, all the while assuring me that this time I'd have straight hair like white people. "Straight as spaghetti."
And my dumb ass continued this search for the elusive straight as spaghetti white people hair. I started going to this high end salon in Milwaukee. My stylist told me I didn't even need to straighten my hair. Supposedly, it had a nice texture. But, I'd have to cut all the straight part off and start all over. OHO no! I must have long hair. We started doing this new process from Japan where they used heat along with the chemicals to make your hair super straight. And it did. But it took at least 3 or 4 hours. HOURS!
I'm not really sure what I'm babbling about. This is turning out to be a huge big deal for me. I've done something I swore I'd never do. I'm a slow fucking learner. Why did it take me such a long time to realize my hair looked like shit? I suppose. There are still ladies out there in their 40s with hair-sprayed giant bangs, so I'm not that bad off.
I guess it makes me wonder how much more of me is composed of these weird biases of my mom's? She's a fucking nutcase.
// posted by jess @ 5:23 PM 
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Dark Damian turned me on to your blog. My 4-year-old is racially mixed. I *love* her hair. It's soft, curly, dark brown with light brown highlights, and frames her face wonderfully. Thing is, she *hates* it. She wants long, blonde, Barbie doll hair. "Babydoll," I say, "People pay lots of money to get their to look just like yours." "I don't care," she says, "I want blonde hair and white skin." I do my best to instill her with pride about her looks (she really is gorgeous), I make sure she meets people of a wide variety of racial backgrounds, but she just wants to be a freakin' Barbie doll! Last week, she came home from visiting her dad (Mr Rasta, with dreds down to his ass) and her hair was matted into one big dred. (He's not into combing.) After struggling with it for a couple of hours, I finally decided to bite the bullet and get it relaxed, hoping to save it from being cut completely off. $140 later, she's thrilled with her new hair and I'm thinkin it looked better before. Now, people ask me if she's mixed instead of asking me if she's adopted. Weird.
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