Carter Ernessa T. - Better than good hair: the curly girl guide to healthy, gorgeous natural hair!

To the curly homies everywhere, who shared my struggle and inspired me to be an advocate.
To my daughter, Gia, who keeps me motivated; my husband, Gene, who has provided constant support and guidance; and to my mother, father, grandmother, sister, and all of the friends and family who have supported me.

Contents

By Kim Wayans

Photo: Daniel Reichert

The topic of hair is such a potent one. Its political, social, cultural, sexual, and, above all, very personal and emotional. How many of you at some point in your life have been guilty of canceling a hot date, calling in sick to work, or playing hooky from school because you just could not get your hair to act right? Maybe the weave needed to be tightened, or those unruly edges and roots were in some desperate need of the creamy crack. Whatever the case, you have to admit, hair drama is all too often front and center in the lives of women, especially black women.

We spend far too much time obsessing over our hair, and spend way too much money (sometimes the rent money!) trying to beat it into submission and make it do something it doesnt want to do. And who could blame us? With the mainstream media bombarding us with images of women with bouncin-and-behavin long, straight hair as the ideal beauty role models, its no small wonder that so many sistas shy away from wearing their natural hair.

For those of us brave enough to consider breaking free from another cultures idea of what real beauty isand finding our way back to our roots, so to speaktheres a great deal of fear around exactly what to do with natural hair. If you think about it, most of us didnt grow up learning how to take care of and manage our own hair. From a very early age, we practiced on our Barbie dolls (or her cheap ghetto knock-off, Shanequa) replete with straight, silky hair. In essence, we learned how to do nonblack hair. To make matters worse, we watched those television commercials where white women just jump in the shower, wash their hair without a hitch, then shake and go. If we tried that, wed wind up with a matted birds nest that you couldnt get a comb through for a week!

Looking back on my own hair journey, I was fortunate that I never had a perm. Which isnt to say I didnt want one. Like almost every other little black girl I knew, I was desperate to push the hair out of my eyes and toss it over my shoulder like Marcia Brady. But my progressive mother was not having it. She was adamant about her girls maintaining their natural hair while living under her roof. No matter how much my sisters and I reasoned, argued, or got down on our ashy knees and begged, she held her ground. We could hot-comb our hair if we must, but absolutely no chemicals were allowed in her house.

So the hot comb became my best friend. And it served me pretty well until it was time to go away to college at a predominately white university in Middletown, Connecticut, miles away from my hometown of New York City. I remember being stressed out in the weeks before leaving, worrying about how I would maintain my press and curl while I was away.

I thought Id found a genius solutionbuying an electric hot plateuntil I almost burned down the dorm one night when my ten-dollar fleece blanket got too close to the apparatus and went up in flames. Luckily, I was able to snuff it out before it got out of hand. Rather than try to explain to all those clueless white girls in my dorm what a hot comb was, and why I was using it (especially since they had assumed that my hair was just naturally straight, and Id allowed that fraud to perpetuate), I said Id burned some popcorn instead!

From then on, whenever they would smell burnt hair and smoke wafting from under my door, I could hear them whisper to one another, Oh, Kims burning popcorn again. How hard is it to cook popcorn anyway? Well, Im here to tell you, Kim burned some popcorn once a week for four years. Im sure to this day theyre all wondering what the hell was up with the black girl and her popcorn.

After graduating and moving out to sunny California, I became more health conscious, so I joined a gym and started working out. I quickly discovered that I couldnt break a sweat without hearing the faint sound of African drums in my head as my kitchen started napping up. Well, sista-girl couldnt have her press and curl going back on her, so I did what most other women in my predicament would doI gave up my gym membership. Hair that lay straight was simply more important to me than a strong cardiovascular system.

Eventually, though, I got tired of hanging out at pool parties, pretending that I enjoyed baking to a crisp in the sun without ever taking a dip in the pool. And I also got tired of running like a madwoman for the nearest shelter whenever I felt a drop of rain fall from the sky. A change was due. So I gave up my press and curl and made the leap to individual braids with extensions.

I must admit I loved my braids. It was kind of like having long, straight hair, but I could exercise and even take a swim! And the tons of compliments I received from folks were quite addictive. People would always comment on how beautiful and exotic my braids were. I went from being a slave to my hot comb to being a slave to my extensions. They were quite costly and time-consuming, too. Every two months, Id sit for eight hours to get them taken out; then come back the next day and sit for upward of fourteen hours to get them put back in. I couldve bought a vacation home in Antigua with all those fat checks I was writing to the stylists to keep up my do.

The longer I wore braids, though, the more I discovered some of the pitfalls of wearing them. The most embarrassing was that an extension would often loosen and fall out when you least expected it. Like the one that fell out when I was standing in line at the buffet at my best friends wedding. It plopped down right on top of the curried chicken, which wouldnt have been too face-breaking if the fine guy standing behind me hadnt lifted it up and handed it to me as I was trying to make a clean getaway. I have more stories like that than I care to remember. It got to the point where my extensions became like Hansel and Gretels bread crumb trail. If you needed to find Kim, just follow the fallen extensions.

But even worse was when I started noticing that my edges were breaking off and my hairline was slowly creeping backward, thanks to too much stress being placed on the hair follicles from the weight of the extensions. Faced with the choice of either looking like Egghead McGee with a hairline that started back behind my ears or giving up the braids, I decided that the braids had to go. I needed a different style and quick. But what? I knew I didnt want to get a weave, and that was mostly because I had hugged one too many weave-wearing mamas whose head smelled like something crawled up under that weave cap and died. I needed access to my scalp, so I could keep it clean and smelling lovely. Moreover, I didnt want to become one of those scary women who would put a brotha in a choke hold if he attempted to touch her hair. (Weave wearers can be extremely sensitive to human touch.)

With much trepidation, I decided I would take out the extensions and go completely natural. This was not an easy decision to make. To be quite honest, I was scared. I had become so attached to my braids. What was I going to look like without them? Would I still be cute? Would people still compliment me? Would men still be attracted to me? Its incredible to think how insecure I was initially about wearing my own hair.