Fix Your Crown, Queens

Yes ladies, I’m speaking to you. Just a reminder to my melanin-rich sistas with 4C coils, 3B waves/curls, or if it’s bone strait to zig-zag. In most cases, our hair is the first thing that people notice about us. When we’re born most of us have that soft and manageable curly or wavy hair that has come to affectionately be known as “placenta perm.” Normally, by the time we’re toddlers our true texture comes in. It’s at that time we’re taught that combed, coifed hair is proper and acceptable. Little black girls with their ponytails and ornaments and little black boys with their fades or afros. Until the take their little tails outside and come back in with “bed head.” I mean how they do that when their awake? Anywho, they are “adorable” and “cute” until the 3^rd grade for the boys then they themselves become “problematic” let the school system tell it, but that’s for another blog at another time…

We need to normalize celebrating the diversity of our hair. The way that it grows from our head is even regal. I mean, it defies gravity. Stands up and out. When it’s wet it hangs low, as it dries it draws up. When heat is applied it lengthens and when pressed it TRANSFORMED. We are taught to dislike our kinks and their nuances. By the time we’re able to style it ourselves we’re bombarded with the messages to relax it and alter it’s texture permanently. We MUST resist. There are a few things that we as African Americans, Blacks, (however you identify) can hold on to and say is ours and OUR hair and how we style it and express ourselves is one of them. Embrace your hair, Queen! Cheer on when your twist-out is perfect. Your bantu knots are rolled to the Gods. Or even if that lace is melted so well that you can say and mean, “lace, where?” while you’re super strands are cornrowed underneath being protected and everything.

I know it’s counter-intuitive to everything we’ve been taught. The media in this country has spoon-fed us the notion that white is right for so long and that our natural hair is unkept, unprofessional, and unruly. I mean, Dafuq?! They write dress codes and legislation to deem it unworthy. That to be in their world our appearance should mimic theirs. Straight hair for our women, short hair for our men. I be like, “damn, why they in our business? I don’t like that!” So much so that hair discrimination lawsuits over the last several years have popped up ALL over the country. From little girls at school being told their curly hair is violating dress code to young men who made HS valedictorian but couldn’t speak because of his locs. Or black women in the workforce being told that they cannot where braids or afros. Hell even before then having to wear a wig or straight sewn in protective style to interview for a position.

As with other cultural vulture practices perpetrated by the melanin deprived species; they vilify us for our bodies, features and hair then take ownership of acquiring said bodies, features and hair styles. I mean c’mon euro-centric media declared Kim K of inventing what they coined “boxer braids” when she had her hair corn-rowed. C’mon white beauty writers. I know it’s hard writing in this industry. But do your due diligence. Cornrows date back to at LEAST 3000 B.C.

Oh and please don’t try to argue about black women who wear straight weave, As explained, it is out of necessity to acquire professional acceptance that we resort to that. As with relaxing our natural hair which in essence kills our strands. Sacrificing to conform, I just want to make it OUR decision if we WANT to we can, don’t make it MANDATORY. Is that SO difficult to understand?

We’ve had some victories, but the fact remains that we’ve had to SUE to be ourselves says a LOT more of our country than it does about us. Please make it make sense! We are regal, we are resilient, and we are REAL. Damn who you THOUGHT we were, WE’RE Rick James BIH! Meaning We gonna do us and be unapologetic about it.

Tasha Morris is a graying 3B curly girl with low porosity and frizzy hair. I braid it up occasionally but rock a puff most days. I want to start styling it more. But you know what they say about stylist, we never keep our hair done.