Don’t Touch My Hair!
A few days ago, the prized package of hair products that I ordered made it through customs to arrive safely at my front door. While opening the jars of Shea butter infused with scents of lemongrass, honey, mango, and ginger, I realized that ten years had gone by since I did the official “big chop” and stopped chemically treating my hair, choosing instead to rock the type four kinky coils I was born with. Transitioning from relaxers, braids, and weaves was somewhat counter-cultural to my upbringing. You see, my mother is a talented hairstylist who has been a salon owner for well over 20 years. For the good and not so good it offers, when you get down to it, the beauty salon was another home. It was there that I spent countless days after-school completing homework assignments in a swivel chair, eavesdropping and even interrupting spirited exchanges, of truth-telling and gossip, from black women who were getting their hair washed, shampooed, and styled. It has always been a haven of regeneration and support for women of all stripes to vent, cry, laugh, and be themselves with each other, and when needed received informal therapy sessions. An abbreviated worship service has even been known to spontaneously breakout sometimes, as well. For me, despite its flaws, this special place embodied an African saying that Christians should already know well: “It takes a village to raise a child.” The women frequenting my mother’s salon each week were a significant part of my community, gracing me with the best nuggets of wisdom they could muster, and modeling hair inspiration and femininity in different sizes, shapes, and hues.
As a woman of color, but even more to the point as an African American woman, my hair has always been a BIG deal. Most women I know possessing increased melanin will tell you the same. When a little girl, my mother rather adamantly taught me how to assert myself in a variety of ways. One such lesson was to not allow people to touch or play with my hair. I was also schooled about the complications of being caught in the rain without an umbrella. This was boot camp level instruction of no laughing matter. As the only black girl in my class, the various hairstyles I wore were somehow a constant source of curiosity with white classmates. Although I realized from a young age that my skin color and hair were different, I didn’t feel at all inferior. Shrinking to make others feel comfortable around these issues was never something I contended with. When putting on a cap for swimming lessons or when getting into the water at a pool party, I didn’t feel bad. My hair was my hair and I needed to take good care of it. I was proud of it, as opposed to wishing that it felt or looked like that of my white peers.
Though my hair journey has not been fueled by protest, I absolutely reject the hidden and brazen assumptions that black women should apply Eurocentric concepts of beauty to themselves. No, thank you. White people cannot be the standard-bearers to whom everyone else aspires. We are all equally beautiful in God’s sight. I also reject the self-hate that I see among people of color regarding colorism and hair texture, which in fact finds some origin in how many of our cultures have been colonized. The truth is that since “God don’t make ugly,” there cannot be any “good” (meaning straight) or “bad” (meaning curly) hair around texture gradation. That needs to stop right now. Marcus Garvey’s words ring true that, “God made us in His perfect creation. He made no mistake when He made us black with kinky hair.” Little boys and little girls in adult bodies, which is all we are, should confidently embrace their identity as image-bearers of God whatever their color. “So, all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.” I am convinced that “going natural,” as we call it, is not for everyone just so you know. But still, loving yourself “as is,” for who you truly are away from artificial constructs and superficial aesthetics, is critical and life changing.
Working through hair issues has amounted to my own “becoming,” as an outward expression former first lady Michelle Obama branded in her memoir. It is about considerably more than having come full circle from braids with beads, press and curls, pixie cuts, and bobs back to blow-out Afros and twist-outs. Back when I decided to “go natural”, I was fresh from completing an intensive outpatient eating disorder program. Finally exposing my tight, coarse curls to the world (and first myself) reflected the rediscovery of self and on-going deliverance from years of addiction and self-punishment. Celebrating my hair without a bunch of chemical intervention was part of a spiritual awakening to embrace authenticity and reject vanity and vain conformity.
I am no longer imprisoned by prescribed marginalization that seeks to cheapen the beautiful person God has already made me all by Himself. In life, desired outcomes are not instantaneous, and can take a long, long time to gain traction, let alone reach the destination. But that isn’t the end of the world. Restoration and growth are inside-out jobs. Each braided twist of my hair is a reminder that some days some things aren’t going to go as planned. Hair is surely like that and life is, too. The trial and error of living is par for the course. As my hair takes microscopic steps, with follicles contracting and expanding while I sleep, in this or that direction even changing color to gray, I am reminded that God is moving. I cannot always see what He is doing each moment, but I know He is there, caring for me more than the birds of the air or flowers of a field. (Matthew 6:26-34) It is a process to de-tangle from my old self, but I am learning to accept that no matter how much Shea butter I smear on it, my hair will never have a curl pattern that enables me to “wash and go.” But that is how God made me, which means He sees it as good and I should, too.
Still, though, just so we are clear, don’t touch my hair.