Natural is the New Light Skinned
The topic of women and their hair is always a touchy subject. I have been on the end of some serious lip service (not that kind) when it comes to discussing women and their (seemingly) most prized possession. Since I have not learned my lesson (and I lightweight like pissing people off), I have returned for a discussion about what looks to be the newest trend among black women, natural hair.
A few years ago when Twitter did not exist and Facebook was still for college students, I was a young whippersnapper at FSU minding my own business when I started to observe that many women were going natural and getting “the big chop.” I also noticed that many of these women were Deltas…
I did not understand what was going on, so as any young person would do, I wrote a status on Facebook in hopes of getting some answers. Needless to say the backlash was crazy. The women who responded were very upset at my questioning of their movement from perms to natural and told me I had no business to inquire.
Fine.
Another incident rings out in my mind with a weave wearer I got into an argument with. I told her I preferred not to date heavy weave wearers (she was a heavy weave wearer) and she said something to the effect of “you probably like to date them natural bitches as if they are better than people who wear weave and they will probably cheat on you faster than a bitch with weave will.”
Mad feelings were obviously caught. But I paid more attention to her assumption of why I dated women who were “natural.”
In my naiveté, I was aware of the hair complex of black women, but I did not know that there was a secret war between weave wearers, permed folk, and natural hair wearers.
A woman I know who has worn her hair natural for over 10 years is upset with what she refers to as “all these trendy natural hair wearing bitches.”
“I mean I have been wearing my hair natural for 10 years and when I first started, me and my cousin who was also natural got side eyed to death. People asked us why we did not like to comb our hair and how come our hair was not straight like everybody else. People can wear their hair how they want, but I do not understand why there has to be a big political showing. ‘Oh I am about to make the big chop.’ Saddown bitch, I been natural for 10 years and I made no spectacle of it. If you want to be natural, be natural, but I do not get why women have to make a big deal, it’s just hair.”
No doubt, a mouthful. On Twitter I saw others saying things about natural women like “natural is the new light skin” with one woman stating “just because you natural does not mean you have reached some higher consciousness, you just decided to stop getting your hair permed. Stop that “we are the world, black power” bulls**t.”
Now, if every woman rocking a natural is doing it because it is trendy, let me be the first to say that they are well within their right to do so (no matter how wack I think it is).
I just want to know why. Where did this trend start? Who started this trend? I am a bit secluded from the world since I spend my days around mostly “educated” people in school and on Twitter. Is this wide spread among ALL women or just a small percentage?
I am also reminded of another conversation I have had with an ex about her going natural. Around the same time all the Deltas on my campus were doing it, she was visibly upset too.
“When I first decided to go natural I remember talking about it with my girls for weeks and it just being a very uncomfortable topic. It felt like such a struggle to make the transition, and now I walk on campus and all these women are doing that because it’s the “in” thing to do and its wack.”
That story echoes the same sentiments as my close friend and I see there is plenty resentment from women who have been wearing their hair natural for years, to women who are hopping on it because it is the “cool” thing to do.
I thought this line of thinking problematic as well and after a few minutes it actually made sense. I will use video games for my example. Upon being released, video games were widely thought to be used by nerds and anti-social white kids who wore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirts and built bombs in their basement.
Being the young form on entertainment it was, I can remember being side – eyed to death by my friends when I talked about spending all weekend playing role playing games in fantasy lands that people had never heard of. I actually had more nerdy white kids as friends growing up; because they were the only people I could share my love of gaming with.
Fast forward 15 years later and now gaming is the new hotness. Because of being so widespread, I no longer have to hide the fact that I spent an entire weekend on my couch playing the newest Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, or Final Fantasy game. Nope. Now it is a cool activity and I, at one point, found myself saying “you wasn’t on this stuff when it first came out because you thought it was lame, but now that everybody doing it, you want to do it too. Lame.”
There is also a great deal of ignorance when it comes to natural hair. Some women are not sure if being natural means “going to the salon to get it done” or just growing it out in its natural state. One dude on Twitter said that natural women are just “chicks who are bald and don’t have no hair.”
His words, not mine.
Some women also rock their natural hair straight (through the use of grease and hot combs) and were confused if their hair would be considered natural as well. The ex I mentioned earlier had hair down to the middle of her back when it was straightened. It was so long in fact, I mistakenly believed that it was a weave. (Nobody is perfect)
I want to say that there is some overarching point to this blog, but there isn’t. I’m interested to see what you guys have to say on the matter. Are you natural? Why did you do it? How long have you done it? Do you see it as a trend? Does it make you upset when other people treat is as a trend? Hit the comment box and let me know your thoughts.
Peace.
‘Natural is the New Light Skinned’: A Rebuttal
In July I wrote “The Hair Politics of Natural vs. Permed,”a commentary article for Essence’swebsite, after growing tired of the divisive debate and natural hair roll call on Twitter. In the article, I admit that the topic has been discussed ad nauseum, and how unproductive that debate can be. On most days, I still think the #naturalhair hashtags seem to be a bit cultish. I also stand firm in my belief that wearing your hair in its natural state is not synonymous with having some higher level of consciousness than sisters who wear their hair relaxed or weaved.
None of those sentiments negate the fact that I am transitioning to natural hair. More on that later.
I have very low tolerance for men who have Black women hair issues. Any man who has a strong opinion regarding how he prefers a woman to wear her hair strikes a nerve with me. So when I saw the title of Garlfield Hylton’s post on The FreshXpress, I had to read further to find out what a man could possibly have to say about this topic.
In “Natural is the New Light Skinned,” Hylton writes:
* No doubt, a mouthful. On Twitter I saw others saying things about natural women like “natural is the new light skin” with one woman stating “just because you natural does not mean you have reached some higher consciousness, you just decided to stop getting your hair permed. Stop that “we are the world, black power” bulls**t.”
And this:
Now, if every woman rocking a natural is doing it because it is trendy, let me be the first to say that they are well within their right to do so (no matter how wack I think it is). I just want to know why. Where did this trend start? Who started this trend? I am a bit secluded from the world since I spend my days around mostly “educated” people in school and on Twitter. Is this wide spread among ALL women or just a small percentage?
Admittedly, at the end he mentions that there was no overarching point of his article. Thank goodness, because I thought I had missed it.
On top of the article being poorly written, it missed the mark. The author loses credibility when he assumes that Black women are going natural as some type of trend without any evidence to support his claim. But what if women were doing it as a trend? It would be no different than men wearing skinny jeans because a few rappers do it—or when button downs, blazers, and sneakers became hot because Jay-Z did it. Who cares!?!
The title was misleading as hell. With this type of analogy in the title, most readers are assuming that the writer is going to make a point that connects the title to the overall message. Hylton fails his readers here. If by “natural is the new light skinned” he is referring to light skinned being a trend that was once in, the analogy is poor because skin tone is not a choice, or something people can switch up whenever they want versatility.
But Hylton did pose three questions at the end of the article, which indicates that he is at least trying to understand the topic a bit more.
Like so many Black girls, I never had a vote on whether I wanted my hair relaxed. My mother made that decision for me at a young age. I believe my first perm was around the age of 10, and I’ve been perming my hair since.
As a freshman in high school, I dyed my hair for the first time, and have been dying it for over 10 years. A combination of perm and dye over a long period of time will inevitably damage your hair. I have been blessed in that my hair hasn’t fallen out, it still grows at a fast rate, and it’s not badly damaged. But it’s not as healthy as it could be.
I went natural in college for about a year, but I was getting my hair pressed every two weeks. So I never fully got to see the real natural texture of my hair. Going fully natural this time was not really on purpose.
Life happens. I moved from three states in a matter of a month, and it turned out that I hadn’t had a perm since June 26th. Being in a new state with no beautician, and having already gone three months without a relaxer, I started doing research. Tons of research. After reading, watching tutorials, and speaking to other women who assured me that I didn’t have to do the big chop to go natural, I decided to do it.
As I began to do the transitioning styles–bantu knots, twist outs, braid outs, flat twists–and testing out great products, I became enamored with my hair and the journey. I can’t wait to see what the end results will be a year from now.
Transitioning to natural for me is just about wanting to accomplish this. For others it means so much more. But I can say it has made me realize how much one has to love themselves, possess self-confidence, and have high self-esteem to rock their hair natural. There is still a stigma about curly, kinky, beautiful Black hair in its natural state. People will come at you sideways because they think you need to “comb your hair.”
Everyday I question if I am making the right choice, knowing that appearance is heavily attached to women’s success in certain fields in NYC. In addition, Black women have the burden of worrying if White employers will see their hair as some type of pro-Black political statement. So, the last thing we want to do is read a blog post claiming “we’re whack” for following “the trend.”
It really is a journey to go natural in every sense of the word. I don’t know if women are doing it as some kind of new trend. But if so, there are far worse trends that women could be following.
It’s just hair, but it’s not just hair. It does, however, become problematic when we are concerned with other women’s hair choices. And why any man is concerned about how we wear our hair is baffling to me.
I’m less concerned with our hair and more with women knowing their worth. With or without natural hair, we need to celebrate one another for who we are in all of our versatility.
*The grammatical errors in Hylton’s excerpts have not been edited.
>via: http://clutchmagonline.com/lifeculture/feature/natural-is-the-new-light-skinn...