Did YOU see how stunning Viola Davis looked as she strutted down the red carpet, with her gorgeous dress, sexy husband and that amazing N-A-T-U-R-A-L hair?!  She was breath-taking, but it baffles me that it took her decades to climb from behind the weave; the hair that allows you to become acceptable in the eyes of the majority.

I was once just like Viola.  I grew up being taught and believing that I am nothing if I don’t have long, straight hair.  My friends were the same way and often times if you were the girl with the shortest hair you were picked on; me again.  However, it’s not our fault or even our parents fault for having the “long hair/straight hair is better” philosophy.  Nope, this started back in the 17^th – 19^th centuries; the black enslavement era.  I know what you’re thinking, why does everything have to go back to slavery?!  Well think about it this way, if you arrive from Africa, black as all get out with hair that was “wooly”, you worked outside; sun-up to sun down.  On the flip side, if you were of African descent, but you were mixed because massa slept with yo momma and your hair was “fine”, then you had the privilege of working inside with your owners; kind of like family…..well technically you were.

Slave owners used this difference to keep the black race down; they intentionally taught the mixed slave that he/she was better than the “darkies” that were working outside, but still less of a person than the white race.  Although they may not have said it this way, they’re actions spoke volumes and ever since, we’ve been running with it.  Black women are afraid to rock their natural, kinky hair because it symbolizes our rank on the “whose better” poll.  When will we get over this ignorance?

I’ve been rocking a mini afro since 2008, and I went to a buzz cut in January 2009; just because I felt like it.  Well actually, back in 2008, I was in the process of removing chunks of weave from my head, when all of a sudden I told my little sister (who was in the early stages of growing dreads) that I didn’t want to get my hair done, I wanted it cut!  I remember she was so excited because I was relieving myself of the fakeness that was holding me back from my natural greatness.  I must admit that I was scared when I got to the hair salon and the women in there were kinda in awe that I wanted to chop off my hair (this is quite odd however, since I didn’t have too much to chop off to begin with).  When the stylist chopped off the first piece of permed hair, I felt an immediate sense of awareness: I was different and I didn’t care how anybody outside of God had to feel about it.  The only person that really took this hard was my dad, who is your typical old school man who believes that all women should have long, pretty hair. Needless to say, I am still rocking my shaved haircut and I’m using my beauty to take me to where I wanna be; Famous!

This message is for all the girls and women who find me beautiful, but who are too afraid to step outside the box and do what’s natural.  Rocking a natural hair style makes you stronger, because you don’t have the powerful chemicals of the perm knocking you down.  If you worry about what they world has to say about your kinky hair, then you aren’t living.  If you think no man will want you with kinky hair, why would you want a man who thought that way?  If you think you can’t manage kinky hair, think again, there are thousands of youtube.com videos online of black women showing other black women how to take care of their natural hair.  Cutting your hair, dismissing the weave and flushing the perm, all things that are supposed to make you marketable to men and society, is the best choice you’ll ever make concerning hair, health and history/future.