As I mentioned in my ‘hello!’ post, I started a hair tumblr recently. The short reason is because I wanted to look at pictures of awesome hair. The long reason, well, it’s a little complicated.
I went natural two years ago, after having relaxed hair longer than I could remember. I don’t fault my mom for that at all — she was a working woman with a crazy commute, and my dad’s one attempt at doing my hair resulted in all of my hair being cut off. As a natural hair neophyte, I had all the zealousness one would expect. I pored over the black hair internet, reading hair boards like Naturally Curly and Nappturality, found as many hair blogs as I could, tried dozens of products, and stalked natural hair Fotki accounts whenever I had the time.
But by immersing myself so deeply in the online natural hair world, I soon became the bane of my straight-haired friends. I tried really, really hard to not push nappiness on them, but a simple answer about a hair product I use would inevitably turn into a diatribe about the evils of the perm or how heat straightening causes incalculable damage. I was that nappy.
I was at times a devotee of coconut oil. Then shea butter. Then castor oil. Then henna. I tried them all, with mixed results. I learned the lingo, and went strictly CG for a while (CG being shorthand for Curly Girl, the all-natural regimen developed by British ‘curl advocate’ Lorraine Massey). I became a no-pooer. I was fervent about my curls, and spent hours trying to ‘type’ my hair. I watched 400 Years Without A Comb.
But something happened about a year into my ‘natural hair journey.’ My natural laziness reasserted itself. I lost the wonder at each tiny curl, and stopped deep conditioning, stopped henna-ing, and started occasionally using regular shampoo (well, Trader Joe’s shampoo. I still don’t mess with sulfates). I pared down my product usage, and even though I occasionally branch out to other brands, I generally stick to three. I use two hair products a day, a moisturizer and a gel, whereas before, I was using 3-5. I decided people should have whatever hair works for them, because hey, they’re the ones who have to style it.
And I stopped reading the hair boards and blogs. I think they are invaluable for the newbies out there — they’re the best place to get answers, support, and great ideas. But a lot of angst and anxiety over natural hair still exists, and it’s played out daily online. There are women who think natural hair isn’t natural unless it meets a particular set of criteria (which, by the way, reminds me a lot of the fights over Real Feminism), and there are women who think that straight hair on a black woman is the equivalent of mental slavery. I’m at a point where I can’t deal with all of that. But I do still crave pictures of beautiful hair. It can be naturally straight, naturally nappy, colored, grey, styled, or unstyled. I just want to look at it.
That’s the long version of why I started a hair tumblr.