Good hair

If you have had the privileged of growing up in the Caribbean or belonged to an Afro-family, you would have been familiar with terms such as “good hair” and “nappy head”. The latter represented hair that was more difficult to comb and thus less attractive and these terms led to much contention at times. As I set out to write my piece this week, I couldn’t help but laugh at these terms born out of a colonial and post-colonial era. If you have ever visited countries like Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, just to name a few, you would encounter multi-ethnic women of colour, with a variety of hair types and it was out of that era hair-discrimination began.

Sounds funny that you would be discriminated against because of the quality of your hair but it did occur, perhaps to a lesser extent these days, but it hasn’t gone away. It was just the other day the daughter of a friend of mine wrote of her own experiences with her hair. She too, of mixed heritage, struggled with what she felt her hair had to look like in order to feel confident within herself. She is not alone.

I can’t even remember what my natural hair looked or felt like. All I know it was a thick, full head of hair that my relatives found difficult to manage so I learned to comb it myself. By the age of 14 years, I had it relaxed (chemically permed) and I have never looked back. Having it relaxed made it easier for me to comb and style it the way I wanted it to be. A dream for any teenager, but back then, that is what most young women did. Very few wore their hair in its natural state until back in the 80’s but it all changed in the 2000’s.

Salon treatments had wreaked our hair over the years through mechanical and chemical applications as there is an under-appreciation of how fragile the hair of a woman of colour can be. Poor weave applications, traction alopecia, and chemical damage drove many back into their natural state. It was the only way to stop the hair loss but this also helped to redefine once again, what was good hair. Women had to learn to comb, style and love their hair again with fresh eyes. The change demanded a new market of hair products that were compatible with our needs. The U.S. Black Hair Care market is worth $2.6 billion but there is a gap in the products for the woman who desires to wear her hair “au naturale”. There is room for growth here. I have friends that have taken to mixing their own oils, for their hair care, in a need to fill the gap.

It is time we women understand that good hair means healthy and not the way it looks or feels in texture. What is the point having a head of hair that is soft to the touch, easy to comb, almost tangle free yet it is falling out, breaking and patchy in appearance? I also don’t believe anyone should be pressured into wearing their hair in a natural state because somehow it offers a sense of identity or needing to be identified of a particular group.

Hair can often times be the thermometer of the body. As changes occur in the body the hair can sometimes be the first place you notice that something is wrong or there is a change occurring internally. Let us in turn treat our hair with the respect it deserves. Here is a quote that I recently heard from an Instagram follower, who also is a hair stylist helping women give love to their naturally style coifs, “Your hair is the crown you never take off”. She is right and no one wears a rusty, lack-lustre crown. Be proud of the crown you wear.