A Daughter's Thoughts…

As you can see, my user name  is NaturalSystah. If you’ve not seen the About Me page, it’s because I am a black woman who has chosen not to use chemicals to straighten her hair since 1997.

Some of you may think “What’s the big deal?” Others may be thinking “Uh-oh” as this can still be a touchy issue for many. For the lowdown, I heartily recommend Nappturality.com as a resource for natural black hair. I loved the post by Jean at The Virtuous Woman blog on embracing our God-given beauty and thought that I’d better get on with publishing this post! This is one huge topic that I think is just part of the bigger problem relating to perceptions of external beauty, which is of course highly subjective. There’s big bucks to be made from making people feel that there’s something wrong with how they look and that’s not going to change any time soon.

It’s interesting to me though, that the black pentecostal church in particular was known for frowning upon straightened hair as being somehow worldly. Nowadays natural hair is in the minority in the ones I’ve been to. I’m not sure why or how that shift in opinion happened, but I wonder if the prevalence of many women preachers and gospel artists wearing straight weaves made it seem okay? (side note:  I’m not sure I can recall any black female gospel artists with natural hair?!)

I got to thinking that there have been quite a few parallels in my life between my walk with the Lord and my having natural hair. Check it out:

• Both Biblical Christianity and natural hair are often misrepresented and are surrounded by many myths, far too many to list here!
• I experience freedom in Christ, the Son has set me free indeed! Having natural hair has freed me in many ways too.
• There are many who give up on the faith or on natural hair, either because of ignorance or lack of support/ostracism.
• I’ve been ridiculed for being a Christian and yep, having natural hair
• There are people whose lifestyles can indicate that they may be a false convert, and I’ve wondered about those who have eschewed chemicals, state proudly that they have natural hair yet regularly fry their hair with heat and it’s rarely seen in a non-straight style…
• I’ve been called judgmental because of my faith, and also for having fairly strong opinions about natural hair (which I might add, I don’t give unsolicited but I will correct untruths when I hear them – whether about the Lord or natural hair) – my faith and my views on hair are unpalatable to some…

I didn’t get too much grief about my hair growing up, but I do remember hearing people say that it was a shame that I didn’t inherit my dad’s “good hair” (good hair = straight or wavy, anything but nappy or “picky”, the Afro-Caribbean pejorative term for kinky textured hair). To my shame I deeply resented my hair and gave in to the chemicals when I was about 14 or 15.  I loved having it straight and wouldn’t entertain the idea of having it any other way until I turned 20 and started questioning many things I was doing in my life. I wondered why it was ok for the relaxer to go on my head yet the stylist had to wear gloves? And I slowly began to see that there was nothing inherently wrong with my hair, I was just ignorant as to how to treat it. Now I realise that my hair texture is not “bad”, not even problematic, it’s how the Lord designed it to be.

At first my peers thought I was going mad, especially when I cut out the relaxed hair and had natural hair only 3-4 inches long. It did make me giggle inside though when I saw a few of them wear the same canerow style that I had though Incidentally, the Lord saved me a couple of months after that haircut and He’s been working on me both inside and outside, praise Him.