Please Teach the Babies AND Yourself!

While reading the O Hell Nawl blog, I came across a seriously funny post about Biracial kids' hair and their white parent's completely inability to find out what the fuck to do for their hair. Come to think of it, for some reason, it's very rare that I see a mixed child's hair to be kempt and tamed. Often it's frizzy, dry and leaves them lookin' like a used paintbrush. *sighs* Why? Is there not ANYONE the unknowledgeable parent can talk to about products and styling techniques? Is the Black partner's family unwilling to share their hair care secrets?

The person I feel sorry for the most is the child.

Parents: Your children should NOT walk around looking disheveled as hayle cause you can't get on the 'Net/talk to a
friend/elder/relative/cosmotologist/whoever about what to do for that child's hair! No, you can't just put a ton of grease in it but you also can't just wash it and let it flow in the breeze! Why does it seem like no one can find a happy medium?

Ok, there are some parents who end up taking their precious one to a salon or over someone's house to get it done and it looks nice...

...then two weeks later, the chile is walking around with frizzy ass braids/ponytails/whatever 'cause SOMEBODY didn't take the time to find out how to keep the style up! *throws up hands*

The saddest part about all of this? The child is not taught to LOVE his or her hair texture or to play with it or to embrace it...they're taught to destroy it because "nothing else works". Believe me, I know of which I speak. As a child, my hair was VERY thick and wavy. Hell, it still is. The main problem for me and my mother was the fact that I had these little eensy weensy waves all over my head which made it HELL to comb through! Seriously, Sunday nights played out like a torture flim.

Act 1: HANGING BY A STRAND

For some reason, my dear mother LOVED to braid my hair into little ass cornrows. Shit looked fly when it was done, but MAAAAAAAAN...getting there was a bitch! Anyway, she would make me take down my hair so she could wash it. Do you know how long it took me to do that shit? One to two hours! By the end of it, my arms would be quivering more than Big Gay Al when he realized what "consumating the marriage" meant!


Act 2: PROJECT WATER TORTURE

With a dirty mass upon my head, I was then lead to the sink by my mother. Then it began: The few tricklets of water streaming down my face. Then a full-on current of water dead in the face! I don't know what the FUCK my mother's problem was but she damn near drowned me every. single. time she washed my hair! It always took about 20 or 30 minutes cause the water had to soften the hair, then the shampoo had to be lathered (which, as y'all with kinky hair know ain't a-gonna happen the first time around, most likely), then it had to be scrubbed into the scalp and then the rinsing. SWEET JEEBUS, the rinsing!

Keep this in mind:

We didn't have one of those fancy spray hoses that connected to the faucet. Our oh-so-lovely ABLA project home had only a standard faucet. Now, it's bad enough that I had to crane my neck under that damn thing to fit but in order to get enough pressure to get the suds and dirt out, my mother would press her fingers on the faucet to create a spray.

...yeah, Shamu made less of a splash than that shit did.


Act 3: THE REVENGE OF BEY'S BREF

So, after looking and feeling like a drowned rat, my mother would set me down on the bed, hand me a hair dryer and go on about her business getting ready for work and/or school the next morning. To recap, my arms feel like I've been dangling from a dusty lacefront for days and I'm waterlogged as hell and this chick wants me to use my arms AGAIN to blowdry my shit? Y'all, I've always loved my mother but my dislike of her started very early with this shit! Who ever heard of a self-service salon?!?

"Yeah, take down your hair and blowdry it and I'll wash it and style it."

o_O

So after ANOTHER hour of getting through the Amazonian jungle (but with considerably less moisture) that was my hair it was time for the last and most brutal act...



Act 4: THE SCALPING

*winces and shakes in rememberance* Going through this act is what made me turn to tha Creamy Crack aka Relaxer aka Perm. LAWD, I was screaming bloody murder for 4 hours every fuckin' Sunday because Mama wanted to be cute with the braids.

Ol' heffa. *snorts*

I'm telling you, the scalping machine in "Saw 4" would've felt better to me than this shit! *punches the air like Ricky in "Boyz N Da Hood"*

I was tenderhead as HAYLE so y'all already KNOW how that shit goes. Add on to that an annoyed-at-my-screaming mama and fun times were had by all! Every now and then she would pop my ass with the (grease covered) comb and let me know that if I didn't stop screaming like I was getting abused she would give me a real reason to scream. Good times, y'all.

So...after all of that a beautiful young lady with tear-stained cheeks and grease-stained arms would stand before my mother. A girl who was Black, German, Jewish and Blackfoot, who looked Puerto Rican but had eyes like a Japanese chick from the braids being so tight! She knew how tight to braid them, though cause I never had bumps and I still have my edges. Uh, fuck yeah!


Unfortunately, the drama AND the trauma of us not knowing what the hell else to do with my hair (and due to there not being many products for mixed kids) led us to what we both considered to be OUR salvation: Relaxer.

Oy.

It was cool at first because with a little burning and spoiled somethingorother smell, I had managable ass hair! Years later I just couldn't deal with the hassle anymore: the smell, the burning, my hair burning off at the roots, the upkeep, the flat irons and most of all, the TIME! Eventually, I just cut the shit off and went natural and that's where I've been for about 4 years. That creamy crack be caaaaaaaaallin' me sometimes but I know that I'm better off for getting that shit outta my life.


ANYWAY...the point of all that was...wait...lessee...

Right! Not teaching the child to love their hair. *shuffles topic cards* Okay.

I cannot tell you how pissed off and disgusted I get at the "My Child NEEDS a Makeoever!!" shows on TV, specifically "Maury". First of all, the fact that you're telling a national audience that your child is looking so fucked up that they "need" a makeover is a bit distasteful to me.

Second, the fact that the mother (it's always the mother and she's always white) not only will allow her child to look like whodiditandranandwherecanwefindhisasssohewon'tdoitagain in their everyday lives - she will take that child on the air looking like that! Do you know how fragile kids' feelings can be and how cruel those lil' bastards are? You really think a hot comb will keep the child from getting teased once that shit airs? Chile, boo!

The two things that fuck me up most are the "solutions" and the aftermath.

What's the FIRST damn thing the stylists do when taking on the "challenge" of Biracial hair? RELAX IT! And we're not talking about just putting a little bit in and letting it sit for a small amount of time to loosen the curls. Nope, we talmbout full on, napalm bomb-strength, 45 minutes, cuticle destroying, bone-straight hair!


*screams in frustration*

So, instead of showing the child how to nurture her hair, you teach her to fuck it up. Nice. As if that wasn't insult enough, the child's hair STILL be looking frizzy and dry as hell!

*smacks forehead on desk*

The aftermath? *sighs* It really does hurt my heart when they do an update and the girl is all, "I have sooooooo many new friends at school now! Thanks, Maury! *waves*". That shit cuts me in two ways: One, it shows how kids can be so fickle and so rude to those that are different from them in any way. Two, she had to get her hair straightened to get accepted at school (and sometimes in her own family). I wish I could say that if she had been in school with healthy natural hair that she would've gotten the same results but I honestly don't know. It never turns out that way on TV. Sometimes it doesn't turn out that way in real life.

*sighs with a heavy heart*

*wipes tears*


The point to all of this is NOT to demonize the relaxing of one's hair. If that's how you rock it and it works for you, DO YOU! I understand that for a lot of sistahs it's not about trying to look white, it's about managablity, versatility or you just like the way it looks. That's FINE.

The point of all this is to say that we seriously need to start educating ourselves and others about how to have healthy natural hair. We don't have to load it down with grease and we don't have to burn it into submission. We CAN have unfrizzy, moisturized looking AND feeling, natural hair. We just have to be willing to take the journey to get there. And PLEASE take the babies along for the ride! Use Corbin Blu as inspiration or whatever, just do it.



4 years CC-free and counting,


Reina Negra V