Hair today, gone tomorrow - good riddance!

As some of you may have noticed, I recently chopped all my hair off. I did it in the middle of May, right when it was starting to get hot. I remember complaining to my Wikasika (WCSC) housemates that it was too hot and I’m just going to cut all my hair off so I don’t have to deal with it any more--you know, what every girl says every year when summer starts. I didn’t think I’d actually do it.

At the risk of revealing too much about myself, my hair-cutting experience was more than just a hair style change or getting rid of annoying long hair. You see, that long hair was fake. It was chemically processed, straightened hair. I’ve had my hair chemically straightened ever since I was about nine or 10 years old. My mother probably just got tired of hearing me scream every time she yanked all of the knots out of my nappy hair in order to form two side-hanging pig-tails during my grade-school years. So she had me straighten it, making it much easier to deal with.

Not only was it easier to deal with, but more fashionable and made me fit in with my friends. When we moved from Washington, DC, to Pittsburgh, Penn., I also made a move in the racial make-up of my friends. In Pittsburgh all of my friends were white, so having "white" hair was cool--I could buy pony tail holders, barrettes, I could braid my hair, use hair spray, a curling iron, a huge flat brush--anything and everything a girl in junior high needed to perfectly style her hair (and boys, we didn’t style our hair for you; we girls were mainly trying to outdo each other and it was fun to read Seventeen magazine and style our friends’ hair). So this was me all the way through high school--dealing with processed "white" hair because I was living in a white world.

It wasn’t until I moved back to DC (where I was born) that I got to reclaim my black hair. I lived and worked among blacks, so that encouraged me, but that wasn’t all. Changing your hair that drastically and going natural for anyone is really challenging, and it wasn’t without the help of three of my housemates (and closest friends) that I was able to do it. And isn’t that how life is--you need the encouragement of your closest friends to confront challenges that are good for you, to overcome them, and change.

One of my friends has been asking me to grow my hair curly for about two years (I didn’t know if this was for my good or because she had to look at me all the time); the other just thinks afros are cool and said he’d love me more if I grew a ‘fro (I couldn’t turn that offer down), and the other teased me about "fake" hair because he thought he knew stuff from his Afro-Caribbean philosophy class.

Nevertheless, all of these people loved me deeply. This made me feel accepted and OK and provided the right environment for me to make the change. So I made an appointment and had it whacked off--to begin my journey of natural hair growth. When I first took a shower and was running my hands through my hair, I cried. I think it was because it was such a beautiful experience being loved and validated in my own identity (black) enough to claim it and grow. Growth can only come from such nurture and an environment of love (which includes the nagging, the friendly teasing, and offers of more love from people around you). And it’s not that I wasn’t "OK" before; it was just time for a change as I grew older and learned things about myself and my role in the world, or in other words, identity. And personally, I look forward to all of the change and growth that is bound to come from EMU’s intentional community that focuses on non-violence, peace, and ultimately love.

Roxann can be reached at allenr@emu.edu.