How White Women Taught Me to Love Black Hair

Ok, this is a big thing for me to admit. And it's surprising because it's something I just discovered today.

Now, I've discussed hair here before - and I'm sure I'll discuss it again. Hair is a big thing for me as it is for all women - particularly Black women. Culturally, we have all kinds of hang-ups about hair. There's just no getting around it. It's ingrained in us from the time we're young. And honestly - there are a whole LOT of attitudes that Black women have about hair, that we just need to get past.

I tend to think that because I'm aware of these issues, that I am beyond them. But I'm not. I've got my own issues about hair - proof of which being that I cut all my hair off last summer because I wasn't feeling right with long hair - and since then I've felt even worse with short hair. But that's a whole other story.

Now, when I was a kid, I never got to wear my hair out. It was always contained in ponytails that were either twisted or braided - or on very special occasions rolled into great, big "banana curls." But my hair was never free and un-contained. Ever. It was long and curly and tangled easily and was never allowed to roam free. I hated it and when I graduated from elementary school I had it all cut off.

As an adult, looking at other children, I, surprisingly (when I look back on it) always preferred to see little girls with their hair contained as well. You'd think that, based on my own experience, I would have liked to see little girls with their hair out. But it always looked unruly and haphazard to me.

Now, for the most part, it's rare to see Black girls with their hair out. In fact in my experience, whenever I saw a Black girls with her hair out and all over her head it would turn out that they had a white mother. And the assumption was always that the reason the girl's hair was out was because her mother didn't have the faintest clue about how to handle hair with some texture to it.

Now, with my own experience of hating wearing the same 3 hairstyles for the majority of my childhood, but with the culturally ingrained preference for seeing girls with their hair neat and orderly - when Sugar was born I became an expert at getting creative with hairstyles. Braids, cornrows, twists, elaborate series of connected or disconnected ponytails, different colored barrettes, bands, beads and clips. I really had a handle on her hair and I got compliments on it everywhere I went. People stopped me in the street to ask me how I got her to hold still for these styles. Friends begged me to teach them how to do their kid's hair.

I discovered that it wasn't only White women who didn't have much of a clue about how to style textured hair - many Black women didn't have a clue either. They'd been going to hairdressers for so long that they didn't even know how to do their own hair - much less their daughter's. And many of them had been wearing their hair in a processed style for so long that they had no clue about how to deal with naturally textured hair.

For a long time, I nurtured the idea of writing a book, or creating a video or teaching lessons on how to do hair. It's an idea I still haven't really let go of.

But then a while back, I suddenly realized that I NEVER let Sugar wear her hair just out. Completely out - no twists or other manipulations of her hair. And I realized that despite the fact that I gave wonderful lip service to the idea of teaching Sugar to love her hair - that I was sending just the opposite message by making her believe that her hair was just too unruly to be left to it's own devices. So, on occasion I started letting her wear it out. And then when Spice was born, I made the decision to do the same with her.

With both girls, their hair looks the most beautiful and is the most manageable for wearing out when it's freshly washed. Textured hair desperately needs moisture - and when it gets it, it follows it's own twists and turns beautifully - catching the light and bouncing and just being ALIVE.

Well, last night, I washed Spice's hair. And I decided that I would just let her wear it out for a couple of days. So I put some conditioner in it and let it be. Today her head was filled with crazy, twisty beautiful curls when she woke up. I did nothing more than stick some barrettes in to hold it out of her eyes and let her go.

She LOVED it and so did I. And, as usual, I started wondering why I didn't do this more often.

And I flashed back to how I used to think about girls with their hair out and wild like Spice's. And how it would make me cringe and want to teach the mother how to take care of her child's hair.

And I thought about how maybe, in some cases, those White women I saw with their kids hair out and wild, weren't leaving it like that because they didn't know what to do - but maybe they were leaving it like that because they enjoyed the natural beauty of it.

And I realized, that this is probably very true. White women don't have the hang-ups Black women do about feeling the need to mold, meld, contain and control hair. Not that White women don't have hair issue of their own - but honestly they are not nearly as extensive. And I'm not even talking about the politics of hair.

A white woman can have a child with tons of texture in their hair and just enjoy the beauty of it without feeling compelled to want to DO it. And the beauty of it has begun to transcend the personal and become part of American culture through advertising and media. Pick up any catalog for kids clothes, any flyer for the Children's Place or Old Navy or Hannah Anderson or Land's End and you will find a picture of a Black girl with her hair out and free and twisting, curling, dancing to it's own beat.

And I realized that these ads, these children whom I see, they've broken through my own upbringing to let me see the beauty of my own girls' hair. To show me that their hair isn't only pretty when it's pulled and twisted and braided - but that it's even more stunning when it's out and curling and free.

So I'm thanking every White woman with a child with naturally curly, nappy, kinky, textured hair who either didn't know how or didn't want to DO it and so let it go free - showing me that if I want to get over these hair hang-ups one of the first things I need to do is stop tying up my kids' hair all the time.




Spice says, "blech" to ponytails and braids - she loves that wild hair and so do I!