I arrived in the UK from West Africa Nigeria, with a short tight
afro and thrown into the world of straight, loose curls and relaxed hair. And of
course, I had to join the bandwagon! Bless my mother she would do anything for
me, when it comes to hair and beauty (Love you mum! Happy Mother’s Day). So, we
trudge to the beauty supply store to pick up a relaxer and we sat down to do
the so-called dirty deed. I did not last for a year! It did not look how I
wanted, it did not feel how I wanted, I was losing so much hair and I did not
have any idea how to take care of it. I was starting to realise hair formed
such a big part of a woman’s identity and I wanted to be more than my rubbish hair.
So back to natural hair it was and to be honest it was perfect timing. My mum
got busier with work and she had already taught me how to do braiding. I was
only 14 and could wear my hair kind of crazy for a while with little judgement
from the world.
But my hair growth progress was slow, it broke a lot, was
dry and appeared to be thinning at times, despite multiple trims trying to keep
it healthy. I started University in 2010 and before then the black hair/natural
hair movement had started to gain traction in America, but as it gained
popularity in the digital world, UK started to get on board. YouTube became my go
to place for getting natural hair advice. It was a lot of learning about
texture, porosity, protein, moisture balance and it was the first time I
understood I had a mixture of hair textures, 4c and loose 4b with fine strands and thin hair to boot! Lucky me!
I kept on with the natural hair. When I started working full
time, I discovered a blog on growing waist length hair and
low and behold I saw someone who had relaxed hair like I did all those years
ago and her hair was growing long with wigs. So, I started this journey also.
My progress was slow frustrating and disheartening when I saw natural girls, I
had watched on YouTube succumbing to the ‘creamy crack’. I was constantly limited
by shedding and breakage (which I minimised by finger detangling) and the
biggest issue SINGLE STRAND KNOTS. Which to this day I have no solutions for as
I have tried almost everything? I even tried locking but never fully committed.
After 4 years I revisited the blog that started the whole length journey and
realised I missed a KEY detail. Our girl was TEXLAXED!!
I do not have to tell you what happened next. I started the
search slowly as I could not fully commit. I felt I was turning back on identity,
culture, the race struggle. Nevertheless, I
continued looking for videos on how this was done and while some results absolutely
terrified me, some results were surprisingly familiar…too familiar! In Gus’s
voice from Recess, ‘Hey, those look awfully like those natural haired girls who
could get their hair straight with little effort, with 4c hair hanging loose onto
their shoulders!!!!!’ They were texlaxed! THEY WERE TEXLAXED Y’ALLL! And the
really amusing thing is that texlaxing (when done right) appears to achieve
similar growth rate as those with looser hair textures (unless you are
genetically inclined to have long hair).
So, I have been stressed for the last 16 years to do the
impossible and the last 10 years following advice on the internet when we may
be starting from different baselines. In the same breath I was well pissed off,
wanted to throw a massive rock but then decided to write this blog because life
is too short and hair grows back, unless it can’t, and you have wigs and scarves! Thank God
for those as well! Hair has so many meanings; it is part of how we show the
world how we want to be addressed; it can be our identity. While the natural hair
movement has been a useful tool to liberate people out of what may have
appeared to be the only option, I think the digital world can sometimes only
show us what we want to see, not always the truth. Using relaxer is not that
deep. If you want to get political, cultural, religious…you can do so in the
comments! As for me, whatever I do from this point on to my hair is for me!
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