Since I was young I’ve always been told that I have “good hair”. Why? Because I have curly soft hair? That’s what my cousins would say. But yet as I was growing up I actually was extremely obsessed with kinky hair (4a, 4b, 4c). Although I got a relaxer because I didn’t want my dreads anymore, I wanted something completely different.

As I got older I’ve always thought, “Maybe I should go natural.” But the thing that held me back was, “How the heck do I do natural hair???” I had gotten so used to my relaxed hair I had no idea how to do my natural hair anymore. So it took until my senior year in high school to actually really try to go natural.

As I was going natural I talked to family and African American friends about why they didn’t or wish they could go natural. They at first were very serious and told me that they didn’t have “good enough hair” to wear it like that. “My hair is nappy.” “I don’t want to get a ‘kitchen’ on the back of my neck.” “It’s unmanageable.” “It’s not versatile.” “It doesn’t look cute.” etc. But, I kept thinking about how much fun you could have with a more textured hair! It holds styles longer and your hair grows faster! And no more pouring money down the drain for all those relaxers! Of coarse these were some of the pros they stated. But after that it just became a joke of some sort.

To me good hair is healthy hair. And you can tell healthy hair apart from unhealthy very easily. If your hair is growing, has a natural shine to it, and has no split ends, then I think it’s good hair. The thing about African and African American hair, is that it comes in such a wide variety of textures that we can’t all use one miracle product for beautiful healthy hair. And for African Americans we have a hard time doing this because we have been so emerged in this European idealization of beauty that we’ve forgotten our own roots. If we all just took the time and got to know our hair in it’s natural state we’d all have “good hair”.

Peace~ :]

Here’s a video from the Tyra show about the subject.