This Week's Discussion: Your natural hair isn't difficult. You just don't like it.
What's been blowing up the group chat this week.
One of the very few bright spots during the first months of the pandemic last year was seeing so many Black women embracing their natural hair. Without the demands of having to go into the office everyday — and the pressures to conform that come with it— many finally found the right moment to stop relaxing or straightening their hair. Others, like me, used the time stuck inside to finally learn how to braid!
But, we’re now 18 months into this never-ending plague and the narrative is starting to shift. Allure recently ran a piece titled “Why Some Black Women Are Going Back to Relaxers” in which they talked to several women who decided that their natural hair was just too time consuming and having straight, relaxed hair was easier. "It was just a struggle for me to figure out my hair and determine what it likes, what it needs, what products that work with it," Ashley White, who has a YouTube channel, told the magazine. "It was taking a lot of time and a lot of effort, or just more time and effort than I want to put into my hair to just achieve a simple style."
Going back to the creamy crack (relaxer) is really not a new trend; if you go on YouTube, you’ll see videos from years ago of women doing exactly that. But TikTok is “discovering” a lot of things for the first time. (Relaxer sales have been steadily declining since the 1990s and there’s no real sign of that reversing.)
I honestly try and stay off TikTok as much as possible because while entertaining, I find it to be an overall toxic environment. For the sake of this newsletter, I decided to watch a few videos around the discourse. Most of them were saying pretty much the same thing: let people do what they want with their hair. Which is a sentiment I 100% agree with. But, what I can’t ignore is the type of comments that flood these kind of videos. Here are a few:
natural hair isn’t for the weak
if we’re being honest, natural hair doesn’t suit everybody
let’s be real…if your hair is texture 4c, being natural isn’t fun
Do we hear ourselves? How can your natural hair that you are BORN with not suit YOU?
I’m not goin to invalidate anyone’s struggles with taking care of their hair. When I first went natural, I had no idea what worked for my hair and it was definitely difficult at times. But we as a community, and by that I mean Black women, need to break this narrative that natural hair or type 4 hair (I really hate the hair typing system but I’m going to use it for clarity) is inherently hard to manage. BECAUSE IT’S NOT.
Your hair isn’t difficult. You just don’t like it.
The historical reasons for hair discrimination and why many Black people wear their hair straight are well known. The tools, techniques, and ingredients our ancestors used on their hair prior to colonization and the slave trade were stripped away for centuries and natural Black hair was maligned as unkempt and unclean. We really need to remember and understand precisely why so many of us reached adulthood not knowing what our real hair texture looked like.
When I stopped wearing weaves, I had so many moments when I didn’t even recognize myself in the mirror. And as embarrassing as it is to admit now, I was secretly hoping that the right gel or cream would be reveal my true, looser curl pattern. I was, to put it bluntly, delusional and struggling with a lot of internalized self hate.
Everyone should be free to wear their hair how they want without judgement. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t evaluate why we prefer one thing over another. There are plenty of women with extremely kinky 4c hair who have no issues taking care of it and it doesn’t take them hours to do it in the morning, just like there are women with bone straight hair who have trouble achieving the style they want.
One of my favorite YouTubers, Joy-El, posted an excellent video about the trend of self-deprecating videos and memes about type 4 hair in the natural hair community. It’s become normal for Black women to openly disparage their hair and its texture while praising the hair type of other women.
“Take accountability for the negative thoughts and opinions you have about your hair,” she says in the video. She’s right. Enough is enough.
I strongly believe a lot of the frustration and difficulty many of us have with our kinky hair stems from us trying to manipulate it into something it’s not. Our hair is never going to behave or look like someone with type 3 curls. And it shouldn’t.
Your hair routine doesn’t need to be 10 steps and your wash day doesn’t need to be six hours long. Once you accept your hair for what it is, you’ll finally be able to find a routine that works for you and products your hair responds to. You’ll never get there if you keep fighting against it.
Type 4 hair is the most versatile and unique texture. We can wear our hair bone straight one day and then a fro the next. It is insanely beautiful and it doesn’t need to be tamed. Everyone’s journey is different but it doesn’t need to be painful and hard.
I want to reiterate that Black women should wear their hair however they want. I enjoy getting a silk press sometimes, too! But we can’t ignore that chemical relaxers have been proven to increase the risk of uterine fibroids in Black women and put you at a higher risk for breast cancer. So while relaxed hair may be “easier to manage” — which I also think is a myth — it comes at a cost.
It’s time for some tough self love: Be honest with yourself about why you have certain preferences for your hair and so little patience for it. It takes A LOT of unlearning, but I promise, you’ll be able to discover the magic in your hair if you just give it a chance.
Going natural can be a daunting experience. There are so many products on the market and figuring out what works for you involves a lot of trial and error — which amounts in a lot of wasted money. Black consumers spend 9x more than any other group on hair products, and many times, a lot of these products don’t even work on our hair! It doesn’t have to be like this.
I’m collecting data for a potential new service that would make the hair industry more equitable for Black women by saving us money and simplifying the process of taking care of our natural hair. I’d appreciate your response to my quick survey about the natural hair journey and the money spent along the way:
Natural hair product usage survey
Stay tuned — I’m hoping to have more to share very soon.
Thank you so much for joining the group chat. If you liked what you read, please share and subscribe. Leave a comment to let me know what you’d like me to discuss next week or products and services you’d like me to try.
In the words of Forever FLOTUS Michelle Obama, "hey queen, girl you have done it again!" As a proud 4C natural, I thank you for this piece.
I love-love-loved this post and this is something that has been on my mind, also, as of late — mostly because I kept seeing women on TikTok talk about how their natural hair was "too difficult" to style and that naturals need to stop "shaming" them. For me, I think desirability politics have a lot to do with the idea that we even have to wear our natural hair in a *certain* style (and ofc that ties entirely into the idea that type 4 hair is not beautiful in its actual natural state).
Like what you were saying about manipulation, the reality is that natural hair IS so easy once you make peace with what you've been blessed with. For instance, a wash-and-go or 6-section twist-out literally takes a half-hour to 45 minutes once a week and can last for that entire week, as long as I rock my bonnet in the PM. I know because I have 4b hair and both easy styles work great for me, shrinkage and all.
Relatedly, I remember seeing another TikTok where this young woman was saying she struggled to feel sexy in her natural hair, and in the comments, a lot of women were agreeing with her, saying they feel much hotter in a straight or wavy weave... and stuff like that breaks my heart. Because, again, I feel like women aren't really putting in the critical-thinking work — they aren't asking themselves *why* they feel that way. Shit ain't normal, y'all! I really want our community to free itself from desirability politics and the blatant eurocentrism they're centered on.
Anyways, keep doing what you're doing. xx