This week Petra posted an excellent article about falling in love with your natural hair. One I enjoyed reading every bit as much as I enjoyed editing it. She made some excellent points and the one that grabbed me more than anything was the one about accepting that you won’t always be able to show your true length.
Being able to show my true length has been a sort of obsession of mine since beginning my natural journey. I suppose that’s why I flat ironed my hair so often in the past. Sometimes it was just because I fancied straight hair for a minute but sometimes it was because I was going somewhere and I wanted people to know that my hair was actually long dammit!
I can’t in all honesty say that it’s a failing in character because it is a need shared by many natural ladies, particularly those with high shrinkage hair. Yet losing the need to show off length all the time, or ever is truly a sign of growth and self acceptance.
I’m not ensconcing allowing your hair to shrink to a 1 inch twa every week, that wouldn’t support length goals of course but there is something terribly freeing about not caring what people think of your hair. And coming from someone like me who thinks about hair every day, it’s a big deal.
Last week I heard about someone who had met two very popular hair-lebrities, they will remain nameless because their identities don’t really matter. She said that she was not impressed with either of their hair. She said that blogger A’s hair looked dry and blogger B had thin looking hair. She couldn’t understand why they were so popular.
Now hearing such criticism from a random person it did make me wonder what people who have met me in real life think of me and my hair. After a very short deliberation it became clear to me that you simply can’t please all of the people all of the time. And I shouldn’t try to.
By blogging about my hair and attempting to help others along with theirs I am not putting myself on a pedestal and saying that my hair is anything unique or extraordinary. Hell, I don’t have the longest, prettiest, curliest, kinkiest or thickest hair there is. Nobody can really claim that crown.
But I do put myself out there and I like to think that what I have done has inspired other women with bigger, thicker and prettier hair than me to have the best head of hair that they can have. And that is something that truly fulfills me.
So in spite of my all hair’s failings, and there are many, I can honestly say that I love my hair!
