The Bullshit of This Natural Hair "Movement"

This crap makes my ass itch to the highest degree. I want to speak on it, but it would take forever. So I will try to touch on my main idea about what I think about this and move the hell on..

I started growing my hair out in order to go natural around late 2004 when I was a senior in high school. I loved the way natural hair looked. I loved the raw, unique fierceness of it. And, at the same time, I grew tired of wearing weave and perming and coloring my hair in attempts to look a certain way that was never meant for me or Black people. I tried to adhere to a Eurocentric standard of beauty that was getting crazy and was completely unrealistic. True, when I wore my perms and weave (that I glued in myself and ended up ripping my damn air out), I made that shit look good. I'm not sure where I got the money for my weave from, but I always got the $8 plastic, Beverly Johnson crap that somehow managed to blend awesome with my own hair. I'm not sure if that is a good or bad thing, but I had people FOOLED into thinking that hair was really mine, $8 or not.

But the downfall came when I took that shit out. I would feel different because I was different. My confidence was gone. My feeling of being beautiful was gone. I was a regular Black girl with thin, short, unhealthy permed hair. I was like everyone else. And the worst part was the boys stopped looking at me the same, if they looked at me at all. They ignored me..
It's amazing how much hair adds to a woman's "beauty", so to speak.
I was so afraid that if I met someone looking one way, all glamourous with my long weave, they would not like me if I looked differently afterwards. And to this day, I still have that fear.

I want to represent my true self when people see me. And my natural hair is that.

So I went natural with the intent to get closer to myself, to love myself, to have my own, true high self esteem sans enhancement.. Like weave.

So I learned the hard way about my hair, a few products, styles and things like that. I drew confidence from within and what God granted me with and I became a stronger woman because of that. It's an amazing way to grow and mature. At least it was for me. I didn't have a real support group, just a friend here or there who may have been natural. But that was IT. It was a personal thing.
I didn't have the internet or a smart phone(or a cell phone at all!), or even money for that matter. Hell, youtube wasn't even around yet. I sneeked and looked up natural hair when I was in my graphic design class in high school. I looked at pictures and other than that, I had nothing!

But NOW, hunty?

Now natural hair is a damn movement with blogs and youtube and facebook and twitter and hair types and product reviews and rules and shit to make my hair grow (they still on this white girl, long hair shit) and "protective styling" and "good" shit and "bad" shit to use for your hair. Women get into discussions and arguements about hair and buy any and everything that promises curl definition..

And WHAT the hell is going on with all this damn curl definition?? I never gave two shits about curl definition! And NOW it is all the rage. Girl, if your hair is kinky, WHY are you trying to get hair like a bi-racial person? When I was learning my hair, I didn't CARE about curls. I didn't have anyone to look at or COMPARE myself to, so I did not look into hair gels or getting my shit to curl like some freeze curls in the beauty salon and shit like that..

See, this is the damn problem. People get too tied up into others and forget about themselves.
Let SistaGurl do her, and you do YOU. I did ME. And I still am.
This is where all this drama and hair typing shit comes into play.

I never knew my "type" and I still don't pay attention to that crap.

WHY? How will it help me?

Sweety, when you come from the time of "The Dark Ages", before this movement crap, you don't know what you are missing.

I just think the purity of natural hair has been lost.
We need to return to that.

Now, I do look at hair blogs, but I do it out of entertainment. It's fun. It's a hobby of mine. And that's it.
And if I do look at someone's natural hair blog, I make sure they have hair that mimics mine so I will not have "hair envy".
Which is stupid as all damn hell.
What the hell is the point of going natural if I am going to be jealous of someone's damn hair? Doesn't that just defeat the whole damn point? Isn't being natural about loving yourself and working what you got? This shit reminds me of young girls in the ghetto wanting long, yellow hair like Disney princesses. That is hair envy. It's like some Bluest Eye, self-hating type crap for me. Like that stand-up Whoopy did about putting a towel on her head when she was younger.
Craziness.

But why use gel to change your texture, or even worry about your texture, or worry about getting long hair, or retainging length, and titling shit like "protective styling"?

Just wear your hair the way you want and do you!


Anyway, my rant is over. But this IS some mad bullshit, yo. And I think it needs to stop. Anytime too many people jump on a damn bandwagon, shit pops off.
I don't need any support and I enjoy doing my own thing. Always have
I wish others were the same, because the drama and "rules" of being natural looks like a damn voguing competition between drag queens. I understand some do need support, but support is different compared to THIS.

It's a damn shame.

~Ash

My Baby is Here!!

And by "My Baby", I mean my laptop.
Yay!

It is a 17.3 inch Gateway laptop that I paid $571 for and got from Amazon. It came over night.
Amazing, right?

But I put it on my credit card that I will have paid off in 6 payments (5 $100 payments and one $71 payment.. roughly).

I wanted to use it SO BAD last night, but the damn wi-fi network was not working for me so I will have to use it tonight...After studyhall:(

But at least I got it!

And I am being more careful/ "mature" with my expenses and bills as far as keeping better track of things and paying them off.

So I am happy. I cannot spend like crazy, like before, but I will benefit from this in the future.

Yay:)