HOW I DISCOVERED GOING NATURAL..

The first time I had heard of going natural was online a couple of years ago…I forgot where exactly I was reading from…I believe it was on a forum, a woman was discussing chopping off her hair again and starting over. She mentioned using olive oil for her hair and skin…I have to admit to, when I first read this I didn’t put much thought into it except it was odd.

Fast forward a couple years later, I discovered  the blackhairmedia forum. How? Well I was looking for some good weave lol. Believe it or not, I am like a hair fein…I’ll spend hours on the internet literally reading reviews, watching youtube videos and reading forum discussions about products, etc…it just sparks my interest. So anyway, I spent like a few months just going through blackhairmedia archives and discovering the Chinese vendors to go for good hair..Holly, Kevin…and how american vendors are basically rip offs because they order their hair from the Chinese just to sell it at a higher price. If you watched the movie, Good Hair, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

So all these months I’m on the forum it never struck me to go to the Natural Hair Care side of the forum until one day someone had mentioned taing care of their hair underneath their wig…so I thought about it, looked at my overly dry hair and began my research on taking care of my hair which led to me learning about natural vs relaxer and my ambition to want to grow long natural hair.

When i think about it now, there have been sooooo many hints throughout life that would have gave me the lift of having natural hair sooner but because of stereotypes and what women/men (not only African American, people of other ethnicities think it too) who think “relaxed hair” is the only way for good hair, imprint into their children and peers mind…it never crossed my mind until a year ago.

I would look at girls of other races and think…wow they’re hair is so beautiful and naturally healthy while I have to get relaxers and deal with my nappy edges. I remember meeting a black girl in my gym class when I first entered High school…we were in the locker room and her hair was wet because we had swimming class. For some reason we got to talking about hair and I mentioned something about her and she responded “This IS my real hair”. I was speechless…never had I seen a girl with the same skin tone as me with long hair that reached her hips!! Now that I think about it, her hair was natural at that. If that wasn’t an obvious sign then I don’t know what was lol.

Another hint I had about the natural world was my aunt! She would always say to my grandmother (who always has her kids at her house) that she doesn’t want her children’s hair relaxed, she wants it to be NATURAL. I remember thinking how dumb it was that she didnt want their hair relaxed. The reason why I thought that was because their always and still does…LOOK A HOT MESS. I mean hair sticking out everywhere..the oldest one has some breakage in her hair and she hardly ever has her hair done..you know how your braids look when you leave them in longer than what your suppose to? Thats how hers looks. And the funny thing about it is…both my grandmother and aunt have a license from hair school. What a waste of education?

Well I better stop before I get off track. So thats how I discovered “going natural” through blackhairmedia.

-Jazzie