DeeRSco

Honestly, I never thought it was such a huge deal. And then I cut my hair last summer and all of a sudden I found that I was making a “statement” when I never intended to. For starters, I’ve been “natural” since birth. My hair has never been chemically altered aside from dye. Now, I never really had any identity issues surrounding my hair but I very rarely wore it curly - a choice that had more to do with lack of knowledge about styling than anything.

My parents divorced when I was in elementary school and since my father had primary custody of myself and my 2 brothers, if I wasn’t with my mother I was either sent to the hair dresser every 2 weeks, stuck with whatever style Ms. Roxanne (my father’s neighbor and the sweetest lady ever) could fix before I got too antsy, or left to my own devices to wash blow-dry & style my hair. And if you’ll note the photo below, I had a lot of hair as a kid.

So that meant when my hair did get “done” it was usually blow-dried & hot-combed/flat-ironed because that was a way easier style for kid me to maintain.

Now let’s fast forward 20 years to early winter 2011. I bought a brand new shiny flat iron that I fell in love with because A) it came in purple & 2) it flat-ironed my hair in less than an hour, which was record time. The unintended side effect was that I damaged the bejeezus out of my hair with the weekly heat routine I was giving it. Over the summer I tried to give it a break and wore it “natural” more often. This was partly because I was biking a lot and straightening would’ve been pointless but that will get me started on an entirely different tangent…

So by the end of the summer, I realized I had two completely different textures on my head and cut off about 6 inches of straight hair. Since then I’ve almost exclusively worn my hair curly and that’s it.

It wasn’t an “I am a free woman” thing or an “I’ve finally accepted myself and everyone else should” thing or an “I reject mass media’s ideals of beauty” thing. It was a, my hair is damaged and needs time to chill thing. I mean, I guess if you get down to the root of it, it is some of those things I just said it isn’t - my mother definitely raised me to be comfortable in my own skin - but eh, it’s also convenient and a lot less time-consuming.

So that’s it. That’s my rant. Any other questions, feel free to drop me a line.

(Source: DeeRSco.com)

crap. I’ve been wearing my hair curly so long that I forgot how to blow-dry my own damn hair.